CHAPTER XIX

THE ST. LAWRENCE: A BEAUTIFUL RIVER

MEASURES TAKEN FOR SAFETY -- FATHER POINT -- PICTURESQUE RIVER -- GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE -- HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -- TADOUSAC -- CAP TOURMENTE -- QUEBEC -- MONTREAL -- GEOLOGY OF COUNTRY

THE St. Lawrence passage is one of the most beautiful in the world, and is also one of the safest and best marked of all interior waterways.

The improvement of the St. Lawrence, indeed, dates as far back as 1825. In that year the opening of the Lachine Canal gave connection with the Great Lakes and established a commercial basis for the route. In those days attention was turned chiefly to making the channel deeper. At that time light sailing vessels could come up as far as Montreal. In 1844 dredging was begun to give safe passage for vessels of 500 tons. The progress made in this fundamental of safe navigation may be strikingly shown by a few figures. The original depth of water in Lake St. Peter was ten feet six inches. Today there are thirty feet of water there and a channel 800 feet in width. In order to provide the present channel it has been necessary to dredge seventy miles; and the cost of the work since 1851 has been $15,600,000.

The deepening of the channel, the straightening of curves and the removal of obstructions--these things have been but the beginning of measures taken for the safety of the St. Lawrence route by the Canadian government. The waterways have been charted. The tides have been measured. The darkness has been lighted and beacons erected to throw a warning or a welcoming flash across the waters. Fog alarms have been installed. Wireless and other signal stations have been erected, and a system of marine intelligence has been built up to warn the mariner of coming storms. Science has been enlisted in the cause, and the Dominion has in several directions been a pioneer in the world-wide work of providing for the safety of those who go down to the sea in ships.

FATHER POINT

Father Point, near which the wreck of the Empress of Ireland occurred, is a small village on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, and ten miles distant from Rimouski, where the transatlantic mails are transferred. It stands high above the water, and on clear days can be seen from a distance of twenty miles.

In 1859 the first telegraph line was connected with this point, and Robert E. Easson was the first operator. It was the first point in Canada to receive old country news from the boats, and this was relayed to other parts. Messages for the old country were also wired there frequently and mailed on the boats.

The river in this neighborhood is approximately thirty miles wide. Rimouski is about 150 miles down the river from Quebec, and usually is reached in the early morning after an afternoon departure from Quebec.

PICTURESQUE RIVER

The St. Lawrence comes down to the gulf under various names. From the little River St. Louis it pours through the great inland sea of Lake Superior and the St. Mary's River, with its crowded canals, into Lake Huron; thence, in another outflow, through the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers to Lake Erie and from there by the Niagara River and its wonderful falls, to Lake Ontario. From Lake Ontario, for 750 miles, it rolls to the gulf and the ocean under its own historic name and is never less than a mile in width. As it broadens and deepens into beautiful lakes or narrows and shallows into restless rapids, as it sweeps past cliffs crowned with verdure or great natural ridges capped with dense forests, as these break frequently to reveal fertile valleys and a rolling country, or rise into rugged and yet exquisitely picturesque embodiments of nature such as the heights of Quebec, there comes the thought that here, indeed, is a fitting entrance to a great country, an adequate environment for the history of a romantic people, a natural stage-setting for great events and gallant deeds.

Though greater than any other Canadian river, the St. Lawrence was, and is, a natural type and embodiment of them all. Sweeping in its volume of water, sometimes wild and impetuous, never slow or sluggish, on its way to the sea, ever changing in its currents and rapids and waterfalls, its lakes and incoming river branches, passing through varied scenery yet always preserving in its course a degree of dignity which approaches majesty, it reveals a combination of volume and vastness, beauty and somberness, which makes it in more senses than one the father of waters on this continent--"the great river without an end," as an Indian once described it to Cartier.

