The writer from whom the foregoing account of Niagara is quoted, went out with his father and a few labourers to settle in Canada. His voyage up the St. Lawrence is very descriptive of the scenery and adventures which fell to the lot of all travellers on the same errand at that time, and may be useful as well as interesting here. He says:—“I embarked at La Chine with my father and his settlers, twenty days after our arrival in Quebec. On account of the shallows immediately below this village, goods and passengers intended for a higher destination up the river are conveyed by land from Montreal. Previous to our leaving La Chine, thirty-one of the settlers, dreading, the expense of transporting their families to the Upper Province, separated from us and accepted of a settlement at or near Perth, about 140 miles north-west of Montreal. Owing to the rapidity of the St. Lawrence immediately above Montreal, ship navigation terminates at that city. Such is the vehemence of the current in various places, that it is totally impossible to ascend the river in vessels of ordinary construction. Batteaux, or flat-bottomed boats, narrow at bow and stern, and made of pine boards, have been found much better adapted to the river than any others. These boats are about forty feet long, and six across the centre, and are navigated by four men and a pilot. Each boat carries about five tons, and is provided with a small mast and sails, six setting poles about nine feet long, shod at their lower extremities with iron, which terminates in a sharp point, and the necessary cooking apparatus. In these boats, all the merchandise destined for Upper Canada is conveyed; and, fitted out in this style, they depart from La Chine, four or five of them generally forming one party. They quickly arrive in Lake St. Louis, which is formed by the junction of the Ottawa, or Grand River, with the St Lawrence. If the wind happen to blow favourably when they are passing through this lake, they haul up their sails until they arrive at the Cascades, which are about thirty miles from Montreal.
[Illustration: _Working a Canoe up a Rapid._]
At the Cascades a short canal has been cut, and locks formed by the government, through which the vessels pass, till they attain the head of these rapids, after which they proceed without departing from the river till they arrive at the Cedars, where, by other locks, they ascend the most difficult part of the rapids. The current between the Cascades and the Cedars is so very impetuous, that the boatmen are obliged to have recourse to their setting-poles, which they fix in the bed of the river, and thus propel their boats with considerable celerity. These exertions, though fatiguing in the extreme, they are often obliged to continue for several hours without intermission, and not unfrequently even their best endeavours in this may prove abortive. When this is the case, they make a rope fast to the bow of the boat; and leaving only the helmsman on board, they plunge into the water and tow her by main strength up the rapids. This is the manner in which they perform the arduous passage, which, though only 120 miles, they seldom accomplish in less than ten days. How the men who are employed in this difficult navigation exist without ruining their constitutions is a mystery which I am utterly unable to explain. They are compelled, almost every hour, when actually melting with heat and fainting with fatigue, to jump into the water, frequently up to their arm-pits, and to remain in it towing their boats until they are completely chilled. They then have recourse to the aid of ardent spirits, of which on all occasions they freely partake, and, in a few minutes, are once more bathed in perspiration. The principal rapids between Montreal and Prescott are the _Cedars_ and the _Cascades_ already mentioned, the _Coteau du Lac_ and the _Long Sault_, the latter of which are about nine miles in length; and though they are seldom ascended in less than a day, boats have been known to descend through their whole length in fifteen minutes.