"'Alas for thy lady! No service from thee
Is needed by her whom the Lord hath set free:
Nine days in stern silence her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came, and Death opened her door!'"
La Tour returned, but hardly in the manner justifying the revenge indicated in the poem. D'Aulnay died shortly afterwards, whereupon La Tour recaptured his fort and domain in 1653, but not at the head of an army, diplomatically accomplishing his victory by marrying D'Aulnay's widow. This post was known as Fort La Tour until the British conquest in the eighteenth century, when it was changed to Fort Frederick. It then became a fishing station, and was plundered in the Revolution. Afterwards, in 1783, about ten thousand exiled tories from the United States were landed there, this being the "Landing of the Loyalists" commemorated on May 18th as the founding of St. John, the charter dating from that day in 1785. Benedict Arnold was one of these refugees, he living in St. John for several years from 1786. A Monument in King Square commemorates the landing of the loyalists and the grant of the charter. Being built largely of wood, the city suffered from many disastrous fires, the worst being in June, 1877, when one-third of the place was burnt, involving a loss of over sixteen hundred buildings and nearly $30,000,000. St. John rose from the ruins with great vitality, the new construction being largely of brick and stone. The population now exceeds forty thousand.
THE RIVER ST. JOHN.
The great curiosity of St. John is the "reversible cataract" in the river, caused in the gorge just west of the city by the enormous tides of the Bay of Fundy. The great river above the city is a wide estuary, but before entering the harbor it is compressed into a short, deep and narrow gorge, barely one hundred and fifty yards wide in some places, and obstructed by several rocky islets. As this is the best crossing-place, two bridges are thrown side by side over the chasm, one for a railway and the other for a street, resting upon the limestone cliffs a hundred feet above the water. As the tide ebbs and flows, the rushing river currents make the reversible cataract, almost under the bridges, with the water pouring down both ways at different tidal stages. Through this contracted pass the entire current of the vast St. John valley finds its outlet to the sea. When the ebb tide quickly empties the harbor below, the accumulated river waters cannot get into the gorge fast enough to reduce as rapidly the level of the broad basin above, and they consequently rush down, a cataract, swelling sometimes to ten or twelve feet at the upper entrance to the gorge, and make whirling, seething rapids below. When the tide turns, this outflow is gradually checked by the rise in the harbor, but soon the tremendous incoming flood from the Bay of Fundy overpowers the river current, fills up the gorge, and rapidly rising in the gorge rushes inward to the broad basin, thus making the cataract fall the other way. Twice every day this ever-changing contest is fought, and were it not for the obstruction made by this narrow, rocky gateway, these enormous tides would rush along in full force and overflow a large surface of the very low-lying interior of New Brunswick. The river makes a sharp bend just at the outlet of the gorge, turning from south to northeast around a rocky cape protruding far into the stream; then it broadens out into a rounded bay, and a short distance beyond sharply bends again into the harbor of St. John. Vessels are taken through the gorge at proper tidal stages, guided by tugs and floating at high speed with the rushing current. This is one of the most remarkable exhibitions made of the curious influence of these enormous Bay of Fundy tides.
The River St. John, flowing out of the vast forests of Maine, stretches four hundred and fifty miles from its sources to the sea. The Micmac Indians of its upper reaches called it Ouangondie, while the Etechemins of the lower waters and the St. Croix valley named it Looshtook, or the "Long River." Its sources interlock in the Maine forests, at two thousand feet elevation, with those of the Penobscot flowing south and the Chaudiere flowing north to the St. Lawrence, near Quebec. At first the St. John flows northwest, then east and southeast to its Grand Falls, then by a winding southern course to the Bay of Fundy. For a long distance its upper waters are the national boundary between Maine and Canada. It receives several large tributaries and drains a valley embracing seventeen millions of acres. The immense forest wilderness of Maine, wherein are the sources of these streams, is seven times the size of the famous "Black Forest" of Germany. Upon the upper St. John waters are various villages of French Acadians, the descendants of those who were driven out of Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century. It receives the Allegash, St. Francis, Madawaska, Grand and St. Leonard's Rivers, and thus comes to its cataract with augmented waters—the Grand Falls. Above, the stream expands into a broad basin, flowing from which its enormous current is compressed into a narrow rock-bound canyon, and after running down a moderate incline suddenly plunges over the front and sides of an abyss. This is about sixty feet deep and formed of slate, the water falling into the cauldron below, and also over the outer ledges in minor cascades. Then, with lightning rapidity the foaming current dashes through another canyon of two hundred and fifty feet width for three-fourths of a mile, the walls, of dark, rugged rock, being one hundred and fifty feet high. Within this terrific chasm there is a descent of sixty feet more, in which the waters do not rush along as in the rapids below Niagara, but are actually belched and volleyed forth, as if shot out of ten thousand great guns, with enormous boiling masses hurled into the air and huge waves leaping high against the enclosing cliffs. This ungovernable fury continues throughout most of the passage, the stream at times heaping itself all on one side, and giving brief glimpses of the rocky bed of the chasm. Finally an immense frothy cataract flows over into a lower basin, said to be unfathomable, where the stream becomes tranquil and then goes along peacefully between its farther banks. Majestic scenery surrounds these Grand Falls, there being high mountains in all directions.
