soil is warm and fertile, and there is a thrifty growing settlement
here with valuable agricultural produce, but no market nearer than
Quebec, two hundred and fifty miles distant by water, with a hard,
tedious land journey besides. In winter the settlement can have little
or no communication with the outside world.

To relieve this isolated colony and encourage further development of
the St. John region, the Canadian government is building [footnote:
Written in 1877] a wagon-road through the wilderness from Quebec
directly to the lake, thus economizing half the distance, as the road
when completed will form with the old route, the Saguenay and St.
Lawrence, one side of an equilateral triangle. A railroad was projected
a few years ago over nearly the same ground, and the contract to build
it given to an enterprising Yankee, who pocketed a part of the money
and has never been heard of since. The road runs for one hundred miles
through an unbroken wilderness, and opens up scores of streams and
lakes abounding with trout, into which, until the road-makers fished
them, no white man had ever cast a hook.

It was a good prospect, and we resolved to commit ourselves to the St.
John road. The services of a young fellow whom, by reason of his
impracticable French name, we called Joe, were secured, and after a
delay of twenty-four hours we were packed upon a Canadian buckboard
with hard-tack in one bag and oats in another, and the journey began.
It was Sunday, and we held up our heads more confidently when we got
beyond the throng of well-dressed church-goers. For ten miles we had a
good stone road and rattled along it at a lively pace. In about half
that distance we came to a large brick church, where we began to see
the rural population or _habitans._ They came mostly in two-wheeled
vehicles, some of the carts quite fancy, in which the young fellows