discovery up the St. Lawrence. On the S. E.
shore of this island is St. Anne, where is a Catho-
lic college, and a settlement of considerable size.
Kamourasica, on the S. E. shore, about 90 miles
below Quebec, containing about 1600 inhabitants,
has become a favorite place of resort, during the
summer months, for the inhabitants of Montreal
and Quebec, for purposes of fishing and bath-
ing, and is doubtless destined to become a fash-
ionable watering-place, where, as the waters are
perfectly salt, invalids and the seekers of pleas-
ure may enjoy sea-bathing and other recreations.
There is a settlement at the mouth of the River
Du Loup, which comes into the St. Lawrence from
the S. E. 120 miles below Quebec, containing
some 1500 or 1800 inhabitants. Here commences
the great road from the St. Lawrence River to the
St. John's, by the way of the Madawaska River
and settlement. As you come to the mouth of
the Saguenay, which is 140 miles from Quebec,
the waters of the St. Lawrence take a blackish
appearance, which is perceivable for many miles
below, extending far out into the river. This
discoloration is occasioned by the entrance of the
waters of this great tributary, which are of a very
dark hue. Off the mouth of this river is Red
Island, and nearly opposite is Green Island, which
are among the first of the islands met with in
ascending the St. Lawrence. The St. Lawrence
River, below this point, assumes an imposing ap-
pearance ; being clear of islands, and gradually
widening until its breadth exceeds 100 miles.

We are now at the mouth of the Saguenay,
to visit which is the principal object of the excur-
sion. From the strange, wild, and romantic char-
acter of the scenery along its banks, as well as
from the great depth and almost inky blackness
of its waters, this may be considered as unques-
tionably the most remarkable river on the Amer-
ican continent. It is about a mile wide at its
confluence with the St. Lawrence; and, in differ-
ent parts of its course above, is often from 2 to 3
miles in width, It is one of the most important
tributaries of this great river; its volume of wa-
ter is indeed immense ; and the depth and force
of its current is so sensibly felt at its junction
with the St. Lawrence, that vessels going up or
down are obliged to yield to its influence for sev-
eral miles. With the exception of the St. Law-
rence itself, it is decidedly the largest river E. of
the Appalachian chain of mountains. It is the
only outlet of the beautiful Lalce of St. John,
which lies about 140 miles nearly W. from the
River St. Lawrence, in an immense valley forming
part of the territory belonging to the Hudson's
Bay Company. This lake is nearly circular in
its form, being between 30 and 40 miles in diam-
eter ; and it constitutes the great natural reser-
voir into which no less than twelve rivers, and
many smaller streams, discharge their waters.
The Saguenay is the channel by which this vast
collection of water finds its way to the St. Law-
rence, draining an area of country which is more
extensive than all the rest of Lower Canada,
although but little known, and till lately almost
entirely uninhabited, except by one or two hun-
dred Indian families.

The first half of the course of the river lies
through a wilderness of hills, covered with an
unbroken forest of pine, fir, and spruce; and
numerous and formidable rapids in this part
render the navigation difficult, and even hazard-
ous, except to experienced canoe-men. Below

Chicoutimi, however, which is 68 miles from its
mouth, it is navigable for the largest vessels.
From the Ha-Ha Bay, which is 12 or 15 miles
below Chicoutimi, the passage of the waters of
the Saguenay, for the whole distance of 50 miles
to the St. Lawrence, is one of the wonders of na-
ture. They penetrate through solid mountains
of sienitic granite, which seem to have been
split asunder by the upheavipgs of an earth-
quake, thus forming an immense canal, with banks
of perpendicular rocks, towering up to 1500 or
2000 feet above the water, which is about 150
fathoms deep nearly the whole distance. In many
places the largest vessel may run close to the
perpendicular cliffs, with 100 fathoms water. Its
depth, at several different points indeed, has
never been ascertained. It has been plumbed, in
some of these places, with a line of 330 fathoms,
or 1980 feet, and that, too, immediately at the base
of the cliff, and yet no bottom found.

Mr. Lanman, a talented artist and an accom-
plished writer, who recently made a tour through
Lower Canada, thus speaks of the Saguenay:
“Imagine, for a moment, an extensive country
of rocky and thinly-clad mountains, suddenly
separated by some convulsion of nature, so as to
form an almost bottomless chasm, varying from
1 to 2 miles in width; and then imagine this
chasm suddenly half filled with water, and that
the moss of centuries has softened the rugged
walls on either side, and you will have a pretty
accurate idea of the Saguenay.'' “ Generally
speaking,'' he continues, “ these towering bul-
warks are not content to loom perpendicularly
into the air, but. they must needs bend over as if
to look at their own savage features reflected in
the deep... . Awful beyoncl expression is the sen-
sation which one experiences in sailing along the
Saguenay, raising his eye heavenward, to behold,
hanging directly over his head, a mass of granite
apparently ready to totter and fall, and weighing
perhaps a million of tons. Terrible and sub-
lime, beyond the imagery of the most daring
poet, are these cliffs; which, while they proclaim
the omnipotent power of God, at the same time
whisper into the ear of man that he is but as the
moth that flutters in the noontide air.'' Another
writer has remarked that “ the power and pride
of man is as much humbled, in some parts of
this tremendous chasm, as in the immediate
presence of Niagara Falls.''

Not the least remarkable feature of this river
is the ridge of rocks lying across its mouth.
This ridge is below the surface, and through it is
a channel 120 feet deep, on the upper side of
which the depth immediately increases to 840
feet; so that, even at its mouth, the bed of the
Saguenay is absolutely 600 feet, or thereabout,
below that of the St. Lawrence, into which it
empties.

After entering the river, the hills soon rise
abruptly from the water's edge, presenting an
appearance, at first somewhat similar to the en-
trance into the Highlands, from the N., on the
Hudson River. Tadousac, at the mouth of the
Saguenay, on the St. Lawrence, is a small place,
occupied as a trading post with the Indians, by
the Hudson's Bay Company. T6te. du Boule is a
round mountain peak about a mile from Tadousac.
The Two Profiles, a few miles farther up, ele-
vated several hundred feet above the water, bear
a striking resemblance to the outline of the
human face. At St. John's Bay, 28 miles above