Every few turns of the wheel reveal some new feature of the scene, unexpected channels cutting through the centre of a long, wooded reach, broad open spaces studded with islets, narrow creek-like channels between rocky island shores, in which the whole river seems contracted to a slender stream, while farther on the channel expands to a mile in width, and glimpses of other channels open behind distant islands. Quick turns in our course plunge us into archipelagoes, through which a dozen channels run and wind in every direction. Sudden openings in the wooded shore along which we are swiftly gliding yield glimpses of charming islands, here closing the view, there cut by narrow channels which reveal more distant wooded shores, and lead the imagination suggestively onward till we fancy that scenes of fairy-like beauty lie hidden beyond those leafy coverts, enviously torn from our sight by the remorseless onward flight of the boat. For hours we sit in rapt delight, drinking in new beauty at every turn, and heedless of the fact that the breakfast gong has long since sounded, and the more prosaic of the passengers have allowed their physical to overcome their mental hunger.
One tall, long-whiskered old devotee of “cakes and ale,” hailing from somewhere in Ohio, shaped somewhat like a note of interrogation, and sustaining his character by asking everybody all sorts of questions, did not, I am positive, digest his breakfast well, for I took a wicked pleasure in assuring him that we had passed far the most beautiful portions of the scenery while he was engaged in absorbing creature comforts, and that the world beside had nothing to compare with the fairy visions he had lost. Old Buckeye, as I had irreverently christened him, wished his breakfast was in Hades, and at once set out on a tour of interrogation to learn if he could not return by the same route and pick up the lost threads of beauty he had so idly dropped.
Another of our fellow-passengers was an English gentleman of perfect Lord Dundreary pattern, his every movement being so suggestive of those of his stage counterpart as to furnish us an unfailing source of amusement. At Prescott, Canada, a New England college boat-club came on board with their boat, and highly amused the passengers during the remainder of the journey with a long succession of comical songs. Three of them were sons of one of our venerable New England professors, one an unvenerable professor himself, yet their tanned faces, worn habiliments, and wild songs bore so strong a flavor of the backwoods that it was hard mentally to locate them within college walls.
We were roused from dinner by the announcement that the Long Sault Rapid was at hand, and gladly deserted one of the meanest tables we had ever encountered to partake of one of nature’s rarest banquets.
The boat was entering what seemed a heaving sea, the waters lifting into dangerous billows, and tossing our craft with unmitigated rudeness, until it became almost impossible to retain a level footing. But the appearance of these rapids was different from what we had been led to expect. The frightful aspect of danger, the rapid down-hill plunge of the boat, and all the fear-inspiring adornments of the guide-books, while they might be visible from the shore, did not appear to those on the deck. Apparently the boat was fixed in the heart of a watery turmoil, her onward motion lost in her various upward and sidelong movements, while as for fear, its only evidence lay in little shrieks full of laughter, as the equilibrium of the craft was suddenly destroyed.
Five minutes or so of this experience carried us through the perilous portion of the great rapid, and brought us into safe waters again. The St. Lawrence has various other rapids between the Long Sault and Montreal, differing in appearance, some of them being, as far as the eye can reach, a succession of crossing and tumbling waves, which give the boat unexpected little heaves, and appear like the waves of a tossing sea. Here the water plunges rapidly down a narrow throat between two islands, there it curves round a rocky shore, on which it breaks in ocean-like billows. But the only point where danger becomes apparent to untrained eyes is at the La Chine Rapids, near Montreal, where the river runs through a narrow foaming channel between two long ridges of rock, over which the water tumbles with a terrible suggestion of peril.
The peak of Montreal mountain has been long visible, and now we rapidly approach the long line of Victoria bridge, the great pride of Canadian engineering. Under this we glide with a gymnast at the mast-head, whose erected feet seem nearly to touch the bridge; and in a short time we round in to the wharf and are ashore in the largest city of Canada.