The things we do!

On he
sailed, with his two dusky captives for pilots, seeing with regret the
banks of the river gradually draw together and hearing unwelcome word of
the freshening of its waters--on past the "gorge of the gloomy Saguenay
with its towering cliffs and sullen depths, depths which no sounding-line
can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling eagle seems a
speck"; on past frowning promontory and wild vineyards, to the foot of the
scarped cliff of Quebec, now "rich with heroic memories, then but the site
of a nameless barbarism"; thence, after parley with the Indian chief
Donnacona and his people, on through walls of autumn foliage and frost-
touched meadows to where the Lachine Rapids mocked with unceasing laughter
those who dreamed of an easy way to China. There, entertained at the
Indian capital, he was led to the top of a hill, such as Montmartre, from
whose height he saw his Cathay fade into a stretch of leafy desert bounded
only by the horizon and threaded by two narrow but hopeful ribbons of
water.


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