America Volume IV Part 8

There is a fine outlook from the Dufferin Terrace, high up on the cliff above the river, the favorite gathering-place of the townsfolk on pleasant afternoons. The St. Lawrence flows placidly, with a narrow strip of town far down below at its edge, and a few vessels moored to the bank. At one's feet are the Champlain market and the famous little church, and a ma.s.s of the peaked tin-covered roofs of the diminutive French houses crowded in along the contracted street at the base of the cliff. High above rises the towering citadel with its rounded King's Bastion, the black guns thrusting their muzzles over the parapet and the Union Jack floating from a flagstaff at the top.

Across the river is Point Levis, with piers and railroad terminals spread along the bank, and various villages with their imposing convents and churches crown the high bluff sh.o.r.e for a long distance up and down. Farther back upon the wooded slopes of the hills are the great modern built forts which command the river and are the military protection of Quebec, their lines of earthworks just discernible among the trees. The river sweeps grandly around the projecting point of Cape Diamond and the surmounting citadel, pa.s.sing away to the northeast with broadening current, where it receives the St. Charles, and beyond is divided by the low projecting point of the green Isle of Orleans. The main channel flows to the right behind Point Levis, and the other far away to the left with the Falls of Montmorency in the distance, and the dark range of Laurentian Mountains for a background with the n.o.ble summit of Mount Sainte Anne, and the huge promontory of Cape Tourmente at the river's edge. Nearer, the Quebec Lower Town spreads to a flat point at St. Charles River, ending in the broad surface of Princess Louise Basin, containing the s.h.i.+pping. Beyond this, a long road extends along the northern river bank, through Beauport and down to Montmorency, bordered by little white French cottages strung along it like beads upon a thread. Such is the landscape of wondrous interest seen from the cliff of Quebec. Across the St. Lawrence, elevated one hundred and fifty feet above the river, between Quebec and Point Levis is about being constructed a great railway bridge with the largest cantilever span in the world.

A ride along the attractive road through Beauport gives an insight into the home life of the French Canadian _habitan_. The village stretches several miles, a single street bordered on either hand by rows of unique cottages, nearly all alike; one-story steep-roofed houses of wood or plaster, almost all painted white, and one reproducing the other. The first Frenchman who arrived built this sort of a house, and all his neighbors and descendants have done likewise.

They, like him, do it, because their ancestors builded so. The house may be larger, or may be of stone, but there is no change in form or feature. The centre doorway has a room on either hand with windows, and a steep roof rises above the single story. The house, regardless of the front road, must face north or south. The long, narrow strips of farms, some only a few yards wide, and of enormous length, run mathematically north and south. It matters not that this highway, parallel with the river, runs northeast. That cannot change the inexorable rule, and hence all the houses are set at an angle with the road, and all the dividing-fence lines are diagonals. The sun-loving Gaul taboos shade-trees, and therefore the sun blazes down upon the unsheltered house in summer, while the careful housewife, to keep out the excessive light, closes all the windows with thick shades made of old-fas.h.i.+oned wall-papers. The little triangular s.p.a.ce between the cottage and the road is usually a brilliant flower-garden. Crosses are set up frequently for the encouragement of the faithful, and there are imposing churches and ecclesiastical buildings at intervals. Along this road ride the French in their queer-looking two-wheeled caleches, appearing much like a deep-bowled spoon set on wheels, and in elongated buckboard wagons of ancient build, surmounted by the most homely and venerable gig-tops. These French cottages are more picturesque than their vehicles.

The French Canadian _habitan_, the _cultivateur_, and peasant of Quebec province, is about the same to-day as he was two or three centuries ago. The Lower Canada village reproduces the French hamlet of the time of Louis XIV., and the inhabitants show the same zealous and absorbing religious devotion as when the French first peopled the St. Lawrence sh.o.r.es. Within the cottage, hung above the _habitan's_ modest bed, is the black wooden cross that is to be the first thing greeting the waking eyes in the morning, as it has been the last object seen at night. Below it is the sprig of palm in a vase, with the little bonitier of holy water, and alongside is placed the calendar of religious events in the parish. The palm sprig is annually renewed on Palm Sunday, the old sprig being then carefully burnt.

Great is its power in warding off lightning strokes and exorcising the evil spirits. The central object around which every village cl.u.s.ters is always the church, with its high walls, sloping roof, and tall and s.h.i.+ning tin-clad spire. The cure is the village autocrat; the legal and medical adviser, the family counsellor, and usually the political leader of his flock. He blesses all the houses when they are built, and as soon as the walls are up a bunch of palm is attached to the gable or the chimney, a gun being fired to mark the event. When the _Angelus_ tolls all stop work, wherever they are, and say the short prayer in devout att.i.tude. Before beginning or completing any task the reverent _habitans_ always piously cross themselves. They do this also in pa.s.sing churches, or the many crosses and statues set up along the roads and in the villages. They are temperate, industrious and thrifty, live simply, eat the plainest food, are abundantly content with their lot, and usually raise large families. In fact, there is a bounty given, by act of the Quebec Provincial Legislature, of one hundred acres of land to parents having more than twelve living children. It is not infrequent to find twenty-five or thirty or more children in a single family. In personal appearance the _habitan_ is generally of small or medium size, with sparkling brown eyes, dark complexion, a placid face and well-knit frame. He has strong endurance and capacity for work, but usually not much education, the prayer-book furnis.h.i.+ng most of the family reading. The Church encourages early marriages, and domestic fecundity is honored as a special gift from Heaven. The pious veneration, like the creed of this simple-minded people, is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenth century.

