Our Titan steamer groaned, and heaved, and strained, as though but sulkily submitting to this added charge, and doing the master's work, in the spirit of Caliban, under the spell of a higher intelligence. _Tuesday, 9th._--Find that during the night our progress continued painfully slow; indeed, only that the wind lulled, we could not have stemmed the rapids; but when above the Richelieu we made better way, arriving at Trois Rivieres about noon, with a fine fair breeze blowing up the stream. The brigs were here cast loose to make the best of their way whilst we took in a supply of wood. Meantime, Captain W----s and I took a stroll about the town, which in itself is pretty, and agreeably situated. All this day the breeze continued favourable, and consequently our pace was tolerable. How long we should have been with a head-wind, it is impossible to say. _Wednesday, 10th._--I was this morning on deck by four A.M. and was well repaid for my early rising. We were some thirty miles distant from Montreal, as our pilot informed me: the land on either side was low, but soft, verdant, and well wooded, with the prettiest-looking villages dotted along from point to point. At times, three or four of these, with their triple-spired churches, were at once visible as we slowly steered through groups of islets of every form and size, but all of a colour of unequalled purity. I cannot wonder at the rapturous language used in the description of these places by the sea-wearied discoverers who viewed them for the first time in the summer season; for even I, with no such spur to imagination, find it difficult to stick to sober prose when recalling the luxuriant growth of these isles of the far North. It would appear as though Nature, aware that the possession of beauty is with them extremely limited, had resolved, by way of compensation, to render their short-lived loveliness surpassing. At last was seen, high towering over all, the rounded top of the fairest of the hundred isles of the St. Lawrence, St. Helen's; and, shortly after, the glittering domes of the city of Montreal gave warning that our up-voyage was drawing to a happy conclusion. _Thursday, 11th._--This morning took a farewell stroll over St. Helen's, which, on a surface of a mile in length by half a mile in breadth, has all the attractions Nature could devise scattered with a most liberal hand. It is shadowed and scented by a hundred sorts of odorous shrubs and flowers. The groves are filled with birds of beautiful plumage; the graceful blue bird, the enamelled hummer, and the cardinal, with his hood of the brightest scarlet, are for ever on the wing in pursuit of the shad-fly. The pert woodpecker climbs the trees, and along the shores sits the contemplative heron, watching the rapids flowing by, which are, during certain seasons, absolutely alive with fish.