OF THE RIVER SAINT LAWRENCE. 



259 



It! V E R ST. LAW U EN C E. 



The whole of the llivcr St. Lawrence, from its entrance at Pointe des Monts to Montreal, 

 has been elaborately surveyed by Admiral Bayfield ; and the charts and sailing directions 

 which arc published by the Admiralty are so extensive and so well known, that it is 

 deemed wholly unnecessary to make any statements with respect to the navigation of the 

 tidal part of the river. 



The tides at Quebec range, upon the gauge which is there fixed, from eighteen feet at 

 spring tides, to thirteen feet at neaps. Unusually high spring tides, accompanied with 

 gales of wind from the northeast, occasionally give from two to two and a half feet more 

 at high water, and a smaller range towards low water, but the mean for all practical pur- 

 poses, may be taken at seventeen feet. At neaps the tides range about eleven and a half 

 feet, the low-water level both at spring and neaps rarely varying more than eighteen inches. 

 Spring tides are felt up the river as far as the entrance into Lake St. Peter, which for all 

 hydrographical purposes may be described as the head of tidal navigation. From this 

 point onwards the river has for some years past been the object of constant superintend- 

 ence; and works of considerable magnitude have been carried out for improving this navi- 

 gation, together with that of the river up to the harbor of Montreal. 



The depth of water existing on the Flats of St. Peter in 1845, is reported by the autho- 

 rities as only capable of passing vessels drawing not more than eleven feet at low stages 

 of the river, and other impediments existed in the river above. But under the direction 

 of the Harbor Commissioners of Montreal, a general deepening of the whole of the fair- 

 way of the navigation, wherever necessary, is being carried out. The works consist of a 

 channel dredged out in the clay and mud bottom of Lake St. Peter, three hundred feet 

 wide, and is intended to afford a depth of water, when completed, of twenty-one feet at. 

 low water. 



According to the statements made to the Harbor Commissioners by the Engineer, to 

 the end of I860, the work has been proceeding with great vigor. There are five dredges 

 employed, with hopper barges and scows; and the work performed during the year 1860, 

 stated to have been two hundred and seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-two cubic 

 yards, at a cost of $57,527, or $0.27 J per cubic yard excavated, including superintendence, 

 but exclusive of the interest on the cost of machinery and boats. Prom this point to 

 Montreal, the general course of the river is direct, although the fairway of the channel is 

 somewhat tortuous, and there are many islands of alluvium which divert the direction of 

 the fairway, but all the courses are duly marked and lighted, and during last year no dif- 

 ficulty was felt in clearing vessels through the improved channel between Montreal and 

 Quebec, drawing nineteen feet of water, the Flats of Lake St. Peter having then about 



