"Fair St. Lawrence! What poet has sung of its grace As it sleeps in the sun, with its smile-dimpled face Beaming up to the sky that it mirrors! What brush Has e'er pictured the charm of the marvellous hush Of its silence; or caught the warm glow of its tints As the afternoon wanes, and the even-star glints In its beautiful depths? And what pen shall betray The sweet secrets that hide from men's vision away In its solitude wild? 'Tis the river of dreams; You may float in your boat on the bloom-bordered streams, Where its islands like emeralds matchless are set, And forget that you live; and as quickly forget That they die in the world you have left; for the calm Of content is within you, the blessing of balm Is upon you forever." SHOOTING THE RAPIDS. Ogdensburg is an active port on the St. Lawrence about twenty miles below Brockville, having a railroad through the Adirondacks over to Rouse's Point on Lake Champlain. Here flow in the dark-brown waters of the Oswegatchie, the Indian "Black River," coming out of those forests, which commingle in sharp contrast with the clear green current of the greater river. Prescott, antiquated and time-worn, is on the Canadian bank. The shores are generally low, with patches of woodland and farms, and the St. Lawrence below Ogdensburg begins to go down the rapids, having tranquil lakes and long wide stretches of placid waters intervening. The first rapid is the "Galop," flowing among flat grass-covered islands, with swift moving waters, but a small affair, scarcely discernible as the steamboat goes through it. The next one, the "Plat," is also passed without much trouble, and then a line of whitecaps ahead indicates the beginning of the "Long Sault," the most extensive rapid on the river. This is the "Long Leap," a rapid running for nine miles, its waters rushing down the rocky ledges at a speed of twenty miles an hour. All steam is shut off, and the river steamer is carried along by the movement of the seething, roaring current, the surface appearing much like the ocean in a storm. The rocking, sinking deck beneath one's feet gives a strange and startling sensation, and looking back at the incline down which the boat is sliding, it seems like a great angry wall of water chasing along from behind. An elongated island divides the channel through the "Long Sault," and there are other low islands adjacent; the boat, swaying among the rocks over which the waves leap in fury, being now lifted on their crests, and then dropped between them, but all the while gliding down hill, until still water and safety are reached at Cornwall. Here begins the northern boundary of New York, which goes due east through the Chateaugay forests across the land to Lake Champlain, and large factories front the river, getting their power from the waters above the rapid.