Their faith is fervent and their belief complete. They typify the beautiful idea the late Cardinal Newman exemplified in his exquisite poem:

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home; Lead thou me on; Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou Shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead thou me on!

I loved the garish day, and spite of fears Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

"So long thy power hast blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since and lost awhile!"

LA BONNE SAINTE ANNE.

This road leads to the Montmorency River, a vigorous stream flowing out of Snow Lake, ninety miles northward, down to the St. Lawrence.

For a mile or so above the latter river it has worn a series of steps in the limestone rocks, making attractive rapids, and the waters finally pitch over a nearly perpendicular precipice, almost at the verge of the St. Lawrence, falling two hundred and fifty feet in a magnificent cataract, the dark amber torrent brilliantly foaming, and making vast amounts of spray. In winter there is formed a cone of ice in front of these falls, sometimes two hundred feet high. The cataract goes down into a deep gorge, worn back through the rocks, some distance from the St. Lawrence bank, and protruding cliffs in the face of the fall make portions of the water, when part way down, dart out in huge ma.s.ses of foam and spray. A large sawmill below gets its power from this cataract, and it also provides the electric lighting service for Quebec. Farther down the north sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence, through more quaint villages--L'Ange Gardien and Chateau Richer--the road leads along breezy hills and pleasant vales in the Cote de Beaupre, to the most renowned shrine of all Canada, about twenty miles below Quebec, the Church of "La Bonne Sainte Anne de Beaupre." This famous old church is the special shrine of the _habitan_, the objective point of many pilgrim parties from Canada and New England, where there now is a large population of French Canadians, as many as a hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims coming in a single year, and it is the most venerated spot in all Lower Canada. The Cote de Beaupre, the northern St. Lawrence sh.o.r.e below Montmorency, is an appanage of the Seminary of Quebec. The little Sainte Anne's river comes down from the slopes of Sainte Anne's Mountain among the Laurentides, and after das.h.i.+ng over the steep and attractive cataract of Sainte Anne, flows out to the St. Lawrence. Upon the level and picturesque intervale of this stream is a primitive French village, whose people get support partly by making bricks for Quebec, but mainly through the entertainment of the army of pilgrims coming to the miraculous shrine of "La Bonne Sainte Anne." The village spreads mostly along a narrow street filled with inns and lodging-houses which are crowded during the pilgrimage season from June till October, culminating on Sainte Anne's festival day, July 26th. To the eastward of the village is the beautiful church, not long ago built from the pious doles of the faithful, a ma.s.sive and elaborate granite building. Just above it, upon the bank, is the original little church of Sainte Anne, which is so highly venerated, and wherein the sacred relics of the saint are carefully kept in a crystal globe, and are exhibited at morning ma.s.s, when their contemplation by the pilgrims, combined with faith, works miraculous cures. The old church of 1658, threatening to fall, was taken down in 1878, and rebuilt with the same materials on the original plan. It is quaintly furnished in the French-Canadian style of the seventeenth century, and one of its features is the ma.s.s of abandoned crutches and canes piled along the cornices and in the sacristy, left by the cripples who have departed relieved or healed.

This is probably the holiest ground in Canada, consecrated by nearly three centuries of the most fervent devotion of the ever-faithful _habitans_. Just below Sainte Anne is the companion village of St.

Joachim. Sainte Anne was the mother and St. Joachim the father of the Virgin Mary. The tradition is that after Sainte Anne's body had reposed quietly for many years at Jerusalem, it was sent to the Bishop of Ma.r.s.eilles, and later to Apt, where it was placed in a subterranean chapel to guard it from heathen profanation. The church at Apt was swept away by the invader, but some seven centuries afterwards the Emperor Charlemagne visited the town, and marvellous incidents took place, light being seen emanating from the vault accompanied by a delicious fragrance, whereupon investigation was made and the long lost remains of Sainte Anne recovered. Ever since, her sacred relics have been highly venerated in France, and it was natural that the early French Canadians should bring their pious devotion into the new Province. Various churches were built in her honor, the chief being this one at Beaupre, by the devout Governor d'Allebout. With his own hands the Governor began the pious work of erecting the church, and as an encouragement, the Cathedral Chapter in France sent to the new shrine a relic of Sainte Anne--a portion of a finger-bone--together with a reliquary of silver, a lamp, and some paintings, all being preserved in this church. The legend of the building is, that upon its site a beautiful little child of the village was thrice favored with Heavenly visions. Upon the third appearance, the Virgin commanded the child that she should tell her people to build a church there in honor of her saintly mother. Thus was the location chosen, and while the foundation was being laid, a _habitan_ of the Cote de Beaupre, one Guimont, sorely afflicted with rheumatism, came there with great difficulty, and filled with pain, to try and lay three stones in the wall, presumably in honor of the Virgin, her father and mother. With much labor and suffering he performed the task, but instantly it was completed he became miraculously cured. This began a long series of miracles, their fame spreading, so that devotion to Sainte Anne became a distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of French-Canadian Catholicity.

