SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.
Ogdensburg is an active port on the St. Lawrence about twenty miles below Brockville, having a railroad through the Adirondacks over to Rouse's Point on Lake Champlain. Here flow in the dark-brown waters of the Oswegatchie, the Indian "Black River," coming out of those forests, which commingle in sharp contrast with the clear green current of the greater river. Prescott, antiquated and time-worn, is on the Canadian bank. The shores are generally low, with patches of woodland and farms, and the St. Lawrence below Ogdensburg begins to go down the rapids, having tranquil lakes and long wide stretches of placid waters intervening. The first rapid is the "Galop," flowing among flat grass-covered islands, with swift moving waters, but a small affair, scarcely discernible as the steamboat goes through it. The next one, the "Plat," is also passed without much trouble, and then a line of whitecaps ahead indicates the beginning of the "Long Sault," the most extensive rapid on the river. This is the "Long Leap," a rapid running for nine miles, its waters rushing down the rocky ledges at a speed of twenty miles an hour. All steam is shut off, and the river steamer is carried along by the movement of the seething, roaring current, the surface appearing much like the ocean in a storm. The rocking, sinking deck beneath one's feet gives a strange and startling sensation, and looking back at the incline down which the boat is sliding, it seems like a great angry wall of water chasing along from behind. An elongated island divides the channel through the "Long Sault," and there are other low islands adjacent; the boat, swaying among the rocks over which the waves leap in fury, being now lifted on their crests, and then dropped between them, but all the while gliding down hill, until still water and safety are reached at Cornwall. Here begins the northern boundary of New York, which goes due east through the Chateaugay forests across the land to Lake Champlain, and large factories front the river, getting their power from the waters above the rapid.
Below Cornwall, which has an industrial population of some seven thousand, and the Indian village of St. Regis opposite, the St. Lawrence is wholly within Canada, and far off to the southeast rise the dark and distant Adirondack ranges. Soon the river broadens into the sluggish Lake St. Francis, at the head of which two well-known Adirondack streams flow in, the Racquette and St. Regis Rivers. The ancient village of St. Regis has its old church standing up conspicuously with a bright tin roof, for the air is so dry that tin is not painted in the Dominion. The bell hanging in the spire was sent out from France for the early Indian mission, but before landing, the vessel carrying it was captured by a colonial privateer and taken into Salem, Massachusetts. The bell, with other booty from the prize, was sold and sent to a church in Deerfield, then on the Massachusetts frontier. The St. Regis Huron Indians heard of this, and making a long march down there, recaptured their bell, massacred forty-seven people, and carried all the rest who could not escape, one hundred and twenty of them, including the church pastor and his family, captives back to Canada. Thus they brought the bell in triumph to St. Regis, and it has since hung undisturbed in the steeple, although the Indians who now hear it have become very few. The lake is twenty-eight miles long and very monotonous, although a distinguishing landmark is furnished by the massive buildings of St. Aniset Church, seen from afar on the southern shore.
