80 THE ST. REGIS AND SAPtANACS. 



miles a good road ; Avhile our chance companions proved 

 tobemostajireeable. For the first third of the distance our 

 way lay through an ordinary, cultivated, farming region; 

 then we began to climb the foot-hills and at length the 

 mountains, in a rougher and more rocky and less cultivated 

 region, until at length, in the density of the forest, weiost 

 all reckoning. 



The first mountain that we ascended, in the open coun- 

 try, gave to our view the broad, vast valley of the St. Law- 

 rence, in panorama. We climbed and straggled up on 

 foot, halting and turning as often to catch the changing 

 scenes as to rest from our weary labors. Far off to the 

 north, north-west and north-east extended below us 

 the i)lain, in field and woodland and town, the shining belt 

 of the distant river faintly gleaming under the July sun ; 

 and the receding Canadian liills, in the remote distance, at 

 length mingled their hazy blue with the tenderer azure of 

 the sky. The higher we climbed, the grander the scene 

 and the wider the scope of vision, although the barrier of 

 hazy blue far off continually lifted its front, a shore to the 

 sea of sunshine in the valle3' below. 



There was a strange thing. Here and there, in the valle}- 

 plaiu, arose, bold and rugged, like a vast boulder, a moun- 

 tain with almost perpendicular sides that were bare and 

 looked to be rock, —detached palisades, or, lost and forsaken 

 antediluvian monarchs with their rugged forest crowns yet 

 on their heads. Or, were they massive towers of Babel, 

 built in some mad freak b}" the old Sons of the North, or, 

 fortresses of defense against Odin and Thor? Whatever 