The great Bishop Laval de Montmorency made Sainte Anne's day a feast of obligation. During the French regime, vessels ascending the St.

Lawrence always saluted when pa.s.sing the shrine, in grateful thanksgiving that their prayers to Sainte Anne had been answered by deliverance from the perils of the sea. Pilgrims flocked thither, and many cures were wrought by pious veneration of the relics. As religion spread among the Indians, sometimes the adjacent sh.o.r.e would be covered by the wigwams of the converts who had come in their canoes from remote regions, and the more fervent of them would crawl on their knees from the river bank to the altar. To-day the pilgrims bring their offerings and make their vows, pleading for relief, many crossing the ocean from France, and it is said of these votaries at the shrine that they now come, "not in paint and feathers, but in cloth and millinery, and not in canoes, but in steamboats." It is noteworthy that in all the vicissitudes of war repeatedly waged around the famous place, the village being sacked and burned, the church was always preserved. When the British under Wolfe, prior to capturing Quebec in 1759, attacked Beaupre, they three times, tradition says, set fire to the church, but by the special intervention of Sainte Anne it escaped unscathed. Upon Sainte Anne's festival day, in 1891, many thousand pilgrims poured into the village, and Cardinal Archbishop Taschereau came down from Quebec, bringing another precious relic of Sainte Anne--a complete finger-joint--which he had obtained for the shrine from Carca.s.sonne, in Languedoc, France. The Holy Father had raised the new church to the dignity of a Basilica, and two years previously he also sent from Rome a ma.s.sive golden crown, set with precious stones, and valued at $56,000. This crown was worn by the rich statue of Sainte Anne, holding the infant Virgin in her arms, which stands before the chancel. There was an elaborate ceremonial, a large number of priests partic.i.p.ating, and a solemn procession translated the precious relic to the church, where, after the services, it was venerated, the reliquary containing it being presented to the lips of each communicant kneeling in the sanctuary.

Several miraculous cures were announced, but it is recorded that most of the cripples taken into the church had to be carried out again unrelieved. Around this sacred shrine crystallizes in the highest degree the pious veneration of the faithful French-Canadian _habitans_.

THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE.

The river St. Lawrence below Quebec is a mighty arm of the sea, stretching in from the Atlantic, through a vast valley enclosed by the primeval forest. The northern sh.o.r.e shows the domination of ruggedness, for here begins the mountain wall of the Laurentides, stretching far away northeastward down the river towards Labrador. The southern sh.o.r.e is less forbidding, having wide fertile slopes rising to a background of wooded hills. Along the river bank is a spa.r.s.ely scattered strip of humanity, which is likened to a rosary, having the primitive farmhouses for beads, and at every few miles a tall, cross-crowned church spire. Set in between the river banks, just below Quebec, is the broad and fertile Isle of Orleans, but beyond this the St. Lawrence is six miles wide, and steadily broadens, attaining twenty-four miles width at Tadousac, the mouth of the Saguenay, and thirty-five width at Metis, one hundred and fifty miles below Quebec.

The Isle of Orleans is twenty miles long and very fertile, largely supplying the markets of Quebec. To the northward Mount Sainte Anne, the guardian of the famous shrine, rises twenty-seven hundred feet.

Jacques Cartier so liked the grapes grown on the island that he called it the Isle of Bacchus, but the king, Francis I., would not have it so, and named it after his son, the Duke of Orleans. Here were ma.s.sacred the Hurons by the Iroquois, who captured from them the great cross of Argentenay, carrying it off to their stronghold, on Onondaga Lake, New York, in 1661. On the northern sh.o.r.e of the island is the old stone church of St. Laurent and farther along that of St. Pierre, the meadows hereabout providing good shooting. The faithful at St.

Laurent were said to have been long the envied possessors of a piece of the arm-bone of the Apostle Paul, a most precious relic, which was clandestinely seized and taken over to St. Pierre Church. This made a great commotion, and some of the young men of St. Laurent made an expedition at night, entered the church, recaptured the relic, and brought it back with some other articles, restoring it to the original shrine. A controversy between the villagers followed, growing so fierce that an outbreak was threatened, and the Archbishop at Quebec had to intervene to keep the peace. He ordered each church to restore the other its relics, which was done with solemn ceremony, processions marching along the road between the villages, and making the exchange midway, a large black cross since marking the spot.

The great promontory of the Laurentides, Cape Tourmente, stretches to the river, with the dark ma.s.s of ancient mountains spreading beyond in magnificent array, the cliffs rising high above the water, firs clinging to their sides and crowning their worn and rounded summits.

On top of Tourmente the Seminarians have erected a huge cross, seen from afar, with a little chapel alongside. The old Canadian traveller, Charlevoix, said Cape Tourmente was probably so-called "because he that gave it this name suffered here by a gust of wind."

