But without any such errand, or occupation, or indirection, we managed
to extract considerable satisfaction from the view of the lower St.
Lawrence and the Saguenay.

We had not paid the customary visit to the falls of the Montmorenci,
but we shall see them after all, for before we are a league from Quebec
they come into view on the left. A dark glen or chasm there at the end
of the Beauport Slopes seems suddenly to have put on a long white
apron. By intently gazing, one can see the motion and falling of the
water, though it is six or seven miles away. There is no sign of the
river above or below but this trembling white curtain of foam and
spray.

It was very sultry when we left Quebec, but about noon we struck much
clearer and cooler air, and soon after ran into an immense wave or puff
of fog that came drifting up the river and set all the fog-guns booming
along shore. We were soon through it into clear, crisp space, with room
enough for any eye to range in. On the south the shores of the great
river appear low and uninteresting, but on the north they are bold and
striking enough to make it up,--high, scarred, unpeopled mountain
ranges the whole way. The points of interest to the eye in the broad
expanse of water were the white porpoises that kept rolling, rolling in
the distance, all day. They came up like the perimeter of a great wheel
that turns slowly and then disappears. From mid-forenoon we could see
far ahead an immense column of yellow smoke rising up and flattening
out upon the sky and stretching away beyond the horizon. Its form was
that of some aquatic plant that shoots a stem up through the water, and
spreads its broad leaf upon the surface. This smoky lily-pad must have
reached nearly to Maine. It proved to be in the Indian country in the