DESCENDING THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.
The Great River of Canada—Jacques Cartier—The Great Lakes—The Ancient Course—The St. Lawrence Canals—Toronto—Lake of the Thousand Islands—Kingston—Garden of the Great Spirit—Clayton—Frontenac—Round Island—Alexandria Bay—Brockville—Ogdensburg—Prescott—Galop, Plat and Long Sault Rapids—Cornwall—St. Regis—Lake St. Francis—Coteau, Split Rock, Cascades and Cedars Rapids—Lake St. Louis—Lachine—Caughnawaga—Lachine Rapids—Montreal—St. Mary's Current—St. Helen's Island—Montreal Churches and Religious Houses—Hochelaga—First Religious Colonization—Dauversière and Olier—Society of Notre Dame de Montreal—Maisonneuve—Mademoiselle Mance—Marguerite Bourgeoys—Madame de la Peltrie—The Accommodation—Victoria Tubular Bridge—Seminary of St. Sulpice—Hotel Dieu—The Black Nuns—The Gray Nunnery—McGill University—Place d'Armes—Church of Notre Dame—Cathedral of St. Peter—Notre Dame de Lourdes—Christ Church Cathedral—Champ de Mars—Notre Dame de Bonsecours—Rapids of St. Anne—Lake of the Two Mountains—Trappists—Mount Royal—Ottawa River—Long Sault Rapids—Thermopylæ—Louis Joseph Papineau—Riviere aux Lièvres—The Habitan—The Metis—Ottawa—Bytown—Chaudière Falls—Rideau Canal—Dominion Government Buildings—Richelieu River—Lake St. Peter—St. Francis River—Three Rivers—Shawanagan Fall—St. Augustin—Sillery—Quebec—Stadacona—Samuel de Champlain—Montmagny—Laval de Montmorency—Jesuit Missionaries—Father Davion—The French Gentilhomme—Cape Diamond—Charles Dilke—Henry Ward Beecher—Castle of St. Louis—Quebec Citadel—Wolfe-Montcalm Monument—General Montgomery—Plains of Abraham—General Wolfe—The Basilica—The Seminary—English Cathedral—Bishop Mountain—The Ursulines—Marie Guyart—Montcalm's Skull—Hotel Dieu—Fathers Brébeuf and Lalemont and their Martyrdom—Notre Dame des Victoires—Dufferin Terrace—Point Levis—Beauport—French Cottages—Faith of the Habitans—Cardinal Newman—Falls of Montmorency—La Bonne Sainte Anne—Isle of Orleans—St. Laurent and St. Pierre—The Laurentides—Cape Tourmente—Bay of St. Paul—Mount Eboulements—Murray Bay—Kamouraska—Riviere du Loup—Cacouna—Tadousac—Saguenay River—Grand Discharge and Little Discharge—Ha Ha Bay—Chicoutimi—Capes Trinity and Eternity—Restigouche Region—Micmac Indians—Glooscap—Lorette—Roberval—Lake St. John—Montaignais Indians—Trois Pistoles—Rimouski—Gaspé—Notre Dame Mountains—Labrador—Grand Falls—The Fishermen.
THE GREAT RIVER OF CANADA.
"The first time I beheld thee, beauteous stream,
How pure, how smooth, how broad thy bosom heav'd!
What feelings rushed upon my heart!—a gleam
As of another life my kindling soul received."
Thus sang Maria Brooks to the noble river St. Lawrence, which the earlier geographers always called "the Great River of Canada." The first adventurous white man who crossed the seas and found it was the intrepid French navigator, Jacques Cartier, who sailed into its broad bay on the festival day of the martyred Saint Lawrence, in 1534. When this bold explorer started from France on his voyage of discovery he was fired with religious zeal. St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany, was then the chief French seaport, and before departing, the entire company of officers and sailors piously attended a solemn High Mass in the old Cathedral, and in the presence of thousands received the venerable Archbishop's blessing upon their enterprise. Cartier, like all the rest of the early discoverers, was sent under the auspices of the French Government to hunt for the "Northwest Passage," the short route from Europe to the Indies, or, as described in his instructions, to seek "the new road to Cathay." The Church naturally bestowed its most earnest benisons upon an enterprise promising unlimited religious expansion in the realms France might secure across the Atlantic. Carrier's chief ship was only of one hundred and twenty tons, but the little fleet crossed the ocean in safety, and on July 9th entered a large bay south of the St. Lawrence, encountering such intense heats that it was named the Bay de Chaleurs, being still thus called. After an extensive examination of the neighboring coasts and bays, Cartier returned home, reporting that the Canadian summers were as warm as those of France, but giving no information of the extreme cold of the winters. This the sun-loving Gauls did not discover until later. Cartier came back the next year, and sailed up what he had already named the "Great River," describing it as the most enormous in the world. The Indians told his wondering sailors "it goes so far that no man hath ever been to the end that they had heard." The explorers carefully examined the vast stream, its shores and branches, and were sure, as they reported, that its sombre tributary, the Saguenay, "comes from the Sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a strong current, and there runs here a terrible tide." They saw numerous whales and other sea-monsters, but found the water too deep for soundings, and in fact the river St. Lawrence cannot be sounded for one hundred and fifty miles up from its mouth.
ITS VAST EXTENT AND FEATURES.
The St. Lawrence is an enormous river, having much the largest estuary of any river on the globe, the tidal current flowing five hundred miles up the stream, and its mouth spreading ninety-six miles wide. It is the outlet of the greatest body of fresh water in existence, draining seven vast lakes—Nepigon, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario and Champlain—besides myriads of smaller ones, including the Central New York lakes, hundreds in the Adirondack forests, and thousands in the vast Canadian wilderness. The St. Lawrence basin covers a territory of over four hundred thousand square miles, and has been computed as containing more than half the fresh water on the planet. The main St. Lawrence river is seven hundred and fifty miles long from Lake Ontario to the head of the Gulf, while the total length of the whole system of lakes and rivers is over two thousand miles, and has been computed by some patient mathematician to contain a mass of fresh water equal to twelve thousand cubic miles, of which one cubic mile goes over Niagara Falls every week. The early geographers usually located the head of the system in Lake Nepigon, north of Superior, but it is thought the longer line to the ocean is from the source of St. Louis River, flowing through Minnesota into the southwestern extremity of Lake Superior at Duluth. The bigness of the wonderful St. Lawrence is shown in everything about it. Thoreau, who was such a keen observer, has written that this great river rises near another "Father of Waters," the Mississippi, and "issues from a remarkable spring, far up in the woods, fifteen hundred miles in circumference," called Lake Superior, while "it makes such a noise in its tumbling down at one place (Niagara) as is heard all round the world." The geologists, however, who usually upturn most things, declare that it did not always reach the sea as now. Originally the St. Lawrence, they say, flowed into the ocean by going out through the Narrows in New York harbor, and its immense current broke the passage through the West Point Highlands in a mighty stream, compared with which the present Hudson River is a pigmy. Professor Newberry writes that during countless ages this enormous river, which no human eyes beheld, carried off the surplus waters of a great drainage area with a rapid current cutting down its gorge many hundred feet in depth, reaching from the Lake Superior basin to the Narrows, where it dispersed in a vast delta, debouching upon a sea then much lower in level than now, and having its shore-line about eighty miles southeast of New York. By some stupendous convulsion this channel was changed, drift banked up the old valley of the Mohawk, and the outflow was deflected from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario into the present shallow and rocky channel, filled with islands and rapids, followed by the St. Lawrence down to Montreal.