180 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



still successfully defies the efforts of the sanitary 

 reformer. 



Fortunately for me, the Allan steamer was on the 

 point of leaving for England; and through the 

 courtesy of one of the proprietors of the line I was 

 offered a passage on her down the river as far as 

 Father Point, the spot at which the pilot hands over 

 the charge of the vessel to the regular authorities. 

 By a great piece of good fortune, my host lived within 

 a few miles of the Point ; for I can assure my un- 

 travelled readers that at the time of which I write 

 some eighteen years back when once you 

 wandered from the regular beaten tracks between 

 city and city, locomotion was difficult, and it was 

 very rarely that the traveller could get within hail of 

 his destination by such commodious means as an 

 ocean steamer ; and it was therefore with feelings of 

 much complacency that I commenced the descent of 

 the St Lawrence a complacency by no means less- 

 ened by the discovery of several friends on board, 

 and carried to an even higher pitch by the recollec- 

 tion of my La Eochefoucauld, and the application of 

 his celebrated aphorism to the probable difference that 

 would exist in our sensations forty-eight hours later. 



Down, still down, the gradually broadening river. 

 First we catch a glimpse of the silver streak which 

 marks the Montmorency Falls, the highest in Canada. 

 Down past Three Rivers, Murray Bay, Cacouna the 

 fashionable Montreal watering-place ; down past the 



