34 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
and so often as to go completely round the compass twice in every 
day. What with the great depths and quick shoalings, the immense 
widths and sudden contractions, the reefs, the islands, the Saguenay, 
the tides, the ten differents currents, and all the other restless things 
that make wild water —there is no other place to compare with this 
for the wonder of its seascapes. Here, in a single panorama, from the 
Tadousac hills or the crags of Cacouna Island, you can see a hundred 
seascapes come to birth, live and die in glory, all in one day and night. 
How often have I watched them shift and change, like floating-opals! 
I have watched the literal “meeting of the waters,” where the last of 
the River ebb meets the first of the Estuary flood, and have seen the 
league-long snake writhing in foam between them. And, here again, 
in calm, unclouded weather, I have seen blade after blade of light flash 
along the surface, as if the sun had damascened them. 
Nature has divided the whole St. Lawrence into seven distinctive 
parts. But man has not given them seven distinctive names; and no 
part requires a name more than the part between Quebec and the 
Saguenay, the part of all others that Nature and Man have united 
in making unique. In default of a better, let us call it “The Quebec 
Channel,” as the next part above it is sometimes, and usefully, known 
as “The Montreal Channel.” Then, if we acknowledge all the straits 
connecting the Gulf with the sea as the real mouth, we shall have 
our seven names complete. “The Mouth” should cover all the lands 
and waters of the actual outlets, that is, the Atlantic straits of Canso, 
Cabot and Belle Isle, and the islands of Cape Breton and Newfoundland. 
“The Gulf” is too well known to need defining. ‘The Estuary” runs 
up from Anticosti to the Saguenay; “The Quebec Channel” from the 
Saguenay to Quebec; “The Montreal Channel” from Quebec to Mon- 
treal; and “The Upper St. Lawrence” from Montreal to the “ Lakes,” 
which speak for themselves. 
IV. For scenery and historic fame together the Quebec Channel 
easily bears the palm. The south shore, with its picturesquely settled 
foreground, undulating up to wooded hills behind, and the north, with 
its forest-clad mountains rising sheer from the water’s edge, are ad- 
mirably contrasted and harmonized by the ten-mile breadth of the 
River which divides them. Opposite the lower end of the Island of 
Orleans, thirty miles below Quebec, both north and south shore ranges 
sweep back in gigantic semicircles, which only approach each other 
again the same distance above the city; so that when you stand upon 
the Heights of Abraham you find yourself on a Titanic stage in the 
midst of a natural amphitheatre two hundred miles around. Here 
