216 THE HALCYON IN CANADA. 



our first view of the St. Lawrence. " Iliad of riv 

 ers ! " 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 imag- 

 ine, 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 un- 

 paralleled. 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 



o * 



that shake the earth at Niagara. Where it receives 

 the Saguenay it is twenty miles wide, and when it de- 

 bouches into the Gulf it is a hundred. Indeed, it is a 

 chain of Homeric sublimities from beginning to end. 



o o 



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 Isl 

 ands, hell is unveiled in that pit of terrors. 



Its last escapade is the great rapids above Mon- 

 treal, down which the steamer shoots with its breath- 

 less passengers, after which, inhaling and exhaling 

 its mighty tides, it flows calmly to the sea. 



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 advent- 

 ore. 



Here we reach the oldest part of the continent, 



