The Halcyon in Canada. 567 



town, water-soaked and heavy (for the poor horse had all it could 

 pull), but merry and good-natured. We paused awhile at the farm- 

 house where we had got our hay on going out, were treated to a 

 drink of milk and some wild red cherries, and when the rain slack- 

 ened drove on, and by ten o'clock saw the city, eight miles distant, 

 with the sun shining upon its steep, tinned roofs. 



. The next morning, we set out per steamer for the Saguenay, and 

 entered upon the second phase of our travels, but with less relish 

 than we could have wished. Scenery-hunting is the least satisfying 

 pursuit I have ever engaged in. What one sees in his necessary 

 travels, or doing his work, or going a-fishing, seems worth while ; 

 but the famous view you go out in cold blood to admire is quite apt 

 to elude you. Nature loves to enter a door another hand has opened; 

 a mountain view, or a water-fall, I have noticed, never looks better 

 than when one has just been warmed up by the capture of a big 

 trout. If we had been bound for some salmon-stream up the Sague- 

 nay, we should perhaps have possessed that generous and receptive 

 frame of mind — that open house of the heart — which makes one 

 "eligible to any good fortune," and the grand scenery would have 

 come in as fit sauce to the salmon. An adventure, a bit of experi- 

 ence of some kind, is what one wants when he goes forth to admire 

 woods and waters, — something to create a draught and make the 

 embers of thought and feeling brighten. Nature, like certain wary 

 game, is best taken by seeming to pass by her, intent on other 

 matters. 



But without any such errand, or occupation, or indirection, we 

 managed to extract considerable satisfaction from the view of the 

 lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. 



We had not paid the customary visit to the falls of the Mont- 

 morency, but we shall see them after all, for before we are a league 

 from Quebec they come into view on the left. A dark glen or 

 chasm there at the end of the Beaufort Slopes seems suddenly to 

 have put on a long white apron. By intently gazing, one can see 

 the motion and falling of the water, though it is six or seven miles 

 away. Then- is no Ngn of the river above or below but this trem- 

 bling white curtain of foam and spray. 



It was very sultry when we left Quebec, but about noon we 

 struck much clearer and cooler air, and soon after ran into an im- 



