368 THE LOWER OR OUTER BARRIER. 



Islands. The information given me by Colonel Garin, a 

 skilful engineer, employed by the canal commissioners, 

 in 1816, to explore the region between the Hudson and 

 the lake Champlain, warrants this conclusion. Indeed, 

 such an overflow of the country is the unavoidable con- 

 sequence, that an obstruction of the water by the High- 

 land mountains in New- York would produce. 



" Upon this supposition, what mound or dam would cir- 

 cumscribe the lake or sea, on the northwest, north, north- 

 east and east ? 



If our physical geographers are correct in their deli- 

 neations, a barrier to the waters can easily be found. 

 Such as, for example, the ridge that bounds the Seigneu- 

 ries, and their augmentations of land N. W, of the river 

 St. Lawrence, and separates them from the waste or un- 

 granted territory of the British crown, all the distance 

 from the Grand, or Ottowa river, in Upper Canada, to 

 the sources of the rivers JaCques Cartier, and Charles, 

 not very far from Quebec in the lower province. And 

 such is the height of ground, elevated though broken, 

 which extends through the rough country, beyond the 

 river Chandiere, from the river St. Lawrence, to . the 

 mountains of Maine and New-Hampshire. 



Some opinion may be formed of this disruption by the 

 considerations of that sensible traveller, Joseph Sansom, 

 Esq. describing the Plain of Abraham, near Quebec. He 

 observes thus: turning round when you arrive at the 

 summit, and looking down the river, between the two 

 steeples of the Catholic and Protestant Cathedrals, you 

 have what I thought the most interesting view of Que- 

 bec, because it embraces in the same coup-cf otf, the prin- 

 cipal objects in the vicinity. Overlooking the basin 



