without great regret of the said people, for as far as they could
follow us down the said river they would follow us, and we accomplished
so much that we arrived at our said pinnace Monday, the fourth day of
October."
The reader must have been struck with the pride of the Hochelagans in
conducting their visitors to the mountain as well as at the accurate
and picturesque description given by Cartier of the scene that met
his delighted gaze. Today the same beautiful sight may be seen by
the visitor who makes his way to the "lookout" or the observatory.
The landscape at his feet has been covered with a busy city and its
suburbs, its manufactories, its public buildings and its homes and
villas, but still it appears as if all these were peeping out of a
garden. All around the green fields and pleasant meadows are there as
of yore. From this height the disfigurements of the lower city are not
visible. Montreal has been described as a beautiful lady handsomely
gowned, but whose skirt fringes are sadly mud and dust stained.
The river has been spanned by gigantic bridges but the main grand
lines of the landscape are those that Cartier gazed upon. There at the
south is the great St. Lawrence with its islands on its bosom, now
studded with ocean going steamers; beyond there is the great sweep
of the St. Lawrence Valley, broken abruptly by the solitary mountain
ridges of Montarville, St. Bruno, Beloeil, Rougemont, Yamaska, and
Mount Johnson--a volcanic sisterhood of which Mount Royal is itself a
member--and hemmed in on the horizon by the cloudlike ridges of the
Green and Adirondack mountains. Looking to the west are the Lachine
Rapids and beyond the Lake St. Louis, and to the north the Rivière des
Prairies or the Back River is seen, at the head of which lies the
bright surface of the Lake of the Two Mountains. Far away hemming in
the horizon on that side runs the hoary Laurentian Range, the oldest
hills known to geology. All this apart from the works of civilization
Cartier saw from the mountain which has only of late years been planned
to intensify its beauty and usefulness. We are now looking forward to
the day when that same city around the mountain will also bear the mark
of an intelligible plan to intensify the beauty of the city and make
it by art, as it is by nature, one of the finest cities in the world,
worthy of the jewel standing out--the pride of its city--Mount Royal.
Cartier saw the island from the point of view of Greater Mount Royal.
In this he resembles those who today see a Greater Montreal. Modern
Hochelagans are as proud of their mountain as those of old. D'Arcy
McGee imagines Jacques Cartier telling of it on his return to St. Malo:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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