"At length they spy huge Tourmente, sullen-browed, Bathe his bald forehead in a pa.s.sing cloud; The t.i.tan of the lofty capes that gleam In long succession down the mighty stream."

Here are Grosse Isle, the quarantine station for the river, and the Isle aux Coudres--Hazel Tree Island,--behind which a break in the Laurentides makes a pleasant nook, the Bay of St. Paul, having little villages named after the saints all about. Below, the mountain range rises into the great Mount Eboulements, twenty-five hundred feet high, its sides scarred by landslides brought down by various earthquakes, which were once so frequent that the Indians called the region Cuscatlan, meaning "the land that swings like a hammock." The name of this mountain means the "falling, shaking, crumbling mountain," but it is nevertheless now noted as the haughtiest headland of the Laurentides. This whole region has been a great sufferer from volcanic disturbances, the chief being in 1663, when the historian says "the St. Lawrence ran white as milk as far down as Tadousac; ranges of hills were thrown down into the river or were swallowed up in the plains; earthquakes shattered the houses and shook the trees until the Indians said that the forests were drunk; vast fissures opened in the ground and the courses of streams were changed. Meteors, fiery-winged serpents and ghostly spectres were seen in the air; roarings and mysterious voices sounded on every side, and the confessionals of all the churches were crowded with penitents awaiting the end of the world." Below this frowning mountain, the little Murray River flows in, making a deep bay and sandy beaches, and far back, under the shadows of the bordering hills, are the parish church and the French village of St. Agnes up the river. This place is Murray Bay, a favorite watering-place, known as Malbaie among the French, the hotels and wide one-story cottages of this Canadian Newport being scattered in the ravine and on the hill-slopes. When Champlain first entered this bay in 1608 he named it Malle Baie, explaining that this was because of "the tide that runs there marvellously." It is said that an attempt was once made to settle Murray Bay with Scotch emigrants, but the families who were sent out soon succ.u.mbed to the overwhelming influence of the surroundings, and their descendants, while having unmistakable Scottish names, have adopted the French language and customs. Over on the southern bank, thirty miles away, for the river is now very wide, is another favorite resort, Riviere du Loup, with the adjacent village of Kamouraska, the great church of St. Louis and a large convent being prominent in the latter.

Riviere du Loup is the best developed of the watering-places of the Lower St. Lawrence. The sh.o.r.e is gentle, and in sharp contrast with the rugged northern bank. The village spreads on a broad plateau, formed by the inflowing stream, there being hotels and boarding-houses scattered about, a tall-spired church back of the town, and a long wharf stretching out in front. To the eastward the sloping sh.o.r.e extends far away to Cacouna, eight miles below, another favorite resort also sentinelled by its church. The Riviere du Loup (Wolf River) naming this place flows out of the distant southern mountains to the St. Lawrence, and is said to have been so called from the droves of seals,--called by the French "loups-marines"--formerly frequenting the shoals off its mouth. Just back of the village the stream plunges down a waterfall eighty feet high. Cacouna is the most fas.h.i.+onable resort of the southern sh.o.r.e, and a place of comparatively recent growth, its semicircular bay with a good beach and the cool summer airs being the attractions. In front and connected by a low isthmus is a large peninsula of rounded granite rock, shaped much like a turtle-back and rising four hundred feet. From this came the Indian name, Cacouna, or the turtle.

THE GRAND AND GLOOMY SAGUENAY.

Far over to the northward, across the broad river, is ancient Tadousac, enclosed by the guarding mountains at the entrance to the Saguenay. The harbor and landing are within a small rounded bay, having the Salmon Hatching House of the Dominion alongside the wharf, a cascade pouring down the hillside behind, and a little white inn prettily perched above on a shelf of rock. The village spreads over irregular terraces, encircling three of these little rounded bays, beyond which the narrow Saguenay chasm goes off westward through the mountains into a savage wilderness. This place has been a trading-post with the Indians for over three centuries, and the ancient buildings of the Hudson Bay Company testify to the traffic in furs, once so good, which has become almost obsolete. It was visited by Cartier in 1535, and afterwards was established as one of the earliest missions of the Jesuits, who came here in 1599 and raised the cross among the Nasquapees of the Saguenay--the "upright men," as they called themselves,--and the Montaignais, both then powerful tribes, which have since entirely disappeared from this region, having withdrawn to its upper waters, around and beyond Lake St. John. The old chapel, replacing the original Jesuit church--said to have been the first erected in North America--stands down by the waterside, a diminutive, peak-roofed, one-story building, kept as a memorial of the past, for the people now wors.h.i.+p in a fine new stone church farther up the rounded hill-slope. These knoll-like rounded hills or mamelons named the place, for they are numerous, and Tadousac, literally a "nipple,"

is the Indian word for them. The most valued possession of the church is a figure of the child Jesus, originally sent to the mission by King Louis XIV. This is the oldest settlement of the Lower St. Lawrence.

The stern and gloomy Saguenay, the largest tributary of the Lower St.

