THE AMERICAN ANGLER. 



Vol. 26. ■ 



DECEMBER, 1S96. 



No. i: 



A GLORIOUS RIVER— THE vST. LAWRENCE. 



BY T. O. RUSSELL. 



The St. Lawrence is certainly the 

 most remarkable river in the world. 

 The Amazon or the Congo may pour a 

 larger volume of water into the ocean ; 

 the Mississippi or the Nile may be longer, 

 but none of those mighty streams can 

 ' compare in scenic beauty with that 

 glorious stream that leaps the cataract 

 of Niagara and forms the broad ex- 

 panse of crystal Avater gemmed with 

 the Thousand Isles. 



The St. Lawrence is a phenomenon 

 among rivers. No other river is fed by 

 such gigantic lakes. No other river is 

 so independent of the elements. It 

 despises alike rain, snow and sunshine. 

 Ice and wind may be said to be the 

 only things that affect its mighty flow. 

 Something almost as phenomenal as 

 the St. Lawrence itself is the fact that 

 there is so little generally known about 

 it. It might be safely affirmed that 

 not one per cent, of the American pub- 

 lic are aware of the fact that among all 

 the great rivers of the world, the St. 

 Lawrence is the only absolutely flood- 

 less one. Such, however, is the case. 

 The difference between high and low 

 water of the Ohio at Cincinnati is nearly 

 fifty feet. Even the Upper Mississippi, 

 placid and smooth-flowing a stream as it 

 is, sometimes overflows the covmtry 

 for miles on either side of its banks. 

 The turbulent Missouri is also subject 

 to immense rises. vSome twelve years 

 ago it very nearly drowned out the 



flourishing city of Council Bluffs, and, 

 had it risen three feet more, the mag- 

 nificent iron bridge that spans it, and 

 that connects Council Bluffs with 

 Omaha, would have only spanned a 

 mud-hole, and the vagabond river 

 would have carved a new channel for 

 itself right through the centre of Coun- 

 cil Bluffs. Even the mighty Amazon 

 has its rises and falls ; if its southern 

 and northern tributaries .should happen 

 to be low, or to be high at the same 

 time, it becomes seriously affected. 

 Every river, in fact, on this continent, 

 and all over the world, has great rises 

 and falls brought about by the ele- 

 ments, the St. Lawrence alone excepted. 

 But the St. Lawrence sometimes 

 causes terrible trouble when the waters 

 get jammed by ice. Only a few years 

 ago it almost drowned out Montreal 

 and did millions of dollars' worth of 

 damage. The flood was not caused 

 by rain, but by an ice gorge and the 

 peculiar character of the river at Mon- 

 treal. That city is only a mile below 

 the rapids of Lachine, and the ice in 

 Spring time is driven down the rapids 

 at the rate of millions of tons per hour. 

 Just below the rapids the large island 

 of St. Helens and the small one called 

 Isle Ronde bar the passage of the ice, 

 and it often gets gorged in the narrow 

 channel between Isle Ronde and the 

 northern shore. The last time Mon- 

 treal was inundated by the obstructed 



