57° The Halcyon in Canada. 



there. The river was as lonely as the St. John's road ; not a sail or 

 a smoke-stack the whole sixty-five miles. The scenery culminates 

 at Cape Eternity, where the rocks rise sheer from the water to a 

 height of eighteen hundred feet. This view dwarfed everything I 

 had ever before seen. There is perhaps nothing this side the Yo- 

 semite chasm that equals it, and, emptied of its water, this chasm 

 would far surpass that famous canon, as the river here is a mile 

 and a quarter deep. The bald eagle nests in the niches in the 

 precipice, secure from any intrusion. Immense blocks of the rock 

 had fallen out, leaving areas of shadow and clinging, overhanging 

 masses that were a terror and fascination to the eye. There was a 

 great fall a few years ago, just as the steamer had passed from under 

 and blown her whistle to wake the echoes. The echo came back, 

 and with it a part of the mountain that astonished more than it 

 delighted the lookers-on. The pilot took us close around the base 

 ,of the precipice that we might fully inspect it. And here my eyes 

 played me a trick the like of which they had never done before. 

 One of the boys of the steamer brought to the forward deck his 

 hands full of stones, that the curious ones among the passengers 

 might try how easy it was to throw one ashore. "Any girl ought 

 to do it," I said to myself, after a man had tried and had failed to 

 clear half the distance. Seizing a stone, I cast it with vigor and 

 confidence, and as much expected to see it smite the rock as I ex- 

 pected to live. " It is a good while getting there," I mused, as I 

 watched its course. Down, down it went ; there, it will ring upon 

 the granite in half a breath ; no, down — into the water, a little more 

 than half-way! "Has my arm lost its cunning?" I said, and tried 

 again and again, but with like result. The eye was completely at 

 fault. There was a new standard of size before it to which it failed 

 to adjust itself. The rock is so enormous and towers so above you 

 that you get the impression it is much nearer than it actually is. 

 When the eye is full it says, " Here we are," and the hand is ready 

 to prove the fact ; but in this case there is an astonishing discrepancy 

 between what the eye reports and what the hand finds out. 



Cape Trinity, the wife of this Colossus, stands across a chasm 

 through which flows a small tributary of the Saguenay, and is a head 

 or two shorter, as becomes a wife, and less rugged and broken in 

 outline. 