Lawrence, is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its main portion is a tremendous chasm cleft in a nearly straight line for sixty miles in the Laurentian Mountains, through an almost unsettled wilderness. These Laurentides make the northern sh.o.r.e of the St.

Lawrence for hundreds of miles below Quebec, rising into higher peaks and ridges in the interior, and being the most ancient part of America, the geologists telling us the waves of the Silurian Sea washed against this range when only two small islands represented the rest of the continent. Through this vast chasm the Saguenay brings down the waters of Lake St. John and its many tributaries, some of them rising in the remote north, almost up to Hudson Bay. This lower portion of the river goes through an almost uninhabitable desert of gloomy mountains, the tillable land being in the basin of the Upper Saguenay and Lake St. John, the people of that valley living there in almost complete isolation. Logs and huckleberries are the crops produced on this savage river, the only things the spa.r.s.e population can depend upon for a living, and the fine blueberries bring them the scant doles of ready money they ever see. The Saguenay's inky waters have the smell of brine as they break in froth upon the sh.o.r.e, and then the air-bubbles show the real color to be that of brandy. The upper tributaries give this color as they flow out of forests of spruce and hemlock and swamps filled with mosses and highly colored roots and vegetable matter. Almost all the lakes and rivers of the vast wilderness north of the St. Lawrence present a similar appearance, their rapids and waterfalls, seen under the suns.h.i.+ne, seeming like sheets of liquid amber.

The vast acc.u.mulations of waters gathered from the heart of the Laurentides by the tributaries of Lake St. John flow down the rapids below the lake in a stream rivalling those of Niagara. Thus the Saguenay comes into being in the form of l.u.s.ty twins--the Grand Discharge and the Little Discharge--deep and narrow river channels worn in the rocks. For some miles they run separately through rapids and pools, finally joining at the foot of Alma Island, where begin the Gervais Rapids, four miles long. The Grand Discharge is a beautiful stream of rapids, the rippling and roaring currents flowing through a maze of islands, while the Little Discharge is a condensed stream, so powerful and unruly that it actually destroys the logs in its boisterous cataracts, the government having made a "Slide," down which the timber is run past the dangerous places. After pa.s.sing Gervais Rapids the Saguenay has a quiet reach of fifteen miles to the Grand Ramous, the most furious cascade of all, and then a few more miles of rapids and falls bring it to Chicoutimi, ending its wild career where it meets the tide above Ha Ha Bay. The first bold Frenchmen who ventured up through the stupendous and forbidding chasm of the Lower Saguenay gave this bay its name, to show their delight at having finally emerged from the gloomy region. At Ha Ha Bay the tide often rises twenty-one feet, and below, the river forces its pa.s.sage with a broad channel through almost perpendicular cliffs out to the St. Lawrence. Its great depth is noteworthy, showing what a fearful chasm has been split open, there being in many places a mile to a mile and a half depth, while the channel throughout averages eight hundred feet depth. For most of the distance the river is a mile or more wide.

The original name given the river by the Montaignais was Chicoutimi, or the "deep water," now given the village below the foot of the rapids. The present name is a corruption of the Indian word Saggishsekuss, meaning "a strait with precipitous banks." The sad sublimity of the impressive chasm culminates at Eternity Bay, where on either hand rise in stately grandeur to sixteen hundred feet elevation above the water Cape Trinity, with its three summits, and Cape Eternity. Ten miles above is Le Tableau, a cliff one thousand feet high, its vast smooth front like an artist's canvas.

This sombre river, whose bed is much lower than that of the St.

Lawrence, is frozen for almost its whole course during half the year, and snow lies on its bordering mountains until June. It makes a saddening impression upon most visitors. Bayard Taylor compared the Saguenay chasm to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley, describing everything as "hard, naked, stern, silent; dark gray cliffs of granitic gneiss rise from the pitch-black water; firs of gloomy green are rooted in their crevices and fringe their summits; loftier ranges of a dull indigo hue show themselves in the background, and over all bends a pale, cold, northern sky." Another traveller calls it "a cold, savage, inhuman river, fit to take rank with Styx and Acheron;" and "Nature's sarcophagus," compared to which, "the Dead Sea is blooming;"

and so solitary, dreary and monotonous that it "seems to want painting, blowing up or draining--anything, in short, to alter its morose, quiet, eternal awe."

EXPLORING THE SAGUENAY CHASM.

Ha Ha Bay, where the exploring Frenchmen found such relief for their oppressed feelings, is a long strait thrust through the mountains southwest from the Saguenay for several miles, broadening at the head into an oval bay, practically a basin among the crags, with two or three French villages around it, named after various saints. The modest one-story huts of the _habitans_ fringe the lower slopes near the water's edge along the valleys of several small streams, each cl.u.s.ter having its church with the tall spire. The basin is two or three miles across, enclosed by bold cliffs and rounded hills, the wide beaches of sand and pebble showing the great rise and fall of the tide. There is a sawmill or two, and lumber and huckleberries are the products of the district. Chicoutimi village is above the chasm, at a point where the intervale broadens, the savage mountains retiring, leaving a s.p.a.ce for gentle tree-clad slopes and cultivated fields.

