er waters of this same Ottawa, or on the
borders of some lonely river of New Brunswick or of Maine.

Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced with eyes
of flame the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against
the burning heaven. Beneath, the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread
far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling
in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky. Now a
fervid light touched the dead top of the hemlock, and creeping downward
bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the
breathless air; now a fiercer spark beamed from the east; and now, half
risen on the sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods
of radiance across the awakened wilderness.

The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course.
Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam; islets of froth
floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on their left, the
falling curtain of the Rideau shone like silver betwixt its bordering
woods, and in front, white as a snowdrift, the cataracts of the
Chaudiere barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down
its sheeted rocks, foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude
with the hoarse outcry of its agony and rage.

On the brink of the rocky basin where the plunging torrent boiled like
a caldron, and puffs of spray sprang out from its concussion like smoke
from the throat of a cannon, Champlain's two Indians took their stand,
and, with a loud invocation, threw tobacco into the foam,--an offering
to the local spirit, the Manitou of the cataract.

They shouldered their canoes over the rocks, and through the woods; then
launched them again, and, with toil and struggle, made their amphibious
way, pushing dragging, lifting, paddling, shoving with poles; till,
when the evening sun poured its level rays across the quiet Lake of
the Chaudiere, they landed, and made their camp on the verge of a woody
island.

Day by day brought a renewal of their toils. Hour by hour, they moved
prosperously up the long windings of the solitary stream; then, in quick
succession, rapid followed rapid, till the bed of the Ottawa seemed a
slope of foam. Now, like a wall bristling at the top with woody islets,
the Falls of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge of their sixteen
cataracts; now they glided beneath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but
unseen, the