THE PERIBONCA AND TSCHOTAGAMA 191 



monarch do come forth toward us." And in recalling 

 the black shadows of the frowning cliffs that fringe the 

 shore, the awe - stricken visitor may say with Dante, 

 "I raised mine eyes, believing that I Lucifer should 

 see." 



A magnificent picture of the Chute au Diable was 

 painted some years ago by Mr. L. R. O'Brien, late 

 president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, 

 during his trip up the Peribonca with Mr. J. G. A. 

 Creighton, of Ottawa, and its gloomy mountain walls 

 and restless water are a study for a Dore. Immense 

 rocks of almost Titanic proportions are strewn in the 

 utmost confusion, sometimes in great masses here and 

 there in the bed of the stream, in summer dividing it 

 into various channels, and during the spring floods 

 contributing to the wild, broken character of the falls; 

 and sometimes, again, piled pell-mell against the oth- 

 erwise precipitous banks as if in very deviltry, form- 

 ing, as they do, a scene of chaotic confusion, and of 

 such an apparent absence of any vestige of law or 

 order. These avalanches of rock, together with the 

 falls of the river, would appear at first to effectually 

 bar the further ascent of the stream ; and in the time 

 of the spring floods ihey certainly do so in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of the Devil's Falls, and the Portage au 

 Diable is then at least two to three miles in length, 

 and lies over the mountains some distance back from the 

 river. When the waters of the Peribonca reach their 

 ordinary summer level, a portage near the falls may be 

 had through a frightfully rough, rocky abyss, down 

 which, in the spring of the year, rushes one of the 

 roaring channels of the Devil's Falls ; for it must be 



