as to
the championship of the rafts on sight. One day, a giant in a red shirt
stood suddenly before him, saying,--

"You're Dick Dempsey, eh?"

"That's me," replied the timber-tower; "and who are you?"

"Joe Monfaron. I heard you wanted me,--here I am," was the Caesarean
response of the great captain of rafts.

"Ah! you're Joe Monfaron!" said the bully, a little staggered at the
sort of customer he saw before him. "I said I'd like to see you, for
sure; but how am I to know you're the right man?"

"Shake hands, first," replied Joe, "and then you'll find out, may be."

They shook hands,--rather warmly, perhaps, for the timber-tower, whose
features wore an uncertain expression during the operation, and who at
last broke out into a yell of pain, as Joe cast him off with a defiant
laugh. Nor did the bully wait for any further explanations; for, whether
the man who had just brought the blood spouting out at the tips of his
fingers was Joe Monfaron or not, he was clearly an ugly customer and had
better be left alone.

There are several roads from Quebec to Lorette, all of them good for
carriages except one, which, from its extreme destitution of every
condition essential to easy locomotion on wheels, is called, in the
expressive language of the French colonists, _La Misere_. And yet this
is the only road which, from touching various points of the River St.
Charles, affords the traveller compensating glimpses of the picturesque
windings of that stream. The pedestrian, however, is the only kind of
explorer who really sees a country and its people; and for him who is
not too proud to walk, _La Misere_ is not so hard to bear as its name
might imply.

If iron takes the romance out of things, in a general way, as I
mentioned at the beginning of this article my impression that it
rather does, I know not whether primitive Lorette has not become sadly
vulcanized into prosaic progress by the grand system of water-works
established there for the benefit of Quebec. Connected as it is, now,
with the latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not
undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its
greener days. Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might
yet have had a chance. To understand this, one should hear the
French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the
metal bridge. Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to
span the Montmorency River, just above the