"I cannot pass over this account," continued Mr. Wright, "without referring to a _sauvage_, from whom we received great kindness. We met him with his wife drawing a child upon a bark sleigh. They looked at us with astonishment. They viewed us as though we had come from the clouds, walking around our teams and trying to talk with us concerning the ice, but not a word could we understand. We then observed him giving directions to his squaw, who immediately left him and went to the woods, while he proceeded to the head of our company, without promise of fee or reward, with his small axe trying the ice at almost every step. We proceeded in this way without meeting with any accident for about six days, when we arrived safely at the township of Hull. We had some trouble in cutting the brush and ascending the height, which is about twenty feet from the water. Our _sauvage_, after seeing us safely up the bank, spent the night with us and made us to understand that he must return to his squaw and child, and after receiving presents for his great services, took his departure." What must have been the feelings of the pioneer settlers when they beheld for the first time the magnificent scenery of the Chaudiere, before its wild beauty was defaced by the woodman's axe or its sparkling waters used in slides and mill-races? Three openings loomed up before them--the most distant one, to the left, a broad half-rapid, half-cascade, sweeping down among islands of pines; the middle passage seemed very narrow and carried away in a sort of creamy foam the waters of the Chaudiere proper; while the nearer or right passage led by a winding route to a rocky cove at the beginning of the portage road. Surely never had they beheld anything so picturesque, so indescribably grand, as it appeared to them on that bright and frosty evening! The precipices and rocky gorge of the opposite shore, green with pine and cedar to the river's brink, and covered with a mantle of beautiful snow; the volume of water, tossed, broken, dashed into foam, which floated down like miniature icebergs on the mighty rushing current till the natural ice-bridge was reached, made a scene not soon to be forgotten. The turrets, domes and battlements of the Dominion House of Parliament, which in a few short years was destined to crown the opposite cliffs, were a dream beyond the wildest imagination of our Pioneer. CHAPTER III. _NEWITCHEWAGAN._ 1802.