NARRATIVE. 85 



reembarkcd, but the current was still rapid ; in some places we 

 estimated it at six miles per hour. At the Decharge dcs Paresseux 

 we again landed, and walked up some hundred yards while the men 

 pushed the boats up with poles, which they grasped by the middle, 

 using the ends alternately on each side. 



We encamped at sunset, climbing up a steep clay bluff to an open 

 spot above, for we could find no landing on a level with the water. 

 Very cold in the evening, silencing the swarms of musquitoes that 

 greeted us on our first arrival. 



July 28 tZ. — Very cold this morning also, and the dew heavy. 

 Even inside of the tent some of the blades of grass were hung with 

 dew-drops, and outside every thing was as wet as if from a smart 

 shower. Without breakfasting we walked through the dripping 

 woods to the Falls. On the way I noticed an old martin-trap, made 

 like the eulJieag of our woods, viz. the butt of a sapling arranged to 

 fall like a portcullis across the mouth of a hole in which the bait is 

 placed. We came out first in an open space, bounded by a broken 

 cliif of slate-rock, whence we could hear, but not see the cataract. 

 The river here flows between high perpendicular walls of rock, and 

 here commences the Portage de la Montague. Following up the 

 portage path about a quarter of a mile, we struck off through the thick 

 arbor-vitiie woods, guided by the roar of the fall, until we came out 

 on an open grassy bank in front of it, and so near that we were drench- 

 ed by the spray. 



From where we stood we could look up a long reach of the 

 river, down which the stream comes fpaming over a shallow bed, 

 thrown up in jets of spray, like the rapids at Niagara. At the brink 

 the stream is compressed, and tumbles over in two horseshoe-shaped 

 falls, divided in the middle by a perpendicular chimney-like mass of 

 rock some feet square, the upper part of which has been partly turn- 

 ed round on its base. The entire height of the fall is about one 

 hundred and thirty feet, but somewhat filled up by fragments from 

 above. Its breadth is about a hundred and fifty yards. 



The rock is clay-slate, the strata dipping two or three degrees south- 

 ward, that is, from the fall. Just above the pitch, the slate is broken 

 into very regular steps, and the same structure is visible in the face 

 of the cascade itself, particularly on the right, from the broken water 



