I Presume I Should Describe It As A
Town, For It Has A Municipality, And A Post-Office, And, Of Course,
A Large Hotel.
The interest of the place, however, is in the saw-
mills.
On the opposite side of the water, at St. Anthony, is
another very large hotel - and also a smaller one. The smaller one
may be about the size of the first-class hotels at Cheltenham or
Leamington. They were both closed, and there seemed to be but
little prospect that either would be opened till the war should be
over. The saw-mills, however, were at full work, and to my eyes
were extremely picturesque. I had been told that the beauty of the
falls had been destroyed by the mills. Indeed, all who had spoken
to me about St. Anthony had said so. But I did not agree with
them. Here, as at Ottawa, the charm in fact consists, not in an
uninterrupted shoot of water, but in a succession of rapids over a
bed of broken rocks. Among these rocks logs of loose timber are
caught, which have escaped from their proper courses, and here they
lie, heaped up in some places, and constructing themselves into
bridges in others, till the freshets of the spring carry them off.
The timber is generally brought down in logs to St. Anthony, is
sawn there, and then sent down the Mississippi in large rafts.
These rafts on other rivers are, I think, generally made of unsawn
timber.
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