The Halcyon in Canada. 



543 



LAKE MEMPHKEMAGOG. 



of them the impression, at a distance, of an encampment of great 

 tents. 



As we neared Point Levi, opposite Quebec, we got our first view 

 of the St. Lawrence. " Iliad of rivers !" exclaimed my friend. "Yet 

 unsung!" The Hudson must take a back seat now, and a good 

 ways back. One of the two or three great water-courses of the 

 globe is before you. No other river, I imagine, carries such a volume 

 of pure cold water to the sea. Nearly all its feeders are trout and 

 salmon streams, and what an airing and what a bleaching it gets on 

 its course. Its history, its antecedents, are unparalleled. The great 

 lakes are its camping-grounds ; here its hosts repose under the sun 

 and stars in areas like that of states and kingdoms, and it is its 

 waters that shake the earth at Niagara. Where it receives the 

 Saguenay it is twenty miles wide, and when it debouches into the 

 Gulf it is a hundred. Indeed, it is a chain of Homeric sublimities 

 from beginning to end. The great cataract is a fit sequel to the 

 great lakes; the spirit that is born in vast and tempestuous Superior 

 takes its full glut of power in that fearful chasm. If paradise is 

 hinted in the Thousand Islands, hell is unveiled in that pit of terrors. 



Its last escapade is the great rapids above Montreal, down which 

 the steamer shoots with its breathless passengers, after which, in- 

 haling and exhaling its mighty tides, it flows calmly to the sea. 



