Its last escapade is the great rapids above Montreal, down which the
steamer shoots with its breathless passengers, after which, inhaling
and exhaling its mighty tides, it flows calmly to the sea.

The St. Lawrence is the type of nearly all the Canadian rivers, which
are strung with lakes and rapids and cataracts, and are full of peril
and adventure.

Here we reach the oldest part of the continent, geologists tell us; and
here we encounter a fragment of the Old World civilization. Quebec
presents the anomaly of a mediæval European city in the midst of the
American landscape. This air, this sky, these clouds, these trees, the
look of these fields, are what we have always known; but the houses,
and streets, and vehicles, and language, and physiognomy are strange.
As I walked upon the grand terrace I saw the robin and kingbird and
song sparrow, and there in the tree, by the Wolfe Monument, our summer
warbler was at home. I presently saw, also, that our republican crow
was a British subject, and that he behaved here more like his European
brother than he does in the States, being less wild and suspicious. On
the Plains of Abraham excellent timothy grass was growing and cattle
were grazing. We found a path through the meadow, and, with the
exception of a very abundant weed with a blue flower, saw nothing new
or strange,--nothing but the steep tin roofs of the city and its
frowning wall and citadel. Sweeping around the far southern horizon, we
could catch glimpses of mountains that were evidently in Maine or New
Hampshire; while twelve or fifteen miles to the north the Laurentian
ranges, dark and formidable, arrested the eye. Quebec, or the walled
part of it, is situated on a point of land shaped not unlike the human
foot, looking northeast, the higher and bolder side being next the
river, with the main part of the town on the northern slope toward the