174 THE GREAT NORTH-WEST 



Five or six miles down channel we perceived the masts 

 of a considerable cluster of shipping. 



Although we could not persuade our driver to take 

 us any farther, he having secured a return fare at one 

 of the last stages, we succeeded in borrowing horses at 

 a neighbouring post where lived a superintendent of the 

 lumbering trade, and on the 7th we reached Tadoussac, 

 a trading station of the Hudson Company, but quite 

 unlike any of their posts or forts I had hitherto seen. 

 Tadoussac is a scattered hamlet at the mouth of the 

 river Saguenay, and reminded me of pictures of a Swiss 

 village ; for the huts are perched here and there, up and 

 down the precipitous rocks, in such a way as to cause me 

 to wonder how the inhabitants could reach them. 



The country is quite mountainous here, and very 

 rugged, the rocks being often quite precipitous and 

 destitute of vegetation. Indeed, just about Tadoussac 

 the mountains have only a few clumps of pine trees 

 scattered about them. No doubt most of the trees have 

 been destroyed, for this is a great lumber depot. There 

 is no fort at Tadoussac. 



A little farther on, and to the right hand of Tadoussac, 

 is another and larger village, St. Catherine, which owes 

 its existence to the lumber trade. The Saguenay is a 

 large, broad river of great depth at its mouth, indeed 

 said by the ignorant lumber-men to be unfathomable. 

 The truth seems to be that the current is so strong that 

 any light sounding weight is forced outward towards the 

 St. Lawrence before it can reach the bottom. The 

 leadsman therefore pays out fathom after fathom with- 

 out finding the bottom. Nevertheless the depth is cer- 

 tainly very great, and from this cause, and the swiftness 

 of the current, the river never freezes over near the 

 mouth. Broad as it is it is hemmed in by gigantic rocks 

 with wall-like faces in many places, and the view up the 

 river is cut off by a huge rounded rock, having the form 

 of a bull's head and shoulders, and hence called " The 



