- With
the bridge fell down an old woman, and a boy, and a cart - a cart
and horse - and all found a watery grave together in the spray. No
attempt has been made since that to renew the suspension bridge;
but the present wooden bridge has been built higher up in lieu of
it.
Strangers naturally visit Quebec in summer or autumn, seeing that a
Canada winter is a season with which a man cannot trifle; but I
imagine that the mid-winter is the best time for seeing the Falls
of Montmorency. The water in its fall is dashed into spray, and
that spray becomes frozen, till a cone of ice is formed immediately
under the cataract, which gradually rises till the temporary
glacier reaches nearly half way to the level of the higher river.
Up this men climb - and ladies also, I am told - and then descend,
with pleasant rapidity, on sledges of wood, sometimes not without
an innocent tumble in the descent. As we were at Quebec in
September, we did not experience the delights of this pastime.
As I was too early for the ice cone under the Montmorency Falls, so
also was I too late to visit the Saguenay River, which runs into
the St. Lawrence some hundred miles below Quebec. I presume that
the scenery of the Saguenay is the finest in Canada. During the
summer steamers run down the St. Lawrence and up the Saguenay, but
I was too late for them.
