There is one charming feature at Lorette,—­a winding, dashing cascade, which boils and creams down with splendid fury through a deep gorge fenced with pied and tumbled rocks, and overhung by gnarly-boughed cedars, pines, and birches.  There is, or at least there was, a crumbling old saw-mill on a ledge of rock nearly half-way up the torrent.  It was in keeping with the scene, and I hope it is there still; but it was very shaky when I last saw it, and has probably made an eboulement down to the foot of the fall before now.  Some short distance above the head of the fall, near the bridge by which the two villages are connected, the scene is pictorially damaged by a stark, staring paper-mill, the dominant colors of which are Solferino-red and pea-green.  This, a comparatively new feature in the landscape, is not visible from below, however, and it is from there that the fall is seen to best advantage.

To the eye of the experienced fisherman, it is obvious that the St. Charles, with its sparkling rapids, and the deep, swirling pools formed by its numerous “elbows,” must erstwhile have been a chosen, retreat of the noble salmon.  Even now, notwithstanding the obstructions caused by the immense deposits of ship-yard refuse at its mouth, a few of these fine fish are caught every season by one or two persevering anglers from Quebec,—­men who thrive on disappointment,—­whose fish-hooks are miniature anchors of Hope.  Lake St. Charles, from which the river derives its existence and its name, is a wild, beautiful tarn, about five miles above Lorette, embosomed in hills and woods.  There are good bass in that lake, by whose shores there dwells—­or dwelt—­an ancient fisherman called Gabriel, who supplied anglers with canoes, and paddled them about the waters.

Lorette, although undistinguished by a glance from the mild blue eyes of the Premier Prince of England, was flashed upon, years ago, by the awful light that gleamed from the dark, fierce ones of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.  This is how I came to know it.

Fifteen years ago,—­it was on the seventeenth of August, 1845,—­I made my first pilgrimage to Lorette, in company with a friend.  We wandered at large through the village, talking patois to the swarthy damsels, and picking up Indian knick-knacks, as we went.  At last, fired with the ambition of doing a distinguished thing, we proposed calling upon the head chief of the village, whose name, I think, was Simon, but might possibly have been Peter,—­for I regret to say that my memory is rather misty upon that important point.  That personage was absent from home; but we were hospitably received by his father, who also appeared to be his butler, as he was engaged in bottling off some root-beer into stone blacking-jars, when we entered.  I suppose the chief’s father must once have been a chief himself, and that his menial position arose from the fact of his appearance being rather disreputable.  He was a decrepit and very dirty old man, in a tight blue