years ago, however, the case was different, and
he gave the British government a good deal
of trouble. Alarmed lest he should be Anglicised,
and Protestantised, and "improved off
the face of the earth," as the Yankees express
it, he declared himself a rebel, took to arms,
got together a small but valiant host, with
which he defied John Bull for several months,
and altogether behaved himself in a manner
which, if it did not show much prudence,
showed a very considerable amount of "pluck."
The British government has never been in the
habit of negotiating or parleying with rebels in
arms; but having put down Jean Baptiste's
rebellion by the strong hand, and got possession
of the bodies of some of the most eminent
leaders, it began to inquire in all good faith
and right feeling what were the grievances, real
or supposed, which had driven a person usually
so quiet, so good, and so amiable as Jean
Baptiste, to so desperate a resort. The result was,
that Jean Baptiste was found to be not
altogether without ground of complaint, and that
he had solid grievances—not caused so much by
the injustice as by the ignorance of the British
government, and the assumption, by his
fellow-colonists of British descent, of a superiority
over him which he was not inclined to allow.
Generous Mr. Bull did the best he could
between the two parties, reformed abuses, modified
the pre-existing arrangements between the
British and French Canadians, and put the
finishing touch to this liberal and enlightened
policy by pardoning Jean Baptiste's generalissimo,
Mr. Papineau, and the other civil and
military chiefs of the abortive rebellion. The
wise policy bore good fruits; rebels became
loyalists, and Mr. Papineau himself, who still
lives a prosperous and a venerable gentleman,
was not only reconciled to the monarchical
rule of Great Britain, but grew to be its
staunchest friend and supporter.

From Three Rivers to the lumber station of
Mr. Rousseau, on the bank of the St. Maurice,
at which we had to take either a canoe or a
scow to be paddled or rowed across the
lake-like bend of the river to the path that leads to
the upper fall of Shawenegan, was a drive of
five hours, through a country sandy, but not
unfruitful, that lay in a plateau for five or six miles,
and thence rose by a steep ascent of a couple
of hundred feet to another plateau of similar
width, followed by another bank and another
plateau, suggesting a succession of former sea
levels in the ancient history of our planet, when
the uplands of Lake Erie were the shores of the
ocean, when Niagara was not, and when what
are now Canada, Maine, New Brunswick, and
Nova Scotia, were more than half submerged,
and what was visible of them were islands of an
immense archipelago. These plateaux and shelving
banks stretch inwards towards that great
inland ocean which few people have ever seen,
called Hudson's Bay, for hundreds of miles—at
least the geological books say so, and we may
as well believe them. Mr. Rousseau had been
apprised of our coming, and canoes and a scow
were in readiness. The ladies of the party did
not like the fragile look of the canoes, so the
scow, in deference to their timidity, was chosen
for our transit. Laden with our provender
and our drink, both of which the boatmen
undertook for an extra gratuity to carry up
the steep path on the other side, we were
speedily impelled across to the mountain-path,
that led by a zigzag of three-quarters of
a mile through the brushwood and the forest
to the skeleton of poor Mr. Turcotte's hotel.
We were advised not to skirt along the bank
to see the falls from the level of the river, but
to ascend to the highest point and view them at
their very best. We paid due deference to this
local judgment, and were duly rewarded for our
acquiescence. Though the St. Maurice was not
at its full, and the depth of water not above
one-half of its usual average, there was more than
sufficient to produce a cataract that has not its
peer in Europe, and very few in America; one
that, were it within five hundred miles of London
or Paris, would be annually visited by tens or
hundreds of thousands of delighted tourists.
The day will doubtless come when the far-seeing
design of Mr. Turcotte will be completed, when
there will be a railroad from Three Rivers to
Shawenegan, connecting the latter point by the
ferry over the St. Lawrence to St. Gregoire,
with the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and
consequently with the entire railway system of
the United States, when the great hotel will be
completed and furnished, and when as many
travellers as now go forth from all points of the
compass to behold Niagara in its glory, will
flock to Shawenegan in the drowsy and oppressive
heats of the American summer to behold
a smaller but still a magnificent fall in its
beauty and splendour—to feast their eyes with
the sight of the cooling waters rushing over
the precipices with everlasting music, and
suggesting to the most prosaic mind:

     To stand before them reverent and dumb,
     And hear their voice discoursing to the soul
     Sublime orations, tuned to psalmody;
     High thoughts of peril, met and overcome
     Of power, and beauty, and eternity,
     And the Great God who bade the waters roll.

Our small party had the large banqueting-room
of the hotel to ourselves—a room
unglazed, only partially boarded, and more
partially roofed, and encumbered with the shavings
and chips and other signs of the late presence
of carpenters and joiners. Our banqueting-table,
overlooking the Falls, was a pile of deal
boards, our seats logs of timber, to be yet,
perhaps, wrought into the edifice as jambs or
joists or cross-trees of the roof; and our waiters
were the Canadian boatmen, who had little to
do but to bring us pitchers of water from the
foaming torrent to mingle with our wine. They
spoke no word of English, were very grateful
for the remnants of our feast, but particularly
grateful for the bottle of good claret with which
we presented them, a wine of which they had
heard but had never seen or tasted before, and
which they were delighted to know had been