Like all great cataracts, this one has its romance and tragedy. Alongside the final unfathomable basin rises a towering precipice two hundred feet high, its perpendicular wall as smooth as glass. Down it the ancient Micmacs hurled their captives taken in war. The implacable foes of these Micmacs, as of all the tribes allied to the French, were the New York Iroquois, and particularly the Mohawks. Once a party of Mohawks penetrated all the way to this remote region, surprising and capturing a Micmac village with a fearful massacre. One young squaw, who promised obedience, they spared, because they wanted her to guide them down the river. She was put in the foremost canoe, and the fatigued Mohawks lashed their canoes together to float with the current in the night, and then went to sleep. The girl was to guide them to a safe landing above the cataract, so they could land and next day go around the portage. She steered them into the mid-stream current instead, and dropping quietly overboard swam ashore. They floated to the brink of the cataract, and when its thunders awoke them, too late for safety, the whole party were swept over and perished. This was the last Mohawk invasion of the region. Twenty miles below, the Tobique River comes into the St. John, and is regarded as the most picturesque stream in New Brunswick, being noted for its lumber camps and good angling. Here is Andover, a little village supplying the lumbermen, and also Florenceville and Woodstock, with busy sawmills. For miles the river shores are lofty and bold, affording charming scenery. The Meduxnekeag flows in from the Maine forests, bringing down many logs, and below the Meduntic Rapids are passed. Then the Pokiok, its Indian name meaning the "dreadful place," flows to the St. John through a sombre and magnificent gorge four hundred yards long, very deep and only twenty-five feet wide. The little river, after plunging down a cataract of forty feet, rushes over the successive ledges of this remarkable pass until it reaches the St. John. For a long distance the great river passes villages originally settled by disbanded British troops after the Revolution and now peopled by their descendants, and then it winds through the pastoral district of Aukpaque, which was held by Americans within New Brunswick for two years after the Revolution began, they finally retreating in 1777 over the border into the wilderness of Maine, and reaching the coast at Machias. Seven miles below is Frederickton, the New Brunswick capital, a small city, quiet and restful, with broad streets lined by old shade trees, and covering a good deal of level land adjoining the river. It has a fine Parliament House, a small but attractive Cathedral, with a spire one hundred and eighty feet high, and on the hills back of the town is the University of New Brunswick. The Nashwaak River flows in opposite among sawmills and cotton-mills, and there was the old French Fort Nashwaak where the Chevalier de Villebon, who was sent in 1690 to govern Acadie, fixed his capital (removing it from Annapolis Royal), and used to fit out expeditions against the Puritans in New England, they attacking him once in retaliation, but being beaten off. The St. John passes through a pleasant intervale below, the garden-spot of the Province, where at Maugerville was the earliest English settlement on the river, colonized from New England in 1763, after the French surrender of Canada. Then the St. John receives Jemseg River, the outlet of Grand Lake, where a French fort was built as early as 1640 and was fought about for more than a century. This is a deep, slow-winding stream in a region of perfect repose, having opposite its outlet Gagetown, a pretty place with a few hundred people, and said to be the most slumbrous village of all this sleepy region:
"Oh, so drowsy! in a daze,