At the height of the forwarding business on the Ottawa, Macpherson & Crane owned a fleet of thirteen steamers and a large number of bateaux and barges, which were towed up the Ottawa and through the Rideau Canal to Kingston, the entire distance being 245 miles. The flotilla would make the round trip, returning _via_ the St. Lawrence, in twelve or fourteen days. The steamers engaged in this service were mostly small, high-pressure boats—commonly called “puffers.” At the first the noise which they made, especially the unearthly shriek of their steam-whistles, scared the natives as well as the cattle along the banks of the river. The passengers were usually accommodated in the barges in tow of the steamers, but as time went on a few of the “puffers” attained the dignity of passenger boats, and, when unencumbered with tows, made the round trip in a week. The writer well remembers making the trip in the early forties on the _Charlotte_, Captain Marshall, and a very pleasant trip it was, the chief attractions being the long chain of locks at the small village of Bytown—soon to become the beautiful capital of the Dominion; the big dam at Jones’ Falls, with its retaining wall three hundred feet in thickness at the base and ninety feet high; the marvellous scenery of the Lake of the Thousand Islands, and, as the climax, what was then the novelty of shooting the rapids on a steamboat. Captain Howard informed me that the first steamer to shoot the “lost channel” of the Long Sault rapids was the old _Gildersleeve_ of Mr. Hamilton’s line, in command of Captain Maxwell and piloted by one Rankin. That was in 1847, and was considered a daring feat at the time, but it established the safety of the new channel which has ever since been used by the larger passenger steamers. No one, however, can form an adequate idea of the grandeur of this raging torrent who has not made the descent upon a raft; though, speaking from experience, this mode of shooting the “lost channel” is not to be recommended to persons of weak nerves.