face, and twisted her blue drapery tight about her comely shape. When
they got out of breath they sat down beside a large American lady, with
a great deal of gold filling in her front teeth, and presently rose
again and ran races to and from the bow. Mr. Arbuton turned away in
displeasure. At the stern he found a much larger company, most of whom
had furnished themselves with novels and magazines from the stock on
board and were drowsing over them. One gentleman was reading aloud to
three ladies the newspaper account of a dreadful shipwreck; other ladies
and gentlemen were coming and going forever from their state-rooms, as
the wont of some is; others yet sat with closed eyes, as if having come
to see the Saguenay they were resolved to see nothing of the St.
Lawrence on the way thither, but would keep their vision sacred to the
wonders of the former river.

Yet the St. Lawrence was worthy to be seen, as even Mr. Arbuton owned,
whose way was to slight American scenery, in distinction from his
countrymen who boast it the finest in the world. As you leave Quebec,
with its mural-crowned and castled rock, and drop down the stately
river, presently the snowy fall of Montmorenci, far back in its purple
hollow, leaps perpetual avalanche into the abyss, and then you are
abreast of the beautiful Isle of Orleans, whose low shores, with their
expanses of farmland, and their groves of pine and oak, are still as
lovely as when the wild grape festooned the primitive forests and won
from the easy rapture of old Cartier the name of Isle of Bacchus. For
two hours farther down the river either shore is bright and populous
with the continuous villages of the _habitans_, each clustering about
its slim-spired church, in its shallow vale by the water's edge, or
lifted in more eminent picturesqueness upon some gentle height. The
banks, nowhere lofty or abrupt, are such as in a southern land some
majestic river might flow between, wide, slumbrous, open to all the