There are several roads from Quebec to Lorette, all of them good for carriages except one, which, from its extreme destitution of every condition essential to easy locomotion on wheels, is called, in the expressive language of the French colonists, La Misere.  And yet this is the only road which, from touching various points of the River St. Charles, affords the traveller compensating glimpses of the picturesque windings of that stream.  The pedestrian, however, is the only kind of explorer who really sees a country and its people; and for him who is not too proud to walk, La Misere is not so hard to bear as its name might imply.

If iron takes the romance out of things, in a general way, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article my impression that it rather does, I know not whether primitive Lorette has not become sadly vulcanized into prosaic progress by the grand system of water-works established there for the benefit of Quebec.  Connected as it is, now, with the latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its greener days.  Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might yet have had a chance.  To understand this, one should hear the French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the metal bridge.  Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to span the Montmorency River, just above the great fall, with an iron suspension-bridge.  This would shorten the road, they said, by some two or three hundred yards of divergence from the old wooden bridge higher up.  They built their bridge, which looked like a spider’s web spanning the verge of the stupendous cataract, when seen from the St. Lawrence below.  It was opened to the public in April, 1856, but was little used for some days, as the conservative habitans, who had gone the crooked road over the wooden bridge all their lives, declined to see what advantage could be gained by taking to a straight one pontificed with iron.  It had not been open a week, however, when, as two or three hurrying peasants were venturing it with their carts, it fell with a crash, and all were washed headlong in an instant over the precipice and into the boiling abyss below, from which not one vestige of their remains was ever returned for a sign to their awe-stricken friends.  Supposing this bridge to be rebuilt,—­which is not likely,—­I do not believe that a habitant of all that region could be got to cross it, even under the malediction, with bell, book, and candle, of his priest.  And so the old wooden bridge flourishes, and the crooked road is travelled by gray-coated cultivateurs, whose forefathers went crooked in the same direction for several generations, mounted upon persevering ponies which wouldn’t upon any account be persuaded into going straight.

A gleam of hope for Lorette flashes upon me since the above was written.  On looking over a provincial paper, I find astounding rumors of ghosts appearing upon the track of a western railroad.  Things clothed in the traditional white appear before the impartial cow-catcher, which divides them for the passage of the train, in the wake of which they immediately reappear in a full state of repair and posture of contempt.  If this sort of thing goes on, what a splendid new field will be opened for the writer of romance!