NATURE'S REALM. 
VOL. PE 
JANUARY, 1891. 
No. I. 
A GLORIOUS RIVER—THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
By T. O. RussELt. 
The St. Lawrence is certainly the most re- 
markable river in the world. The Amazon or 
the Congo may pour a larger volume of water 
into the ocean ; the Mississippi or the Nile may 
be longer, but none of those mighty streams 
can compare in scenic beauty with that glo- 
rious river that leaps the cataract of Niagara 
and forms the broad expanse of crystal water 
gemmed with the Thousand Isles. 
The St. Lawrence is a phenomenon among 
rivers. No other river is fed by such gigantic 
lakes. No other river is so independent of the 
elements. It despises alike rain, snow and 
sunshine. Ice and wind may be said to be the 
only things that affect its mighty flow. Some- 
thing almost as phenomenal as the St. Law- 
rence itself is the tact that there is so little gen- 
erally known about it. It might be safely at- 
firmed that not one per cent. of the American 
public are aware of the fact that among all the 
great rivers of the world, the St. Lawrence is 
the only absolutely floodless one. Such, how- 
ever, is the case. The difference between high 
and low water in the Ohio at Cincinnati is 
nearly fifty feet. Even the Upper Mississsippi, 
placid and smooth-flowing a stream as it is, 
sometimes overflows the country for miles on 
either side of its banks. The turbulent Mis- 
souri is also subject to immense rises. Some 
eight years ago it very nearly drowned out the 
flourishing city ot Council Bluffs, and, had it 
risen three feet more, the magnificent iron 
bridge that spans it, and that connects Council 
Bluffs with Omaha, would have only spanned 
a mud-hole, and the vagabond river would 
have carved out a new channel for itself right 
through the centre of Council Bluffs. Even the 
mighty Amazon has its rises and falls; if its 
southern and northern tributaries should hap- 
pen to be low, or to be high at the same time, 
it becomes seriously affected. Every river, in 
fact, on this continent, and all over the world, 
has great rises and falls brought about by the 
elements, the St. Lawrence alone excepted. 
But the St. Lawrence sometimes causes ter- 
rible trouble when the waters get jammed by 
ice. Only a few years ago it almost drowned 
out Montreal and did millions of dollars’ worth 
of damage. The flood was not caused by rain, 
but by an ice gorge and the peculiar character 
of the river at Montreal. That city is only a 
mile below the rapids of Lachine, and the ice 
- in spring time is driven down the rapids at the 
rate of millions of tons per hour. Just below 
the rapids the large island of St. Helens and 
the small one called Isle Ronde bar the passage 
of the ice, and it often gets gorged in the nar- 
row channel between Isle Ronde and the north- 
ern shore. The last time Montreal was inun- 
dated by the obstructed waters of the St. Law- 
rence, the ice in the narrow channel was esti- 
mated to be nearly a hundred feet in thickness. 
If some means are not adopted for blowing up 
the ice gorge with dynamite when it suddenly 
torms owing to a rapid breaking up of the ice 
above the Lachine Rapids, Montreal may some 
day be ruined. 
The St. Lawrence despises rain and sun- 
shine. Its greatest variation caused by drought 
or rain hardly ever exceeds a foot or fourteen 
inches. The cause of this almost everlasting 
sameness of volume is easily understood. The 