Standing high on the western bank are the magnificent Cathedral, the Seminary, a Sailors' Hospital, and the Convent of the Good Shepherd, and not far away a tributary stream pours fifty feet down the Chicoutimi Falls in a rus.h.i.+ng cascade of foam. There are extensive sawmills, and timber s.h.i.+ps come in the summer for cargoes for Europe, and the place has railway connections with Lake St. John and thence southward to Quebec. There is a population of about three thousand.

The universal little one-story, peak-roofed, whitewashed French cottages abound, some having a casing of squared pieces of birch-bark to protect them from the weather, making them look much like stone houses, and peeping inside it is found that the inhabitants usually utilize their old newspapers for wall-paper.

From Chicoutimi down to Tadousac the region of the Saguenay chasm is practically without habitation. There are two or three small villages, chiefly abodes of timber-cutters, but it is otherwise uninhabited; nor do the precipitous cliffs usually leave any place near the river for a dwelling to be put. As the visitor goes along on the steamboat it is a steady and monotonous panorama of dark, dreary, round-topped crags, with stunted firs spa.r.s.ely clinging to their sides and tops where crevices will let them, while the faces of the cliffs are white, gray, brown and black, as their granites change in color. A few frothy but attenuated cascades pour down narrow fissures. The scene, while sublime, is forbidding, and soon becomes so monotonous as to be tiresome. This gaunt and savage landscape culminates in Eternity Bay.

Ponderous b.u.t.tresses here guard the narrow gulf on the southern sh.o.r.e, formed by the outflow of a little river. The western portal, Cape Trinity, as the steamboat approaches from above, appears as a series of huge steps, each five hundred feet high, and the faithful missionaries have climbed up and placed a tall white statue of the Virgin on one of the steps, about seven hundred feet above the river, and a large cross on the next higher step, both being seen from afar.

Pa.s.sing around into the bay, the gaunt eastern face of this enormous promontory is found to be a perpendicular wall of the rawest granite, standing sixteen hundred feet straight up from the water. At the top it grandly rises on the bay side into three huge crown-like domes, which, upon being seen by the original French explorers when they came up the river, made them appropriately name it the Trinity. This is one of the most awe-inspiring promontories human eyes ever beheld, as it rises sheer out of water over half a mile deep. Across the narrow bay, the eastern portal, Cape Eternity, similarly rises in solemn grandeur, with solid unbroken sides and a wooded top fully as high. The entire Saguenay River is of much the same character, repeating these crags and promontories in myriad forms. While not always as high, yet the enclosing mountains elsewhere are almost as impressive and fully as dismal. The steamboat, aided by the swift tide, moves rapidly through the deep canyon, one rounded peak and long ridge being much like the others, with the same monotonous dreariness everywhere, and every rift disclosing only more distant sombre mountains. The chasm throughout its length has no beacons for navigation, the sh.o.r.es being so steep and the waters so deep they are unnecessary. A sense of relief is felt when the open waters at Tadousac and the St. Lawrence are reached, for the journey makes everyone feel much like a writer in the London _Times_, who said of it: "Unlike Niagara and all other of G.o.d's great works in nature, one does not wish for silence or solitude here.

Companions.h.i.+p becomes doubly necessary in an awful solitude like this."

THE ANGLING GROUNDS OF LOWER CANADA.

Quebec province, on the Lower St. Lawrence, for hundreds of miles north and east of the river is filled with myriads of lakes and streams that are the haunts of the hunter and angler, and the Government gets considerable revenue from the fishery rentals. As far away as five hundred miles from Quebec, up in Labrador, is the Natashquin River, and eight hundred miles down the St. Lawrence is the Little Esquimau, these being the most distant fishery grounds. Among the noted fis.h.i.+ng streams are the grand Cascapedia, the Metapedia, the Upsalquitch, the Patapedia, the Quatawamkedgewick (usually called, for short, the "Tom Kedgewick"), and the Restigouche, on the southern side of the Lower St. Lawrence, their waters being described as flowing out to "the undulating and voluptuous Bay of Chaleurs, full of long folds, of languis.h.i.+ng contours, which the wind caresses with fan-like breath, and whose softened sh.o.r.es receive the flooding of the waves without a murmur." Around the great Lake St. John there is also a maze of lakes and fishery streams. The most noted Canadian fishery organization is the "Restigouche Salmon Club," having its club-house on the Restigouche River, at its junction with the Metapedia, and controlling a large territory. The guides in this region are usually Micmac Indians, who have been described on account of their energy as the "Scotch-Irish Indians." This tribe originally inhabited the whole of Lower Canada south of the St. Lawrence, being found there by Cartier, and the French named them the Sourequois or "Salt-Water Indians,"

because they lived on the seacoast. They were staunch allies of the French, who converted them to Christianity from being sun-wors.h.i.+ppers.

They have a reservation near Campbellton, on the Restigouche, and a populous village surrounding a Catholic church. There are now about seven thousand of them, all told, throughout the provinces. Glooscap was the mythical chief of the Micmacs, whose power and genius were shown throughout all the region from New England to Gaspe. He was of unknown origin, and invincible, and he conquered the "great Beaver, feared by beasts and men," on the river Kennebecasis, near St. John.

