40 The Lower St. Lawrence. 



excellent old harbour, where the troops were landed from 

 England in the winter of 1 86 1. 



•In its vicinity is a small island, which for two centuries has 

 borne the name of L'Islet au Massacre. A deed of blood 

 marks the spot, and history furnishes the details of the scene. 

 Two hundred Micmac Indians were camping there for the 

 night ; their canoes had been beached, and a neighbouring 

 cavern offered an apparently secure asylum to the warriors, 

 their wives and children. Wrapped in sleep, they quietly 

 awaited the return of day to resume their journey. But 

 duririg the still hours of night the Iroquois had compassed 

 his slumbering foe. Laden with birch bark, faggots, and 

 other combustibles, the Iroquois silently surrounded the 

 cave ; the faggots were piled around it ; the torch applied. 

 The Micmacs, terror-stricken, seize their arms and prepare to 

 rush through the flames and sell their lives as dearly as 

 possible. But a shower of poisoned arrows mows them down, 

 the tomahawk completes the scene, and history mentions 

 but five, out of the two hundred, who escaped with their lives. 

 The blanched bones of the warriors strewed the cave, and 

 were seen by the Abbe Ferland a few years ago. It has 

 been the subject of an interesting legend by M. J. C. Tache, 

 in the Soiries Canadiennes. 



Trois Pistoles, 140 miles from Quebec, is a place to 

 which the tourist must pay his compliments in passing, not 

 so much on account of its charming scenery and location, as 

 for the pretty river of the same name, where, from a canoe, 

 he will have the satisfaction of seeing half-a-dozen fish at 

 once dart after his fly, the moment it touches the water. 

 About a couple of miles from the shore is a rocky islet called 

 the Isle of Rosade, upon which is a wooden cross, with a 

 memorial in French under, a glass cover, of the deliverance 

 of forty persons, who, having been attracted on the ice (which 

 very unusually had taken between the island and the shore) 

 by the huge quantity of seals basking there, were cut off 



