animals and the shrill screams of equally frightened children. The convulsion of the water was not less fearful than that of the land. The ice, five or six feet in depth, burst with a crash like the roar of cannon; huge blocks were shot up into the air, and fell again to the earth, shivered into powder, while from the openings, clouds of smoke or jets of mud and sand were projected to a great height. The fish darted in terror from the turbulent waters, and it was noticed that one species, abandoning its usual haunts, made its way to a lake where it had never been seen before. The springs were either choked, or impregnated with sulphur. The waters of some of the rivers became red, others yellow; the St. Lawrence as far as Tadoussac appeared white. Stunned by the suddenness of the calamity, and utterly unable to comprehend it, some thought that a fire had broken out, and ran for help; others that the Indians had made an incursion, and flew to arms, but soon the momentarily increasing violence of the shocks led to the universal conclusion that the end of the world had come. The consternation both of French and Indians can hardly be imagined. The general impulse was to hasten to the churches, and prepare to appear before the judgment seat of God, and truly wonderful were the conversions which ensued: a missioner afterwards told the Mother of the Incarnation, that he had himself heard eight hundred general confessions at that period of panic. After a half- an-hour, the oscillations of the earth became fainter, without however wholly ceasing, but about eight o'clock there was a second shock so severe, that the Sisters who were at the time standing in their stalls chanting the Office, were all thrown to the ground. The earthquake continued at intervals for a full year, the first five months in its original force, the remainder of the period with less violence. Sometimes the motion of the earth was like the pitching of a large vessel dragging heavily at its anchors; at others, it was hurried and irregular, creating sudden, and occasionally very violent jerks, but in general it was merely tremulous. During all that time, men lived in constant dread of immediate death, and actually withered away from fear. The Lent was spent by the Sisters in redoubled austerities, and increasing prayers to appease the anger of God. "Every evening," the Mother of the Incarnation wrote to her son, "we disposed ourselves to be engulphed in the yawning earth before morning, and when a new day dawned, we prepared to stand in God's presence before its close."