Captain Chrysler, Whose Caution, Urbanity, And Kindness
Render Him Deservedly Popular, Seldom Leaves This Post Of Observation, And
Personally Pays Very Great Attention To His Ship; For The River St.
Lawrence Has As Bad A Reputation For Destroying The Vessels Which Navigate
It As The Mississippi.
The snow was now several inches deep on deck, and, melting near the deck-
house, trickled under the doors into the saloon.
The moisture inside,
also, condensed upon the ceiling, and produced a constant shower-bath for
the whole day. Sofas and carpets were alike wet, everybody sat in
goloshes - the ladies in cloaks, the gentlemen in oilskins; the smell of
the latter, and of so many wet woollen clothes, in an apartment heated by
stove-heat, being almost unbearable. At twelve the fog and snow cleared
away, and revealed to view the mighty St. Lawrence - a rapid stream
whirling along in small eddies between slightly elevated banks dotted with
white homesteads. We passed a gigantic raft, with five log shanties upon
it, near Prescott. These rafts go slowly and safely down the St. Lawrence
and the Ottawa, till they come to La Chine, where frequent catastrophes
happen, if one may judge from the timber which strews the rocks. A
gentleman read from a newspaper these terrible statistics, "horrible if
true," - "Forty-four murders and seven hundred murderous assaults have been
committed at New York within the last six months." (Sensation.) We
stopped at Prescott, one of the oldest towns in Canada, and shortly
afterwards passed the blackened ruins of a windmill, and some houses held
by a band of American "sympathisers" during the rebellion in 1838, but
from which they were dislodged by the cannon of the royal troops.
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