This sombre river, whose bed is much lower than that of the St. Lawrence, is frozen for almost its whole course during half the year, and snow lies on its bordering mountains until June. It makes a saddening impression upon most visitors. Bayard Taylor compared the Saguenay chasm to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley, describing everything as "hard, naked, stern, silent; dark gray cliffs of granitic gneiss rise from the pitch-black water; firs of gloomy green are rooted in their crevices and fringe their summits; loftier ranges of a dull indigo hue show themselves in the background, and over all bends a pale, cold, northern sky." Another traveller calls it "a cold, savage, inhuman river, fit to take rank with Styx and Acheron;" and "Nature's sarcophagus," compared to which, "the Dead Sea is blooming;" and so solitary, dreary and monotonous that it "seems to want painting, blowing up or draining--anything, in short, to alter its morose, quiet, eternal awe." EXPLORING THE SAGUENAY CHASM. Ha Ha Bay, where the exploring Frenchmen found such relief for their oppressed feelings, is a long strait thrust through the mountains southwest from the Saguenay for several miles, broadening at the head into an oval bay, practically a basin among the crags, with two or three French villages around it, named after various saints. The modest one-story huts of the _habitans_ fringe the lower slopes near the water's edge along the valleys of several small streams, each cluster having its church with the tall spire. The basin is two or three miles across, enclosed by bold cliffs and rounded hills, the wide beaches of sand and pebble showing the great rise and fall of the tide. There is a sawmill or two, and lumber and huckleberries are the products of the district. Chicoutimi village is above the chasm, at a point where the intervale broadens, the savage mountains retiring, leaving a space for gentle tree-clad slopes and cultivated fields. Standing high on the western bank are the magnificent Cathedral, the Seminary, a Sailors' Hospital, and the Convent of the Good Shepherd, and not far away a tributary stream pours fifty feet down the Chicoutimi Falls in a rushing cascade of foam. There are extensive sawmills, and timber ships come in the summer for cargoes for Europe, and the place has railway connections with Lake St. John and thence southward to Quebec. There is a population of about three thousand. The universal little one-story, peak-roofed, whitewashed French cottages abound, some having a casing of squared pieces of birch-bark to protect them from the weather, making them look much like stone houses, and peeping inside it is found that the inhabitants usually utilize their old newspapers for wall-paper.