38: 



The American A7is[ler. 



waters of the St. Lawrence, the ice in 

 the narrow channel was estimated to be 

 nearly a hundred feet in thickness. If 

 some means are not adopted for blow- 

 ing lip the ice gorge with dynamite 

 when it suddenly forms owing to a 

 rapid breaking up of the ice above the 

 Lachine Rapids, Montreal may some day 

 be ruined. 



The St. Lawrence despises rain and 

 sunshine. Its greatest variation caused 

 by drought or rain hardly ever exceeds 

 a foot or fourteen inches. The cause 

 of this almost everlasting sameness of 

 volume is easily understood. The St. 

 Lawrence is fed by the mightiest bod- 

 ies of fresh water on earth. Immense 

 as is the volume of water it pours into 

 the ocean, any one who has traversed 

 all the immense lakes that feed it, and 

 for the surplus waters of which it is 

 the only channel to the sea, wonders 

 that it is not even more gigantic than 

 it is. Not one drop of the waters of 

 the five great lakes finds its way to the 

 ocean save through this gigantic, ex- 

 traordinary and wondrously beautiful 

 river. No wonder, then, that it should 

 despise the rain and defy the sunshine. 



The headwaters of the St. Lawrence 

 take their rise in Minnesota and form 

 what is known as the river St. Louis. 

 It is a small stream, and falls into Lake 

 Superior at Duluth. The St. Lawrence 

 is generally thought to be a compara- 

 tively short river. This idea is by no 

 means correct, for, measured from the 

 headwaters of the St. Louis River to 

 where it mingles with the ocean, the 

 distance will be found to be little short 

 of three thousand miles. The St. Law- 

 rence is in reality longer than the Mis- 

 sissippi proper, not counting the Mis- 

 souri, and there are probably not six 

 rivers in the world that exceed it in 

 length ; but none of which, except the 

 Amazon, pours more than half the 



volume of the St. Lawrence into the 

 ocean. The river St. Marie, that con- 

 nects Lake Superior with Lake Huron, 

 is where the St. Lawrence nfext as- 

 sumes the form of a river. It is here 

 an immense volume of water, nearly a 

 mile wide and wondrously beautiful ; 

 here tumbling over rapids and there 

 expanding into crystal lakes. But the 

 picturesqueness of the river St. Marie 

 is sadly marred by a canal and by an 

 immense lock that is said to be the 

 largest in the world. The St. Law- 

 rence next makes its appearance as a 

 river at Sarnia, where it rushes out of 

 Lake Huron — a veritable giant nearly 

 half a mile wide, eighty feet deep and 

 with such a rapid current that a steam- 

 propelled craft only can breast it. 

 Here it is called the Detroit River, and, 

 except where it expands into Lake St. 

 Clair, retains its river character until it 

 is lost in Lake Erie. The scenery from 

 Sarnia to Lake Erie, while not striking, 

 is yet very beautiful. The waters of 

 the St. Lawrence are here, as they are 

 everywhere, clear as crystal, pure as 

 nature could make them, transparent 

 as a mirror. 



When the St. Lawrence issues out of 

 Lake Erie its real glories begin. I'll 

 not attempt to describe Niagara. It 

 would be folly in me, for the greatest 

 of those who have attempted it have 

 utterly failed. For nearly ten miles of 

 its course above and below the cataract 

 the St. Lawrence is the glory and the 

 wonder of the world, with its rushing, 

 gleaming, foaming rapids above the 

 falls ; with the falls themselves, their 

 immensity, their thunder and their rain- 

 bows ; and then the seething, swirling 

 river below, confined in the narrow 

 gorge into which it has leaped ; shoot- 

 ing up in ragged masses of water 

 twenty feet high from unfathomable 

 abysses ; plunging wildly against the 



