CHAP, xxiii. MOUNT ST. JOTIX AND THE MAGPIE RIVER. 45 



Anticosti, and tlience to tlie Mingan Islands, in search of 

 their enemies, the Montagnais. Tlie Jesuit missionaries 

 describe various conflicts about the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century on this line of route. 



A great landmark comes into view after passing the 

 Manitou, called Mount St. John, 1,410 feet above the 

 sea, and eleven miles up the river of the same name. 

 But before the mouth of this stream is reached, an 

 important inland hue of communication, called Magpie 

 Eiver, empties itself into the Gulf five miles from the 

 mouth of the St. John. The sources of this river are 

 close to those of the east branch of the Moisie, and the 

 lakes which feed it can be seen from the highest point we 

 reached, at an elevation of more than 2,000 feet above 

 the ocean, and within twenty miles of the east branch. 

 Three hundred yards from the sea Magpie Eiver falls over 

 a ledge of perpendicular gneissoid rocks thirty feet in 

 height. The Eiver St. John is one of the largest on the 

 coast, and is important as a communication with the 

 interior. The east branch of the Moisie, the head-waters 

 of the Magpie, the Manitou, and the St. John Eiver, are 

 close to one another, and there are well-known portages 

 between them, about 120 miles from the sea, in a country 

 intersected with lakes and broad expansions of sluggish 

 streams. The mouth of the St. Jolm is only six miles 

 and a half fi'om the westernmost part of the Mingan 

 Islands, called the Perroquets, on which the ill-fated 

 steamers Clyde and North Briton were wrecked in 

 September 1857 and November 1861. The coast be- 

 tween the mouth of the St. Jolm and the Bay of Seven 

 Islands contains abundance of the black mac^netic oxide 



