The next morning we set out by steamer for the Saguenay, and entered upon the second phase of our travels, but with less relish than we could have wished. Scenery hunting is the least satisfying pursuit I have ever engaged in. What one sees in his necessary travels, or doing his work, or going a-fishing, seems worth while, but the famous view you go out in cold blood to admire is quite apt to elude you. Nature loves to enter a door another hand has opened; a mountain view, or a waterfall, I have noticed, never looks better than when one has just been warmed up by the capture of a big trout. If we had been bound for some salmon stream up the Saguenay, we should perhaps have possessed that generous and receptive frame of mind-that open house of the heart—which makes one “eligible to any good fortune,” and the grand scenery would have come in as fit sauce to the salmon. An adventure, a bit of experience of some kind, is what one wants when he goes forth to admire woods and waters,—something to create a draught and make the embers of thought and feeling brighten. Nature, like certain wary game, is best taken by seeming to pass by her intent on other matters. But without any such errand, or occupation, or indirection, we managed to extract considerable satisfaction from the view of the lower St. Lawrence and the Saguenay. We had not paid the customary visit to the falls of the Montmorenci, but we shall see them after all, for before we are a league from Quebec they come into view on the left. A dark glen or chasm there at the end of the Beauport Slopes seems suddenly to have put on a long white apron. By intently gazing, one can see the motion and falling of the water, though it is six or seven miles away. There is no sign of the river above or below but this trembling white curtain of foam and spray.