Coteau, at the end of the lake, has a railway swinging drawbridge, carrying the Canada Atlantic Railroad over, and below is another series of rapids. These are the "Coteau," with about two miles of swift current, making but slight impression; and then the "Cedars," "Split Rock," and the "Cascades." The "Cedars" give a sensation, being composed of layers of rock down which the boat slides, as if settling from one ledge suddenly down to another, producing a curious feeling. It was here, in 1759, that General Amherst, by a sad mishap, had three hundred troops drowned. The "Split Rock" rapid is named from enormous boulders standing at its entrance, and a dangerous reef can be distinctly seen from the deck as the steamer apparently runs directly upon it, until the pilot swerves the boat aside, seemingly just in time. Then, tossing for a few moments upon the white-crested waves of the "Cascades," the steamer glides peacefully upon the tranquil surface of Lake St. Louis, which is fifteen miles long, and receives from the north the Ottawa River. Each little village on the banks of the lake and rivers is conspicuous from the large Roman Catholic Church around which it clusters, the steep bright tin roof and spire far out-topping all the other buildings. At the lower end of the lake a series of light-ships guide vessels into Lachine Canal, which goes down to Montreal, avoiding Lachine rapids, three miles long, the shortest series, but most violent of them all. Here, at the head of the rapids, stood the early French explorer, sent out to search for "the road to Cathay," and looking over the great lake spread out before him, with a view like old ocean, he shouted "La Chine!" for he thought that China was beyond it. The Canadian Pacific Railway bridge spans the river, and skirting the southern shore is the Indian town of Caughnawaga, with its little old houses and light stone church, the "village on the rapids." The steamboat then slides down Lachine rapids, the most difficult and dangerous passage of all, though it lasts but a few minutes—the exciting inclined plane of water, with rocks ahead and rocks beneath, indicated by swift and foaming cataracts running over and between them, and by stout thumps against the keel, sometimes making every timber shiver, and the apparent danger giving keen zest to the termination of the voyage. These rapids passed, the current below quickly floats the steamboat under the great Victoria tubular bridge, carrying the Grand Trunk Railway over, and the broad stone quays of Montreal are spread along the bank, with rank after rank of noble buildings behind them, and the tall twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral rising beyond, glistening under the rays of the setting sun.
THE CITY OF MONTREAL.
The delta of the great Ottawa—the "river of the traders," as the Indians named it, debouching by several mouths into the St. Lawrence, of which it is the chief tributary, makes a number of islands, and Montreal stands on the southeastern side of the largest of them, with the broad river flowing in front. St. Mary's current runs strongly past the quays, and out there are the pretty wooded mounds of St. Helen's Island, named after Helen Boullé, the child-wife of Samuel de Champlain, the first European woman who came to Canada. She was only twelve years old when he married her, he being aged forty-four, and after his death she became an Ursuline nun. The miles of city water-front are superbly faced with long-walled quays of solid limestone masonry, and marked by jutting piers enclosing basins for the protection of the shipping against the powerful current. At the extremities of the rows of shipping, on either hand, up and down stream, loom the huge grain elevators. The piers are about ten feet lower than the walled embankment fronting the city, this being done to allow the ice to pass over them when it breaks up at the end of winter, the movement—called the "Ice Shove"—being an imposing sight. The elongated Victoria Bridge stands upon its row of gray limestone piers guarding the horizon up-river to the southward. Many storehouses and stately buildings rise behind the wharves, and beyond these are myriads of steeples, spires and domes, with the lofty Notre Dame towers in front. The background is made by the imposing mountain giving Montreal its name, called Mont Real originally, and now known as Mount Royal, rising to an elevation of nine hundred feet. Few cities of its size can boast so many fine buildings. The excellent building-stone of the neighborhood, a gray limestone, is utilized extensively, and this adds to the ornamental appearance, the city rising upon a series of terraces stretching back from the river and giving many good sites for construction. Numerous, massive and elaborate, the multitude of costly houses devoted to religion, trade and private residences are both a surprise and a charm. Mount Royal, rising boldly behind them, gives not only a noble background to the view from the river, but also a grand point of outlook, displaying their beauties to the utmost. The city has wide streets, generally lined with trees, and various public squares adding to the attractiveness.
But the most prominent characteristic of the Canadian metropolis is the astonishing number of its convents, churches, and pious houses for religious and charitable uses. Churches are everywhere, built by all denominations, many being most elaborate and costly. The religious zeal of the community, holding all kinds of ecclesiastical belief, has found special vent in the universal development of church building. This commendable trait is their natural heritage, for the earliest French settlements on the St. Lawrence were largely due to religious zeal. When Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence upon his second voyage in 1535, he heard from the Indians at Quebec of a greater town far up the river, and bent upon exploration, he sailed in boats up to the Iroquois settlement of Hochelaga. Wrapped in forests behind it rose the great mountain which he named Mont Real, the "royal mountain," and in front, encompassed with corn-fields, was the Indian village, surrounded by triple rows of palisades. Landing, Cartier's party were admitted within the defensive walls to the central public square, where the squaws examined them with the greatest curiosity, and the sick and lame Indians were brought up to be healed, the ancient historian writes, "as if a god had come down among them." No sooner had Cartier landed and been thus welcomed than he gave thanks to Heaven, and the warriors sat in silence while he read aloud the Passion of Our Lord, though they understood not a word. The religious services over, he distributed presents, and the French trumpeters sounded a warlike melody, vastly pleasing the Indians. They conducted Cartier's party to the summit of the mountain and showed them an extensive view over unbroken forests for many miles to the dark Adirondacks far away and the distant lighter green mountains, which he called the "Monts Verts," to the eastward. There is a tablet placed in Metcalfe Street near Sherbrooke Street which marks the supposed site of the Indian village of Hochelaga. In 1608, when Champlain came, Hochelaga had disappeared. The fierce Hurons had destroyed the village and driven out the Iroquois, who had gone far south to the Mohawk Valley.
