544 



The Halcyon in Canada. 



ON THE ST. LAWRENCE, NEAR MONTREAL. 



The St. Lawrence is the type of nearly all the Canadian rivers, 

 which are strung with lakes and rapids and cataracts, and are full of 

 peril and adventure. 



Here we reach the oldest part of the continent, geologists tell 

 us, and here we encounter a fragment of the Old World civilization. 

 Quebec presents the anomaly of a mediaeval European city in the 

 midst of the American landscape. This air, this sky, these clouds, 

 these trees, the look of these fields, are what we have always known ; 

 but these houses, and streets, and vehicles, and language, and 

 physiognomy, are strange. As I walked upon the grand terrace, I 

 saw the robin and kingbird and song-sparrow, and there in the 

 tree, by Wolfe Monument, our summer warbler was at home. I 

 presently saw, also, that our Republican crow was a British subject, 

 and that he behaved here more like his European brother than he 

 does in the States, being less wild and suspicious. On the Plains of 

 Abraham, excellent timothy grass was growing and cattle were graz- 

 ing. We found a path through the meadow, and, with the exception 

 of a very abundant weed with a blue flower, saw nothing new or 

 strange, — nothing but the steep, tin roofs of the city and its frown- 

 ing wall and citadel. Sweeping around the far southern horizon, we 

 could catch glimpses of mountains that were evidently in Maine or 

 New Hampshire, while twelve or fifteen miles to the north the 