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE

The gulf into which the river broadens is more or less a land-locked sea, deep and free from reef or shoal, running 500 miles from north to south and 243 from east to west. In its center lies the once lonely and barren Isle of Anticosti; not far from Gaspé Bay, two miles out at sea, lies La Roche Percé, a gigantic pile of stone with perpendicular walls forming, in certain conditions of the weather, a marvelous combination of colors outlined against the blue sky and emerald sea. In this rock there is now an opening broken by the unceasing dash of the waves; according to Denys there were at one time three great arches, and seventy years before his time Champlain stated that there was only one but that one big enough for a ship to sail through; in still earlier days Indian legends describe its connection with the shore.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Let us at this stage look lightly at some of the geographical and associated conditions as we pass slowly up the St. Lawrence from its mouth, and try to see what manner of region this is which has witnessed so much of romance and has brought together and kept together the new and the old--the Europe of three centuries ago and the America of to-day. From Percé and its memories of a naval battle in 1776, when two American ships were sunk, we pass along a shore devoted with undying allegiance to codfish, and possessing at Mont Ste. Anne one of the finest scenic views in eastern Canada. At Gaspé, the chief place in the Peninsula--the farthest point of Quebec on the south shore of the St. Lawrence--there are abundant salmon and fruitful inland fields. Here Cartier once landed, took possession of vast unknown regions for the King of France and erected a cross thirty feet high which flew the fleur-de-lis, also, as a mark of ownership; near here, Admiral Kirke defeated a large French fleet. Then comes Cape Gaspé with its towering rampart of sandstone, nearly 700 feet high, and many succeeding miles of rocky walls and lofty cliffs. Near Cape Chatte, another English and French naval fight took place, and near here, also, runs into the St. Lawrence the Matane River, famous for its trout and salmon, while the great river itself stretches thirty-five miles across to its northern shores.

TADOUSAC

Thence, one goes up the river to Tadousac, the ancient village on the north shore, which nestles at the black jaws of the Saguenay and seems unafraid of all the majesty and mystery of the scene, of all the weird tales and fables which centuries have woven around it, of the dark depths which go down into the bowels of the earth and of shores which are bleak, inaccessible and perpendicular walls of soaring rock. A little higher up on the other side of the St. Lawrence are Rivière du Loup and Cacouna--the latter a fashionable summer resort perched on a rocky peninsula many feet above the water. Back on the north shore is Murray Bay--the Malle Baie of Champlain, now famous for its fishing and bathing. Not far up the river, which here is fifteen miles wide, are the picturesque village and mountain of Les Eboulements with Isle aux Coudrés and its mediæval population out in the center of the river. As the modern traveler passes on up to Quebec City he realizes something of what scenery is in Canada. On the north, for a time, there is visible a region of splendid vistas, a country of volcanic origin where rocks and mountains seem to roll into one another and commingle in the wildest fantasies of nature's strangest mood.

CAP TOURMENTE

Then comes Cap Tourmente, towering 2,000 feet from the water's edge, and other massed piles of granite jutting out into the river, with the Isle of Orléans green and beautiful in the sunlight, with the St. Lawrence jewel-bright and showing glimpses of the white curtain of Montmorency Falls in the distance, with the naked, somber heights of the Laurentides to the north. Everywhere, indeed, along the north shore, from far down on the Labrador coast up to Cap Tourmente, there is this wall of mountains, like a sea of rolling rocks, cleft here and there by such recesses as Murray Bay or the Saguenay. Everywhere, also, are footprints of the early explorers. Here Cartier landed, there Champlain camped, here De Roberval is supposed to have disappeared forever between the wide walls of the Saguenay, there Pont-Gravé or Chauvin left traces of adventurous exploits.

QUEBEC

At Quebec there looms up the sentinel on the rock which overlooks all the pages of Canadian history and still stands as the most picturesque and impressive city of the new world. Here, on one side of the mile-wide river stand the green heights of Lévis; on the other are the grand outlines of Cape Diamond, crowned with the ramparts of Quebec and now embodying age and power as the graces of the Chateau Frontenac represent modern luxury and business. In the neighborhood of this once famous walled city lie the Falls of Montmorency and the historic shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré; a succession of villages typical of the life of the old-time habitants and redolent of mediæval Europe; ruins of famous chateaux embodying memories of history and politics, love and laughter, tragedy and crime.

