The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
"Ottawa's tide! this trembling moon
Shall see us float o'er thy surges soon.
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers:
O, grant us cool heavens, and favoring airs!
Blow, breezes, blow; the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."
On the northern shore of the "Lake of the Two Mountains," with Oka village nestling at the base, where an Indian colony live, are the two mountains from which the lake is named. One, surmounted by a cross, is Mount Calvary, having various religious shrines on its summit, and seven chapels on the road up, representing the seven stations of the cross. Here is also a monastery of the French "farmer Monks," the Trappists, who cultivate a large surface. They live a secluded life under ascetic rules, are not allowed to talk to each other, and only men enter the monastery, all women being stopped at the threshold. They rise at two o'clock in the morning, take breakfast soon afterwards in absolute silence, this being the only meal of the day, and retire to rest immediately after prayers at sunset. They devote twelve hours daily to devotions, and labor in the fields the remainder of the waking time. Their food is a scant allowance of water and vegetables. They sleep on a board with a straw pillow, and never undress, even in sickness. They are a branch of the Cistercians, and their abode overlooks the placid lake, with Montreal spreading beyond. But the city's finest suburban possession is its Mountain, the summit being a pleasant park, and the slopes covered with luxuriant foliage, which in the autumn becomes a blazing mass of resplendent beauty when the frosts turn the leaves. From the top the view is of unrivalled magnificence.
THE GRAND RIVER.
The Ottawa River is the most important tributary of the St. Lawrence, over seven hundred miles long, and draining a basin of one hundred thousand square miles, the most productive pine-timber region existing. It was the "Grand River" of the early French-Canadian voyageurs, and the name of Ottawa, changed considerably from the original form, comes from the Indian tribe and means "the traders." It has a circuitous course; rising in Western Quebec province, it flows northwest and then west for three hundred miles to Lake Temiscamingue, on the border of Ontario province; then it turns and flows back southeastward, making the boundary between the provinces for four hundred miles, until it falls into the St. Lawrence, the vast volume of its dark waters pressing the latter's blue current against the farther shore. It is a romantic river, filled with rapids and cascades, at times broadening into lakes, and again contracted into a torrent barely fifty yards wide, where the waters are precipitated over the rocks in wild splendor. For twenty-five miles above its mouth it broadens into the "Lake of the Two Mountains," from one to six miles wide. Above the city of Ottawa there are rapids terminating in the famous Chaudière Falls, where the waters plunge down forty feet, and part are said to disappear through an underground passage of unknown outlet. It has an enormous lumber trade, and by a canal system, avoiding the rapids, has been made navigable for two hundred and fifty miles. The Rideau River enters from the south at Ottawa, making the route by which the Rideau Canal goes over to Lake Ontario at Kingston. The Gatineau River also flows in at Ottawa, being of great volume, over four hundred miles long, and a prolific timber producer. In the villages around Montreal all the saints in the calendar are named, so that, starting on an exploration of Ottawa River, the route goes by St. Martin, St. Jean, St. Rose, St. Therese, St. Jerome, St. Lin, St. Eustache, St. Augustine, St. Scholastique, St. Hermes, St. Phillippe, and many more. But when the great religious city is left behind the saints cease to appear, and everything in the Ottawa valley above is generally otherwise named. This valley is usually a broad and level intervale, with only an occasional rocky buttress pressing upon the river. At one of these passes, in 1660, a handful of valiant men held the stockade at Carillon, the foot of Long Sault rapids, sacrificing their lives to save the early colony from the Indians, the place being known as the "French Canadian Thermopylæ." The full force of the Iroquois warriors were in arms up the Ottawa, over a thousand of them, threatening to drive the French out of Montreal. Dollard des Ormeaux and sixteen companions took the sacrament in the little Montreal church, made their wills, and bound themselves by an oath neither to give nor take quarter. A few Algonquins joined them, and going up the river they hastily built a stockaded fort at this pass. Soon the Iroquois canoes came dancing down the rapids, and discovering the fort, they surrounded and attacked it, but were repulsed day after day, until every one of the brave garrison had been killed, when the Iroquois had lost so many of their own warriors that they tired of the fighting, and avoiding Montreal, returned southward to their own country. Some fugitive Indians told the heroic story, which George Murray has woven into his ballad: