the climate also, the outward curve of the roof shooting the sliding
snow farther away from the dwelling. It affords a wide projection, in
many cases covering a veranda, and in all cases protecting the doors
and windows without interfering with the light. In the better class of
clapboarded houses the finish beneath the projecting eaves is also a
sweeping curve, opposing and bracing that of the roof. A two-story
country house, or a Mansard roof, I do not remember to have seen in
Canada; but in places they have become so enamored of the white of the
snow that they even whitewash the roofs of their buildings, giving a
cluster of them the impression, at a distance, of an encampment of
great tents.

As we neared Point Levi, opposite Quebec, we got our first view of the
St. Lawrence. "Iliad of rivers!" exclaimed my friend. "Yet unsung!" The
Hudson must take a back seat now, and a good way back. One of the two
or three great watercourses of the globe is before you. No other river,
I imagine, carries such a volume of pure cold water to the sea. Nearly
all its feeders are trout and salmon streams, and what an airing and
what a bleaching it gets on its course! Its history, its antecedents,
are unparalleled. The great lakes are its camping-grounds; here its
hosts repose under the sun and stars in areas like that of states and
kingdoms, and it is its waters that shake the earth at Niagara. Where
it receives the Saguenay it is twenty miles wide, and when it debouches
into the Gulf it is a hundred. Indeed, it is a chain of Homeric
sublimities from beginning to end. The great cataract is a fit sequel
to the great lakes; the spirit that is born in vast and tempestuous
Superior takes its full glut of power in that fearful chasm. If
paradise is hinted in the Thousand Islands, hell is unveiled in that
pit of terrors.