HISTORY AND TRADITION

Passing from Quebec up the river to Montreal, the mouth of the Chaudière is seen with its splendid falls in the distance and the valley through which Benedict Arnold marched his disastrous expedition to the hoped-for capture of Quebec. At Pointe-aux-Trembles, farther on, there took place several encounters between French and English. Three Rivers stands at the mouth of the St. Maurice, which rises, with the Ottawa and the Saguenay, in a maze of lakes and streams hundreds of miles to the north. In the city lie varied historic memories running back to 1618 and including masses of legend and romantic tradition. Not far from here the St. Lawrence widens into Lake St. Peter and just above it the Richelieu pours its waters into the greater stream, and at this point stands Sorel where in 1642 a fort was built by M. de Montmagny.

MONTREAL

Montreal, with its modern population of 500,000 people, rests at the meeting-place of the new and the old. It combines in itself the great and sometimes rival interests of church and commerce, the customs and methods of the English and French races, the streets and narrow passages of the past with the great financial thoroughfares and buildings of the present. It stands at a point where all the commercial and business ideals of English Canada meet and press upon the traditions, practices and policy of French Canada; it preserves itself by combining these varied interests and maintaining a center of wealth, commerce and transportation, while, so far as its French population is concerned, remaining devoted to racial instincts and loyal to one religious faith.

GEOLOGY OF COUNTRY

Geologically this country of the French Canadian is of intense interest. It reaches back into the most ancient period of the world's evolution; it was a later product of titanic changes and movements of the earth's surface. The grinding, crushing flow of great masses of ice from the Arctic regions had potent force in creating the vast basin of the St. Lawrence; upheavals of a volcanic character are obvious around Montreal, are clearly marked in the Lake St. John region, are found in the Laurentian ranges; evidence of earthquakes comes to us from within historic ages. Of the mountains in the Eastern Townships country, where the elemental struggles of geological antiquity must have been violent beyond description, Jesuit records at St. Francis describe an earthquake of September 5, 1732, so powerful as to destroy a neighboring Indian village. The better-known disturbance of 1663 along the lower St. Lawrence lasted for months and resulted in continuous landslides and a series of convulsions. The St. Lawrence was said to have run white as milk for a long distance because of the hills and vast masses of sand which were thrown into it, ranges of hills disappeared altogether, the forests, according to an Indian description, became as though they were drunk, vast fissures opened in the ground, and the courses of streams were changed. The whole of the Mount Royal region and valley shows clear evidences of volcanic action.

These latter disturbances were, however, only episodes in geologic ages of formation; there are no signs of a continuing character. Forever, so far as finite vision can see, the mighty piles of the Laurentian and other ranges of this part of the continent will stand as memorials of still more mighty world-movements, as a somber environment for the history of the Indians and the early struggles of the French Canadian people, and as solemn witnesses of the civilization which has now taken possession of this inherited greatness and hopes in its own fleeting, fitful, fighting way to build upon and refine and cultivate nature's splendid storehouse for its own purposes and the advancement of its people.

FACTS ABOUT THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC

NUMBER of persons aboard, 2224.

Number of life-boats and rafts, 20.

Capacity of each life-boat, 50 passengers and crew of 8.

Utmost capacity of life-boats and rafts, about 1100.

Number of life-boats wrecked in launching, 4.

Capacity of life-boats safely launched, 928.

Total number of persons taken in life-boats, 717.

Number who died in life-boats, 6.

Total number saved, 711.

Total number of Titanic's company lost, 1513.

The cause of the disaster was a collision with an iceberg in latitude 41.46 north, longitude 50.14 west. The Titanic had had repeated warnings of the presence of ice in that part of the course. Two official warnings had been received defining the position of the ice fields. It had been calculated on the Titanic that she would reach the ice fields about 11 o'clock Sunday night. The collision occurred at 11.40. At that time the ship was driving at a speed of 21 to 23 knots, or about 26 miles, an hour.

There had been no details of seamen assigned to each boat.

Some of the boats left the ship without seamen enough to man the oars.

Some of the boats were not more than half full of passengers.

The boats had no provisions, some of them had no water stored, some were without sail equipment or compasses.

In some boats, which carried sails wrapped and bound, there was not a person with a knife to cut the ropes. In some boats the plugs in the bottom had been pulled out and the women passengers were compelled to thrust their hands into the holes to keep the boats from filling and sinking.

The captain, E. J. Smith, admiral of the White Star fleet, went down with his ship.