Still ascending the same river, they traversed the mountains, and by other streams were borne down the western slope to the shores of the remote Pacific. The world offers no parallel to this extraordinary water-road from the Atlantic to the Pacific; nor is the tale all told. From that great central reservoir, that master-key to the whole system of water communications, the traveller might turn his canoe in any direction, and traverse the length and breadth of the continent to its most remote boundaries: east to the Atlantic, west to the Pacific, north to the Arctic or to Hudson Bay, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The story of Canadian rivers would fill several volumes if one attempted to do justice to such a broad and varied theme. One may only hope, in the few pages that follow, to give glimpses of the story; to suggest, however inadequately, the dramatic and romantic possibilities of the subject; to recall a few of the memories that cling to the rivers of Canada. CONTENTS I. The Great River of Canada II. The Mystic Saguenay III. The River of Acadia IV. The War Path of the Iroquois V. The River of the Cataract VI. The Highway of the Fur Trade VII. The Red River of the North VIII. The Mighty Mackenzie By Canadian Streams I THE GREAT RIVER OF CANADA He told them of the river whose mighty current gave Its freshness for a hundred leagues to ocean’s briny wave; He told them of the glorious scene presented to his sight, What time he reared the cross and crown on Hochelaga’s height, And of the fortress cliff that keeps of Canada the key, And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from his perils over sea. McGEE. If we abandon ourselves to pure conjecture, we may carry the history of the St. Lawrence back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, when daring Portuguese navigators sailed into these northern latitudes; or to the latter half of the fifteenth century, when the Basque fishermen are said to have brought their adventurous little craft into the Gulf of St. Lawrence; or, if you please, we may push the curtain back to the tenth century and add another variant to the many theories as to the course of the Northmen from Labrador to Nova Scotia. But while this would make a romantic story, it is not history. The Vikings of Northern Europe, and the Portuguese and Basques of Southern Europe, _may_ have sailed the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and _may_ even have entered the estuary of the great river, but there is no evidence that they did, and we must surrender these picturesque myths if we are to build our story upon a tangible foundation.