r all, for before we are a league from Quebec
they come into view on the left. A dark glen or chasm there at the end
of the Beauport Slopes seems suddenly to have put on a long white
apron. By intently gazing, one can see the motion and falling of the
water, though it is six or seven miles away. There is no sign of the
river above or below but this trembling white curtain of foam and
spray.

It was very sultry when we left Quebec, but about noon we struck much
clearer and cooler air, and soon after ran into an immense wave or puff
of fog that came drifting up the river and set all the fog-guns booming
along shore. We were soon through it into clear, crisp space, with room
enough for any eye to range in. On the south the shores of the great
river appear low and uninteresting, but on the north they are bold and
striking enough to make it up,--high, scarred, unpeopled mountain
ranges the whole way. The points of interest to the eye in the broad
expanse of water were the white porpoises that kept rolling, rolling in
the distance, all day. They came up like the perimeter of a great wheel
that turns slowly and then disappears. From mid-forenoon we could see
far ahead an immense column of yellow smoke rising up and flattening
out upon the sky and stretching away beyond the horizon. Its form was
that of some aquatic plant that shoots a stem up through the water, and
spreads its broad leaf upon the surface. This smoky lily-pad must have
reached nearly to Maine. It proved to be in the Indian country in the
mountains beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, and must have represented
an immense destruction of forest timber.

The steamer is two hours crossing the St. Lawrence from Riviere du Loup
to Tadousac. The Saguenay pushes a broad sweep of dark blue water down
into its mightier brother that is sharply defined from the deck of the
steamer. The two rivers seem to touch, but not to blend, so proud and
haughty is this chieftain from the north. On the mountains above
Tadousac one could see banks of sand left by the ancient seas. Naked
rock and sterile sand are all the Tadousacker has to make his garden
of, so far as I observed. Indeed, there is no soil along the Saguenay
until you get to Ha-ha Bay, and then there is not much, and poor
quality at that.

What the ancient fires did not burn the ancient seas have washed away.
I overheard an English resident say to a Yankee tourist, "You will
think you are approaching the end of the world u