B.C., 1887; A Ramble in British Columbia (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. THE ST. I.AWRENCE. Most things have an end, and by noon on the 6th of August we were, with our pilot at the masthead?for the fog only lay for a few feet above the water? slowly steaming with frequent pauses up the mighty river, losing many of our passengers at Rimouski, where the mail tender meets the steamer, and the inter-colonial railway is available for any one to whom a few hours are of importance. The weather kept improving, and soon the wooded southern bank of the St. Lawrence was plainly visible, and the air was laden with the delicious scent of the pine forests, while the eye was charmed and rested after the weary waste of waters by the ever varying and ever harmonious green and grey of the distant hills, and the spotlessly white dwellings of the French Canadian settlers along the shores. Howbeit, we are told that much enchantment is lent to the view, and that it is more pleasing to every sense to contemplate these inviting-looking cottages from afar than to form a closer acquaintance with them and their inhabitants, human and otherwise. Everything except the forests is whitewashed, and a school of whales which accompanied us about this period seemed to have undergone the same operation, but we can only speak to their appearance, and it is possible that the silvery gleam of their tummies in the water is due to some other cause. Having prepared ourselves for our experiences in America by a strict course of Fennimore Cooper, Mayne Reid, and Mark Twain, we knew all about " bufiler bulls," " bars " and " catamounts," " shooting- irons " and " pill-pumps," and were carefully on the watch against the well-worn traveller's tales with which the native of foreign parts is wont to delude the unwary. It was therefore no surprise to us to hear the pilot enl...