NATURE'S REALM. 3 
rivers are the color of pea soup during nine 
months of every year. The same cause that 
makes the St. Lawrence floodless makes its 
waters pure; the great lakes that feed it ab- 
sorb any sediment washed into their waters ; 
they are alike its parents and its purifiers. 
The sail down the St. Lawrence from Kings- 
ton to Montreal is the most extraordinary and 
exciting river journey in the world. The scen- 
ery of the Hudson is certainly finer than that 
of the St. Lawrence ; but the Hudson, glorious 
as it is, is only an estuary. Its banks are beau- 
tiful but its waters are sluggish. If the St. 
Lawrence had the mountain scenery . of the 
Hudson, its fame would reach the énds of the 
earth. But in sailing down the St. Lawrence 
from Kingston to Montreal, one’s whole atten- 
tion is taken up with the river itself. There is 
no time to gaze around, for soon after the boat 
leaves the mazes of the Thousand Isles the 
rapids begin. Any sensation more delightful 
than being carried along at the rate of fifteen 
miles an hour by rushing waters it would be 
impossible toimagine. If mountains were piled 
on mountains on either side, not one in fifty 
would care to look at them while shooting the 
Cascade, Long Sault or the Lachine Rapids; 
and it must be borne in mind that the greater 
part of the sail from the Thousand Islands to 
Montreal is through rapids more or less swift. 
No passenger, not even the most timid, feels 
any nervousness in shooting through the Cas- 
cade or Long Sault Rapids. On approaching 
Montreal, however, the greatest rapids on the 
river, those of Lachine, are encountered. To 
stand on the bank of the river and gaze across 
more than a mile wide of rushing, roaring 
waters, leaping and tumbling over the ‘ pre- 
cipitous black jagged rocks” that rise here and 
there out of the foam, one would imagine that 
to take a great steamboat drawing six or eight 
feet of water down such a cataract would be 
certain destruction both to passengers and cratt. 
But such is the immensity of the volume of 
water that there is very little danger. No seri- 
ous accident has ever occurred to a steamboat 
going down the Lachine Rapids. It must, how- 
ever, be confessed that many a brave man has 
turned pale where, in one place, the boat has 
to take a plunge of six or seven feet perpen- 
dicular. In less than ten minutes after the 
boat takes the big leap she is in the harbor ot 
Montreal and has no more rapids to shoot. 
The voyage from Kingston to Montreal is 
made in a day. The boats leave Kingston 
early in the morning in order to make the en- 
tire trip by daylight; this they always do, 
although the distance is 198 miles. The boats 
are not nearly so large as those in the Hudson, 
but they are as safe and commodious as care 
and skill could make them. To those who 
want to take the most beautiful as well as the 
most curious trip perhaps on this continent, 
and to any one who wants to experience a new 
sensation of the most delightful kind, I would 
say, ‘‘Shoot the rapids of the St. Lawrence.” 
From Montreal to Quebec the St. Lawrence 
is very unpicturesque ; itis too big to be beauti- 
ful, and is more like a great arm of the sea 
than a river. As Quebec is approached, the 
scenery becomes of great interest, especially 
from a historic point of view. The river narrows 
to less than a mile in width, and Quebec, the 
great fortress of not only the St. Lawrence, but 
of half the continent, is seen towering on an 
apparently perpendicular rock some hundreds 
of feet over the narrow water-way it effectually 
guards. It was near here that the fate of half 
a continent was decided a hundred and thirty- 
one years ago in the memorable battle of the 
plains of Abraham, by which France lost the 
noblest of all her colonial possessions. Below 
Quebec the St. Lawrence becomes a sea, and 
is so wide that it entirely loses its river charac- 
ter. But the lower river possesses one point 
of wonderful beauty and sublimity, that is the 
embouchure of the mighty Saguenay. This 
river joins the St. Lawrence a hundred and fif- 
teen miles below Quebec, and between two 
giant headlands called Cape Eternity and Cape 
Trinity. The scenery of the Saguenay is of 
the grandest and sublimest kind, but couid 
hardly be described in connection with that ot 
the St. Lawrence. The Saguenay, like the 
mighty stream into which it flows, may be 
counted among the remarkable rivers of this 
continent, and is well worthy of a separate 
article. 
Ere closing this short description ot one of 
the mightiest and certainly the most remarka- 