Glooscap's favorite home and beaver-pond was the Basin of Minas, in Nova Scotia, where afterwards dwelt Longfellow's Evangeline. Micmac traditions describe him as the "envoy of the Great Spirit," who lived above in a great wigwam, and was always attended by an aged dame and a beautiful youth. He had the form and habits of humanity, and taught his tribe how to hunt and fish, to build wigwams and canoes, and to heal diseases. He controlled the elements and overthrew all enemies of his people; but the tradition adds that on the approach of the English, the great Glooscap, "finding that the ways of beasts and men waxed evil," turned his huge hunting-dogs into stone, and his huntsmen into restless and wailing loons, and then he vanished.

The route to the angling waters of the great Lake St. John is by railway northward from Quebec. It goes up the valley of St. Charles River, past Lorette, where beautiful cascades turn the mill-wheels.

Here are gathered the scanty halfbreed remnant of the Hurons, once the most powerful and ferocious tribe in Canada, who drove out the Iroquois and compelled their migration down to New York State. These Indians are said to have been Wyandots, but when the French saw them, with their hair rising in bristling ridges above their painted foreheads, the astonished beholders exclaimed, "Quelles hures!" (what boars!) and hence the name of Huron came to them. The railroad goes for two hundred miles past lakes and streams, and through the dense forests of these remote Laurentian mountains, until it finally comes out on the lake sh.o.r.e at the ancient mission town of "Our Lady of Roberval," now become, through the popularity of the district, a modern watering-place. This great Lake St. John, so much admired by the Canadian and American anglers, was called by the Indians the Picouagomi, or "Flat Lake," and it is in a region shaped much like a saucer, lying in a hollow, with hills rising up into mountains in the background all around. The lake is thirty miles long and about twenty-five miles across, having no less than nineteen large rivers, besides smaller ones flowing into it from the surrounding mountains, the vast acc.u.mulation of waters being carried off by the Saguenay. The immense flow of some of these rivers may be realized when it is known that the Mista.s.sini, coming down from the northward, is three hundred miles long, and the Peribonka four hundred miles long, while the Ouiatchouan from the south, just before reaching the lake, dashes down a grand cascade, two hundred and eighty feet high, making an elongated sheet of perfectly white foam.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, this wonderful lake and its immense tributaries were scarcely known to white men, yet upon its sh.o.r.es stood Notre Dame de Roberval and St. Louis Chambord, two of the oldest Jesuit Indian missions in America. For more than two centuries, until the angler and lumberman began going to this remote wilderness, it was a buried paradise in the distant woods, without inhabitants, excepting a few Montaignais and their priests, and a scattered post or two of the Hudson Bay Company, whose occasional expeditions over to Quebec for supplies were the only communication with the outer world.

The solid graystone church and convent stand in bold relief among the neat little white French cottages at Roberval, there are an immense sawmill and a modern hotel, while in front is the grand sweep of the lake, like a vast inland sea, its opposite sh.o.r.e almost beyond vision, excepting where a far-away mountain spur may loom just above the horizon. Here lives the famous ouananiche of the salmon family, called "land-locked," because it is believed he is unable to get out to other waters. He is a gamey and magnificent fish, with dark-blue back and silvery sides, mottled with olive spots, thus literally clothed in purple and fine silver. He has enormous strength, making him the champion finny warrior of the Canadian waters. The chief fishery ground for him is in the swirling rapids of the Grand Discharge. The native Montaignais, or "mountaineer" Indian of this region, is a most expert angler, seducing the royal fish with an inartistic lump of fat pork on the end of a line from his frail canoe among the rapids, and hooking the game more effectively than the costliest rod and reel in the hands of a "tenderfoot." These dusky, consumptive-looking, copper-colored Indians spend the winters in the unexplored wilds of the Mista.s.sini, and wander through all the wilderness as far as Hudson Bay. When the snows are gone, they bring in the pelts of the beaver, otter, fox and bear, to trade at the Company posts, and living in rude birch-bark huts on the bank of the lake, spend the summer in fis.h.i.+ng, and pick up a few dollars as boatmen and guides.

THE ST. LAWRENCE ESTUARY.