For three-quarters of a century the French seem to have waited after Cartier's voyages, before they made any serious attempt at settlement. Then there came a great religious revival, and they planned to combine religion and conquest in a series of expeditions in the early seventeenth century under the auspices of patron saints and sinners whose names are numerously reproduced in the nomenclature of Quebec Province, in mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, capes, counties, towns and streets. It was chiefly due to Champlain, however, that the French foothold was obtained. This great explorer, known as the "Father of Canada," was noted alike for personal bravery and religious fervor. His occupations in the New World were perilous journeys, prayers and fighting. He firmly planted the French race in America, and every characteristic then given "New France," as Canada was called, remains to-day in the Province of Quebec. His noted saying is preserved in the Canadian chronicles, that "the salvation of one soul is of more importance than the founding of a new empire." His system was to take possession for the Church and the French king, and then erect a cross and a chapel, around which the colony grew. During the half-century succeeding Champlain's first voyage, many Recollet and Jesuit missionary priests came over, traversing the country and making converts among the Indians, so that there were established settlements, half-religious and half-military, forming alliances with the neighboring Huron and Algonquin Indians, and ultimately waging the almost perpetual wars with their English and Iroquois foes to the southward. Champlain, in 1608, founded Quebec, where Cartier had previously discovered the Indian village of Stadacona, meaning the "narrowing of the river." Champlain also, in subsequent voyages, discovered Lakes Champlain, Ontario and Nipissing.
RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL.
The original settlement of Montreal was probably the most completely religious enterprise of the many early French colonizing expeditions to Canada. Dauversière, a tax-gatherer of Anjou, was a religious devotee whose constant scourging with small chains and other torments, including a belt with more than twelve hundred sharp points, filled his father confessor with admiration. One day while at his devotions, an inward voice commanded him to found a new order of hospital nuns, and establish at the island called Mont Real in Canada a hospital or Hotel-Dieu for these nuns to conduct. But Mont Real being a wilderness where the hospital would be without patients, the island must be colonized to supply them, and the pious tax-gatherer was sorely perplexed. There was in Paris a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who was zealous and devout, and signalized his piety by much self-mortification, and one day while praying in church he thought he heard a voice from Heaven saying he was destined to be a light to the Gentiles, and that he was to form a society of priests and establish them on the island called Mont Real, in Canada, for the propagation of the true Faith. The old writers solemnly aver that both these men were totally ignorant of each other and of Canadian geography, yet they suddenly found themselves possessed, they knew not how, of the most exact details concerning the island, its size, shape, soil, productions, climate and situation; and they subsequently saw apparitions of the Virgin and the Saviour encouraging them in the great work. Dauversière went to Paris seeking aid to carry out his task, and met Olier in a chateau in the suburbs; the two men, who never before had seen or heard of each other, became at once familiar, and under holy inspiration fondly embraced each other; the tax-gatherer received communion at the hands of the priest; and then for three hours they walked together in the park forming their plans. They determined, as the pious chronicler records it, to "plant the banner of Christ in an abode of desolation and a haunt of demons, and to this end a band of priests and women were to invade the wilderness and take post between the fangs of the Iroquois." They believed in the mystic number, three, and proposed to found three religious communities—one of secular priests to direct the colonists and convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the Faith to all the children, white and red.