At the Point there were a few houses, some vessels imbedded in the snow, and piles of sawn timber and deal planks, and a great concourse of sleighs; and beyond it, looking up to the left, at the distance of some half-mile, we saw a glistening sugarloaf of snow, on the summit of which the creaming, yellow-tinged mass of the Falls apparently precipitated itself from the high precipice which bars the course of the stream. On the snow between us and the sugarloaf, and up the white sides of the latter, little black objects were toiling with small progress, but at intervals one of them, gliding from the top of the cone like a falling star in the Inferno, rushed prone to the base, and thence carried by the impetus of the descent skimmed over the ice towards us for hundreds of yards, like a round shot till its force was spent. Of the crowd gathered at the Point nearly every one had the small hand-sleigh, something like a tiny truck with iron runners, under the arm, known in the vernacular as a “tarboggin,” of the derivation of which it is better to confess ignorance. A few were provided with sleighs of ampler proportions, and all the visitors were bent on tarboggining it, either from a shoulder of the Cone or from the summit of the mass itself. As we approached over the snow the natives, men and women, flew past us on their way after a rush down the Cone, shouting to the bystanders to take care. Sometimes two were together, the lady seated on the front part of the machine, the man behind lying on his face with his feet stretched out so as to guide the sleigh by the smallest touch against the ice. At a distance the pleasure-seekers looked like some hideous insects impelled towards us with incredible velocity. As they came near and flew past, the expression of their countenances by no means indicated serene enjoyment. Near the Cone itself a crowd of “tarboggin” hirers and guides beset us and guaranteed a safe descent, but it seemed a doubtful pleasure at best, and there was some chance of breaking limb, as we were told happened frequently during the season. We ascended to the lower shoulder of the Cone by steps in the snow and gazed on the scene with some curiosity. Not only were the people launching themselves from the Cone, but more adventurous still there were who, climbing up the steep side of the precipice, tarboggin under arm, at last reached some vantage snow, by the side of the Fall, where they threw themselves flat on the sleigh, and then came rushing down with a force which carried them clear up the side of the lower ledge of the Cone and over it, so that they were once more plunged downwards and were borne off towards the St. Lawrence.