lake (which Champlain discovered and named after himself) with the
St. Lawrence River at a point one hundred and forty miles above Quebec,
and forty miles below Montreal. The waters of lakes George and Champlain
flow northward, through the Richelieu River into the St. Lawrence. The
former stream flows through a cultivated country, and upon its banks,
after leaving Sorel, are situate the little towns of St. Ours, St.
Rock, St. Denis, St. Antoine, St. Marks, Beloeil, Chambly, and St.
Johns. Small steamers, tug-boats, and rafts pass from the St. Lawrence
to Lake Champlain (which lies almost wholly within the United States),
following the Richelieu to Chambly, where it is necessary, to avoid
rapids and shoals, to take the canal that follows the river's bank
twelve miles to St. Johns, where the Canadian custom-house is located.
Sorel is called William Henry by the Anglo-Saxon Canadians. The paper
published in this town of seven thousand inhabitants is _La Gazette de
Sorel_. The river which flows past the town is called, without
authority, by some geographers, Sorel River, and by others St. Johns,
because the town nearest its source is St. Johns, and another town at
its mouth is Sorel. There are about one hundred English-speaking
families in Sorel. The American Waterhouse Machinery supplies the town
with water pumped from the river at a cost of one ton of coal per day.
At ten o'clock on Monday morning we resumed our journey up the
Richelieu, the current of which was nothing compared with that of the
great river we had left. The average width of the stream was about a
quarter of a mile, and the grassy shores were made picturesque by
groves of trees and quaintly constructed farm-houses.

It was a rich, pastoral land, abounding in fine herds of cattle. The
country reminded me of the Acadian region of Grand Pre, which I had
visited during the earlier part of the season. Here, as there, were
delightful pastoral scenes and rich verdure; but here we still had the
Acadian peasants, while in the land of beautiful Evangeline no longer
were they to be found. The New Englander now holds the titles to those
deserted old farms of the scattered colonists. Our rowing was frequently
interrupted by heavy showers, which drove us under our hatch-cloth for
protection. The same large, two-steepled stone churches, with their
unpainted tin roofs glistening like silver in the sunlight, marked
out here, as on the high banks of the St. Lawrence River, t