s, or Torc? Who has not found his eye
mesmerized by the falling sheet of dark polished waters, merging into
snowy spray and crowned with rainbow crest, most changeable, yet most
unchanged?

Thousands of years has this been going on; you may read it in the worn
limestone layers that have been eaten through, inches in centuries, by
the impetuous stream. Thus, also, has the St. Lawrence carved out its
mile-wide bed beneath the Heights of Abraham--the stepping-stone to
Wolfe's fame and Canadian freedom.

CHAPTER IV.

WOODEN-NESS.

Piled on the summit of Cape Diamond, and duplicated in shadow upon the
deep waters at its base, three hundred feet below, stands the fortress
of Quebec. Edinburgh and Ehrenbreitstein have been used as old-world
symbols to suggest its beauty and strength; but the girdle of mighty
river is wanting to the former, and the latter is a trifling miniature
of the Canadian city-queen. Robert Wynn knew of no such comparisons;
he only felt how beautiful was that mass of interwoven rock, and wood,
and town, reflected and rooted in the flood; he scarcely heard Captain
Armytage at his left reminding him for the tenth time that he had been
here before with his regiment.

'There's Point Levi to the south, a mile away, in front of the mountains.
Something unpleasant once befell me in crossing there. I and another
sub. hired a boat for a spree, just because the hummocks of ice were
knocking about on the tide, and all prudent people stayed ashore; but we
went out in great dreadnought boots, and bearskin caps over our ears,
and amused ourselves with pulling about for a while among the floes. I
suppose the grinding of the ice deafened us, and the hummocks hid us
from view of the people on board; at all events, down came one of the
river steamers slap on us. I saw the red paddles laden with ice at every
revolution, and the next instant was sinking, with my boots dragging me
down like a cannon-ball at my feet. I don't know how I kicked them off,
and rose: Gilpin, the other sub., had got astride on the capsized boat;
a rope flung from the steamer struck me, and you may believe I grasped
it pretty tightly. D'ye see here?' and he showed Robert a front tooth
broken short: 'I caught with my hands first, and they were so numb, and
the ice forming so fast on the dripping rope, that it slipped till I
held by my teeth; and another noose being thrown around me lasso-wise,
I was dragged in. A narrow escape, eh?'

'