Below the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence stretches four hundred miles to the ocean, its broad estuary constantly growing wider. On the southern sh.o.r.e, below Cacouna, there is another resort at a little river's mouth, known as Trois Pistoles. It is related that in the olden time a traveller was ferried across this little river, the fisherman doing the service charging him three pistoles (ten franc pieces), equalling about six dollars. The traveller was astonished at the charge, and asked him the name of the river. "It has no name," was the reply, "it will be baptized at a later day." "Then," said the traveller, anxious to get the worth of his money, "I baptize it Three Pistoles," a name that has continued ever since. This diminutive village seems rather in luck, for unlike most of the others, it has two churches, each with a tall spire. The Lower St. Lawrence sh.o.r.es maintain communication across the wide estuary by canoe ferries, established at various places. A stout canoe, twenty feet or more long, and having a crew of seven men, usually makes the pa.s.sage. The boat is built with broad, flat keel, shod with iron, moving easily over the ice which for half the year closes the river, not breaking up until late in the spring, and sometimes obstructing the outlet through the Strait of Belle Isle until July. Farther down the southern sh.o.r.e, below Trois Pistoles, is Rimouski, a much larger place, described as the metropolis of the Lower St. Lawrence, and the outlet of the region of the Metapedia. This town has a Bishop and a Cathedral. Beyond are Father Point and Metis, and the land then extends past Cape Chatte into the wilderness of Gaspe. When Jacques Cartier first entered the river in 1534, he landed at Gaspe, taking possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France, and erecting a tall cross adorned with the fleur-de-lys. Very appropriately, Gaspe means the "Land's End." They found here the Micmac Indians, who were then reputed to be quite intelligent, knowing the points of the compa.s.s and position of the stars, and having rude maps of their country and a knowledge of the cross. Their tradition, as told to Cartier's sailors, was that in distant ages a pestilence hara.s.sed them, when a venerable man landed on their sh.o.r.e and stayed the progress of the disease by erecting a cross. This mysterious benefactor is supposed to have been a Norseman, or early Spanish adventurer. An old Castilian tale is that gold-hunting Spaniards, after the discovery by Columbus, sailed along these coasts, and finding no precious metals, said in disgust to the Indians, "Aca nada," meaning, "there is nothing here." This phrase became fixed in the Indian mind, and supposing Cartier's party to be the same people, they endeavored to open conversation by repeating the same words, "Aca nada! aca nada!" Thus, according to one theory, originated the name of Canada, the Frenchmen supposing they were telling the name of the country. Another authority is that the literal meaning of the Mohawk (Iroquois) word Canada is, "Where they live," or "a village," and as it was the word Cartier, on his voyages up the river, most frequently heard from the Indians, as applied to the homes of the people, it naturally named the country.

The surface of the southern country behind Cape Chatte, and of Gaspe (Cape Gaspe being a promontory seven hundred feet high), rises into the frowning mountains of Notre Dame, the most lofty in Lower Canada, the chief peak elevated four thousand feet. In 1648 a French explorer wrote of these stately ranges that "all those who come to New France know well enough the mountains of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived at that point of the great river which is opposite to these high mountains, baptize, ordinarily for sport, the new pa.s.sengers, if they do not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism, which is made to flow plentifully on their heads." The bold southern sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence finally ends beyond Cape Gaspe, where its mouth is ninety-six miles wide in the headland of Cape Rosier, described by dreading mariners as the "Scylla of the St. Lawrence."

The northern sh.o.r.e of the great river, beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, is almost uninhabited. There is an occasional fis.h.i.+ng-post, but it is almost an unknown region, though once there were Jesuit missions and trading-places, the Indians having since gone away. The iron-bound coast goes off, past Point de Monts, the Egg Islands and Anticosti, to the Strait of Belle Isle. This strait is named after a barren, treeless and desolate island at its entrance, about nine miles long, which has been most ironically named the Belle Isle, but the early mariners, nevertheless, called it the Isle of Demons. They did this because they heard, when pa.s.sing, "a great clamor of men's voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you hear from a crowd at a fair or market-place." This is explained by the almost constant grinding of ice-floes in the neighborhood. The Mingan River, a beautiful stream where speckled trout are caught, comes down out of the northern mountains, opposite Anticosti Island, and is occasionally visited by enthusiastic anglers. This is the boundary of Labrador, which stretches almost indefinitely beyond, comprising the whole northeastern Canadian peninsula, an almost unexplored region of nearly three hundred square miles. It is described as a rocky plateau of Archaean rocks, highest on the northeast side and to the south, more or less wooded, and sloping down to lowlands towards Hudson Bay. It is a vast solitude, the rocks split and blasted by frosts, and the sh.o.r.es washed by the Atlantic waves, where reindeer, bears, wolves and a few Esquimaux wander. Its great scenic attraction is the Grand Falls. To the northward of the headwaters of Mingan River is a much larger stream, the Grand River, draining a mult.i.tude of lakes on the higher Labrador table-land, northeastward through Hamilton Inlet into the Atlantic. In 1861 a venturesome Scot of the Hudson Bay Company, prospecting through the region, first saw this magnificent cataract.

For thirty years the falls were unvisited, but in 1891 an expedition was made to them, and they have been since again visited. The cataract is described as a magnificent spectacle, the river with full flow leaping from a rocky platform into a huge chasm, with a roar that can be heard twenty miles and an immense column of rainbow-illumined spray. The plunge is made after descending rapids for eight hundred feet, and is over a precipice two hundred feet wide, the fall being three hundred and sixteen feet. The water tumbles into a canyon five hundred feet deep and extending between high walls of rock for about twenty-five miles. The distant Labrador coasts on bay and ocean abound in seals and fish, and the adjacent seas are vast producers of codfish and herring. There are few visitors, however, excepting the hardy "Fishermen," of whom Whittier sings: