THE SAGUENAT. 181 



All the way to Savard's, the road runs on the verge of a vol- 

 canic ridge, with curious sand-bluffs of undulating outline 

 thrown up at intervals ; and the scenery becomes constantly 

 more rugged, and the contour of the land more broken with 

 dry ravines filled with sand formations, and with others con- 

 stituting the channel-ways of impetuous rivers, No less 

 than twelve large streams empty into this upper Saguenay, 

 between Ha Ha Bay and Lake St. John. All these bear 

 rich tribute of lumber to the booms and mills below. And 

 at Lake St. John begins the Ste. Marguerite mountain 

 range, which extends through Labrador to Hudson's Bay. 

 Throughout its whole extent it bears evidence of having 

 been once subjected to fearful convulsions, violent heat, and 

 volcanic action. According to the assertion of intelligent 

 Hudson's Bay Company's officers, the interior country is one 

 vast bed of granite, syenite, and schist, upheaved in succes- 

 sive billows of rock, as though the entire mass had been 

 poured over the earth in a deluge of liquefaction, and sud- 

 denly cooled before the great waves had subsided. And 

 there are extinct volcanoes which the Indians say were 

 active once ; and hollow mountains that reverberate with a 

 cavernous sound under merely a heavy footfall. Vegetation 

 in most parts is very scant, and chiefly composed of stunted 

 spruce. 



All through the country great bodies of water are situated 

 upon elevated plateaus, some like Lake St. John, full forty 

 miles long. From these, cascades tumble over lofty preci- 

 pices into deep chasms. In some places mountains have 

 been uplifted ; in others they have sunk into subterranean 

 depths. Great seams and lifts yawn where rocks have been 

 cleft asunder. Detached masses and fragments of rock have 

 been burst by explosions and hurled at random over land 

 and sea. With these data it is easy to account for the 

 phenomena of the Saguenay. There is no doubt that its 

 immeasurable channel was cleft into rock that was once a 

 solid mass; for each projecting promontory is offset by its 



