172 THE SAGUENAY. 



back upon it as a kind of vault nature's sarcophagus, where 

 life or sound seems never to have entered. Compared to it 

 the Dead Sea is blooming, and the wildest ravines look cosy 

 and smiling. It is wild without the least variety, and grand 

 apparently in spite of itself ; while so utter is the solitude, so 

 dreary and monotonous the frown of its great black walls of 

 rock, that the tourist is sure to get impatient with its sullen 

 dead reverse, till he feels almost an antipathy to its very 

 name. The Saguenay seems to want painting, blowing up, 

 or draining anything, in short, to alter its morose, eternal, 

 quiet awe. Talk of Lethe or the Styx, they must have been 

 purling brooks compared with this savage river, and a pic- 

 nic on the banks of either would be preferable to one on the 

 Saguenay. 



" The wild scenery of the river culminates at a little inlet 

 on the right bank between Capes Trinity and Eternity. 

 Than these two dreadful headlands nothing can be imagined 

 more grand or impressive. For one brief moment the rugged 

 character of the river is partly softened, and looking back 

 into the deep valley between the capes, the land has an 

 aspect of life and mild luxuriance which, though not rich, 

 at least seems so in comparison with the grievous awful bar- 

 renness. Cape Trinity on this side towards the landward 

 opening is pretty thickly clothed with fir and birch mingled 

 together in a color contrast which is beautiful enough, 

 especially where the rocks show out among them, with their 

 little cascades and waterfalls like strips of silver shining in 

 the sun. But Cape Eternity well becomes its name, and is 

 the reverse of all this. It seems to frown in gloomy indigna- 

 tion on its brother cape for the weakness it betrays in allow- 

 ing anything like life or verdure to shield its wild, uncouth 

 deformity of strength. Cape Eternity certainly shows no 

 sign of relaxing in this respect from its deep savage grand- 

 eur. It is one tremendous cliff of limestone, more than 

 1500 feet high, and inclining forward more than two hundred 

 feet, brow-beating all beneath it, and seeming as if at any 



