On the northern shore of the "Lake of the Two Mountains," with Oka village nestling at the base, where an Indian colony live, are the two mountains from which the lake is named. One, surmounted by a cross, is Mount Calvary, having various religious shrines on its summit, and seven chapels on the road up, representing the seven stations of the cross. Here is also a monastery of the French "farmer Monks," the Trappists, who cultivate a large surface. They live a secluded life under ascetic rules, are not allowed to talk to each other, and only men enter the monastery, all women being stopped at the threshold. They rise at two o'clock in the morning, take breakfast soon afterwards in absolute silence, this being the only meal of the day, and retire to rest immediately after prayers at sunset. They devote twelve hours daily to devotions, and labor in the fields the remainder of the waking time. Their food is a scant allowance of water and vegetables. They sleep on a board with a straw pillow, and never undress, even in sickness. They are a branch of the Cistercians, and their abode overlooks the placid lake, with Montreal spreading beyond. But the city's finest suburban possession is its Mountain, the summit being a pleasant park, and the slopes covered with luxuriant foliage, which in the autumn becomes a blazing mass of resplendent beauty when the frosts turn the leaves. From the top the view is of unrivalled magnificence. THE GRAND RIVER. The Ottawa River is the most important tributary of the St. Lawrence, over seven hundred miles long, and draining a basin of one hundred thousand square miles, the most productive pine-timber region existing. It was the "Grand River" of the early French-Canadian voyageurs, and the name of Ottawa, changed considerably from the original form, comes from the Indian tribe and means "the traders." It has a circuitous course; rising in Western Quebec province, it flows northwest and then west for three hundred miles to Lake Temiscamingue, on the border of Ontario province; then it turns and flows back southeastward, making the boundary between the provinces for four hundred miles, until it falls into the St. Lawrence, the vast volume of its dark waters pressing the latter's blue current against the farther shore. It is a romantic river, filled with rapids and cascades, at times broadening into lakes, and again contracted into a torrent barely fifty yards wide, where the waters are precipitated over the rocks in wild splendor. For twenty-five miles above its mouth it broadens into the "Lake of the Two Mountains," from one to six miles wide. Above the city of Ottawa there are rapids terminating in the famous Chaudière Falls, where the waters plunge down forty feet, and part are said to disappear through an underground passage of unknown outlet. It has an enormous lumber trade, and by a canal system, avoiding the rapids, has been made navigable for two hundred and fifty miles.