52 THE LABEADOR PENIXSULA. chap. xxiv. 



very first taking of the ' bridge/ gradually and slowly increases 

 for a considerable "way up. 



By the time the ice has become stationary at the foot of 

 St. Mary's current, the waters of the St. Lawrence have usually 

 risen several feet in the harbour of Montreal ; and as the space 

 through which this current flows affords a deep and narrow 

 passage for nearly the whole body of the river, it may well be 

 imagined that when the packing here begins, the inundation 

 rapidly increases. The confined nature of this part of the chan- 

 nel affords a more ready resistance to the progress of the ice, 

 while the violence of the current brings such an abundant 

 supply, and packs it with so much force, that the river dammed 

 up by the barrier, which in many places reaches to the bottom, 

 attains in the harbour a height usually twenty, and sometimes 

 twenty-five feet above its summer level ; and it is not uncommon 

 between this point and the foot of the current, within the dis- 

 tance of a mile, to see a difference of elevation of several feet, 

 which undergoes many rapid changes, the waters ebbing or 

 flowing according to the amount of impediment they meet with 

 in their progress from submerged ice. 



It is at this period that the grandest movements of the ice 

 occur. From the effect of packing and piling, and the accumu- 

 lation of the snows of the season, the saturation of these with 

 water, and the freezing of the whole into a solid body, it attains 

 the thickness of ten to twenty feet, and even more ; and after 

 it has become fixed as far as the eye can reach, a sudden rise in 

 the water (occasioned, no doubt, in the manner mentioned) 

 lifting up a wide expanse of the whole covering of the river so 

 high as to free and start it from the many points of rest and 

 resistance offered by the bottom, where it had been packed deep 

 enough to touch it, the vast mass is set in motion by the whole 

 hydraulic power of this gigantic stream. Proceeding onwards 

 with a truly terrific majesty, it piles up over every obstacle it 

 encounters ; and when forced into a narrow part of the channel, 

 the lateral pressure it there exerts drives the bordage up the 

 banks, where it sometimes accumulates to the height of forty or 

 fifty feet. In front of the town of Montreal, there has lately 

 been built a magnificent revetment wall of cut limestone to the 

 height of twenty-three feet above the summer level of the river. 



