ANGLING FOR OUANANICHE 73 



for the wild grandeur of their rapids, are reunited in 

 the bed of the Saguenay. Here, in the Discharge, the 

 dismal " river of death," as Bayard Taylor calls the 

 lower Saguenay, draws the bright beginning of its 

 early gladsome existence. To repeat what I have al- 

 ready said elsewhere : " What a contrast between the 

 Stygian darkness of its latter end and the bright 

 young life that springs into existence from the nat- 

 ure-enforced affinity and commingling upon the ele- 

 vated bed of Lake St. John of its parent streams! As 

 men and women love life rather than death, and the 

 brightness and freshness of youth rather than the ever- 

 present shadows upon the hither bank of the dark 

 river, it is not strange that they should gladly turn 

 from the death-like silence, albeit majesty and gran- 

 deur, of the lower Saguenay, wonderful and awe- 

 inspiring though the} 7 be, to the union of its parent 

 streams at Lake St. John where all is merry as a 

 wedding-bell ; and to the prattling and the babbling of 

 the new-born river as it issues from the bed of the 

 lake, and hastens through a brief and tranquil infancy 

 towards a lusty youth, there to gambol and leap in frol- 

 icsome display, choosing for itself a rough and rugged 

 road, heedless of the rocks that it encounters on its 

 way ; now basking in pleasure and sunlight, regardless 

 of the coming night; now flashing, dashing, crashing 

 over precipitous declines, or gliding with thought-be- 

 guiling rapidity towards an inevitable fall. Nature 

 is here all vocal with melody. She disports herself 

 in various moods. She touches with her breath the 

 chords of the asolian lyre that she has strung upon the 

 branches of the plaintive pine, prattles in the language 



