260 



ON THE IIYDHOLOGY OF THE BASIN 



twelve feet of water on them. The slope on the surface of the river, from the head of 

 Lake St. Peter to the foot of St. Mary's current (which is a small rapid at the lower end 

 of the harbor of Montreal) , is about two and three-quarter inches per mile, and the aver- 

 age velocity is one and a quarter miles per hour in the fairway channel. The rapid last 

 mentioned is formed in a contracted part of the river, between St. Helen's Island and the 

 north shore, which is here about two thousand feet across. The current through the 

 rapid, in ordinary stages of the water, is about four and three-quarter miles per hour, but 

 occasionally reaches from five to five and a quarter miles per hour. 



The harbor of Montreal is shown by the annexed plan, and has wharves for accommo- 

 dation of the traffic which it has for the last few years obtained, and which exceeds two 

 hundred and fifty thousand tons per annum. This accommodation has been obtained by 

 building wharves of cribwork out into the stream of the St. Lawrence, and by dredging 

 out a suitable depth for vessels to lie alongside. This harbor was, until the construction 

 of the canals, the head of navigation for sea-going craft ; and until the commencement of 

 the canal system, the real difficulties of the navigation of the river began at this point. 



It was a great thing to witness a river, rarely less than two miles in width, gradually 

 extending to twenty miles, flowing for five hundred miles of its course with great regu- 

 larity for eight months in the year, and affording accommodations for square-rigged ships 

 of six hundred tons, which then reached Montreal ; it was another thing to attempt the 

 movement of freight from this point upwards. The work up the Valley for the first ten 

 miles above Montreal, was performed either by the Portage Poad, so called, or by drag- 

 ging up by the sides of the rapid current, with long teams of oxen or horses, sometimes 

 in, sometimes out, of the water ; and such portages as these occurred at nine distinct 

 points between Montreal and Kingston, and similar portages were also necessary on the 

 Ottawa. 



The work was chiefly done by canoes or large bateaux, which rarely exceeded twenty- 

 five tons burden ; and it may readily be understood how the freights and charge, for tin; 

 movement of goods and passengers, acted as a most formidable barrier to progress in the 

 settlement of the country ; and as movements over the deep alluvial soil of the valley, in 

 a state of nature, could only be undertaken either in the driest season of the year, or in 

 sleighs over the snow, it is not surprising that forty years ago, the settlements of Canada, 

 consisted only of a few villages and farms fringing the most favorable sites on the banks 

 of the river and Lake Ontario. Still more difficult of access was the country, and more 

 sparse the population of those then remote regions on the border of the upper lakes. 



The Niagara Portage was, however, established early in the present century, and assumed 

 a great importance up to the time of the completion of the Welland Canal. While up the 

 Ottawa, the country at the beginning of the present century, on both sides of the river, 



