Splendid as our forests are at midsummer when the delighted eye roams unweariedly over their billowy expanses of sumptuous verdure, it is in the autumn time that they reach their rarest beauty. Then for a brief space before they strip themselves of their foliage to stand bare and shivering through the long, cold winter, they change their garb of green into a myriad of hues of gold and flame. A keen frosty night following upon the decline of summer heat, and lo, as though some mighty magician had been at work, a marvellous transformation awaits our admiration! Where yesterday a single colour in various tints prevailed, to-day we behold every possible shade of brilliant scarlet, tender violet, sombre brown, vivid crimson, and glittering yellow. The beech, the birch, the oak, and above all, the maple, have burst forth into one harmonious and entrancing chorus of colour—the swan song of the dying foliage—the stern, straight fir alone maintaining its eternal green, as if it said: "Behold in me the symbol of steadfastness." Verily, the wide world round, a more splendid and enchanting silvan panorama cannot be found. *WRECKS AND WRECKERS OF ANTICOSTI.* Right in the mouth of the great St. Lawrence, which without exaggeration has been called "the noblest, the purest, the most enchanting river on all God’s beautiful earth," lies a long, narrow island that might with equal propriety be called the dreariest, most inhospitable, and most destructive island on the earth; for it is doubtful if any other spot of corresponding size has caused so many shipwrecks and so much human suffering. In ten years, according to official records, there have been as many as one hundred and six wrecks, including seven steamships and sixty-seven sailing-ships or barques, having on board no less than three thousand precious souls, and cargoes worth millions of pounds. Years ago, before the Canadian Government erected lighthouses and established relief stations, the wrecks were more numerous still, and were rarely unattended with loss of life. But times are better now, and when a wreck occurs, unless it be in one of those terrible winter storms that seem to make this ill-omened isle their centre, the crew generally manage to make the land in safety, where they are well cared for by the government officials. Far different was it in 1737, when the French sloop-of-war _La Renommée_ stranded upon a cruel ledge of rocks, hardly a mile off shore, about eight leagues from the southern point of Anticosti. It was in the month of November, just as winter, which could nowhere have been more dreadful than on that bleak, barren, shelterless island, was fast closing in. In their mad haste to reach the land—for the waves were breaking high over the vessel—the crew took little food with them, although gallant Captain de Freneuse did not forget to take the ship’s colours.