222 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



suit I have ever engaged in. What one sees in his 

 necessary travels, or doing his work, or going a-fish- 

 ing, seems worth while, but the famous view you 

 go out in cold blood to admire is quite apt to elude 

 you. Nature loves to enter a door another hand 

 has opened; a mountain view, or a waterfall, I have 

 noticed, never looks better than when one has just 

 been warmed up by the capture of a big trout. If 

 we had been bound for some salmon stream up the 

 Saguenay, we should perhaps have possessed that 

 generous and receptive frame of mind — that open 

 house of the heart — which makes one " eligible to 

 any good fortune, " and the grand scenery would have 

 come in as fit sauce to the salmon. An adventure, 

 a bit of experience of some kind, is what one wants 

 when he goes forth to admire woods and waters, — 

 something to create a draught and make the embers 

 of thought and feeling brighten. Nature, like cer- 

 tain wary game, is best taken by seeming to pass by 

 her intent on other matters. 



But without any such errand, or occupation, or 

 indirection, we managed to extract considerable satis- 

 faction from the view of the lower St. Lawrence and 

 the Saguenay. 



We had not paid the customary visit to the falls 

 of the Montmorenci, but we shall see them after 

 all, for before we are a league from Quebec they 

 come into view on the left. A dark glen or chasm 

 there at the end of the Beauport Slopes seems sud- 

 denly to have put on a long white apron. By in- 

 tently gazing, one can see the motion and falling of 



