No More Learning

After breakfast we proceeded to the fall, which was within half a
mile, and at this distance its rustling sound, like the wind among the
leaves, filled all the air. We were disappointed to find that we were
in some measure shut out from the west side of the fall by the private
grounds and fences of Patterson, who appropriates not only a part of
the water for his mill, but a still larger part of the prospect, so
that we were obliged to trespass. This gentleman's mansion-house and
grounds were formerly occupied by the Duke of Kent, father to Queen
Victoria. It appeared to me in bad taste for an individual, though he
were the father of Queen Victoria, to obtrude himself with his land
titles, or at least his fences, on so remarkable a natural phenomenon,
which should, in every sense, belong to mankind. Some falls should
even be kept sacred from the intrusion of mills and factories, as
water privileges in another than the millwright's sense. This small
river falls perpendicularly nearly two hundred and fifty feet at one
pitch. The St. Lawrence falls only one hundred and sixty-four feet at
Niagara. It is a very simple and noble fall, and leaves nothing to be
desired; but the most that I could say of it would only have the force
of one other testimony to assure the reader that it is there. We
looked directly down on it from the point of a projecting rock, and
saw far below us, on a low promontory, the grass kept fresh and green
by the perpetual drizzle, looking like moss. The rock is a kind of
slate, in the crevices of which grew ferns and goldenrods. The
prevailing trees on the shores were spruce and arbor-vitae,--the latter
very large and now full of fruit,--also aspens, alders, and the
mountain-ash with its berries. Every emigrant who arrives in this
country by way of the St. Lawrence, as he opens a point of the Isle of
Orleans, sees the Montmorenci tumbling into the Great River thus
magnificently in a vast white sheet, making its contribution with
emphasis. Roberval's pilot, Jean Alphonse, saw this fall thus, and
described it, in 1542.
It is a splendid introduction to the scenery of
Quebec. Instead of an artificial fountain in its square, Quebec has
this magnificent natural waterfall, to adorn one side of its harbor.
Within the mouth of the chasm below, which can be entered only at
ebb-tide, we had a grand view at once of Quebec and of the fall. Kalm
says that the noise of the fall is sometimes heard at Quebec, about
eight miles distant, and is a sign of a northeast wind. The side of
this chasm, of soft and crumbling slate too steep to climb, was among
the memorable features of the scene. In the winter of 1829 the frozen
spray of the fall, descending on the ice of the St. Lawrence, made a
hill one hundred and twenty-six feet high. It is an annual phenomenon
which some think may help explain the formation of glaciers.

In the vicinity of the fall we began to notice what looked like our
red-fruited thorn bushes, grown to the size of ordinary apple trees,
very common, and full of large red or yellow fruit, which the
inhabitants called _pommettes_, but I did not learn that they were put
to any use.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Hierosme Lalemant says in 1648, in his Relation, he being
Superior: "All those who come to New France know well enough the
mountain of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived
at that part of the Great River which is opposite to those high
mountains, baptize ordinarily for sport the new passengers, if they do
not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism which
one makes flow plentifully on their heads. "




CHAPTER III

ST. ANNE


By the middle of the forenoon, though it was a rainy day, we were once
more on our way down the north bank of the St. Lawrence, in a
northeasterly direction, toward the Falls of St. Anne, which are about
thirty miles from Quebec. The settled, more level, and fertile portion
of Canada East may be described rudely as a triangle, with its apex
slanting toward the northeast, about one hundred miles wide at its
base, and from two to three or even four hundred miles long, if you
reckon its narrow northeastern extremity; it being the immediate
valley of the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, rising by a single or
by successive terraces toward the mountains on either hand.