A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
When I asked the man to whom I have referred, if there were any falls on
the Rivière au Chien,—for I saw that it came over the same high bank
with the Montmorenci and St. Anne,—he answered that there were. How far?
I inquired. _Trois quatres lieue._ How high? _Je pense, quatre-vingt-dix
pieds_; that is, ninety feet. We turned aside to look at the falls of
the _Rivière du Sault à la Puce_, half a mile from the road, which
before we had passed in our haste and ignorance, and we pronounced them
as beautiful as any that we saw; yet they seemed to make no account of
them there, and, when first we inquired the way to the Falls, directed
us to Montmorenci, seven miles distant. It was evident that this was the
country for waterfalls; that every stream that empties into the St.
Lawrence, for some hundreds of miles, must have a great fall or cascade
on it, and in its passage through the mountains was, for a short
distance, a small Saguenay, with its upright walls. This fall of La
Puce, the least remarkable of the four which we visited in this
vicinity, we had never heard of till we came to Canada, and yet, so far
as I know, there is nothing of the kind in New England to be compared
with it. Most travellers in Canada would not hear of it, though they
might go so near as to hear it. Since my return I find that in the
topographical description of the country mention is made of “two or
three romantic falls” on this stream, though we saw and heard of but
this one. Ask the inhabitants respecting any stream, if there is a fall
on it, and they will perchance tell you of something as interesting as
Bashpish or the Catskill, which no traveller has ever seen, or if they
have not found it, you may possibly trace up the stream and discover it
yourself. Falls there are a drug; and we became quite dissipated in
respect to them. We had drank too much of them. Beside these which I
have referred to, there are a thousand other falls on the St. Lawrence
and its tributaries which I have not seen nor heard of; and above all
there is one which I have heard of, called Niagara, so that I think that
this river must be the most remarkable for its falls of any in the
world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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