My intention was to start at once for Kingston; but when they kindly asked me to accompany them, I joyfully accepted, and an hour after I landed at Montreal I was on the rail with my friends, hissing away to Lachine, where the chief office of the Hudson’s Bay Company is fixed.  There we embarked in a steamer on Lake St. Louis, which is a struggling compound of the dark brown Ottawa and the light blue St. Lawrence.  The lake was studded with islands, and the scenery rendered peculiarly lovely by the ever-changing lights and shades from the rising sun.  We soon left the St. Lawrence compound and reached that part of the Ottawa[AQ] which the poet has immortalized by his beautiful “Canadian Boat Song.”

St. Anne’s is a small village, and the rapids being impassable in low water they have built a lock to enable steamers to ascend; but fortunately, when we passed, there was sufficient water, and we steamed up the song-famed rapids, above which the river spreads out into the Lake of the Two Mountains.  It is proposed to build a railway bridge for the main trunk line, just above the rapids.  How utterly the whizzing, whistling kettle spoils the poetry of scenery, undeniable though its utility be!  There is no doubt that the Lake of the Two Mountains has many great beauties; but, whatever they may be, a merciless storm of rain effectually curtained them from us, and we traversed the whole lake to Point Fortune in a mist worthy of the Western Highlands.  There we took coach, as the locks at Carillon are not yet large enough for full-sized steamers to pass.  The road was alike good and uninteresting, running by the side of the canal, whose banks were here and there enlivened by groups of wild flowers.

A stage of twelve miles brought us to Grenville, where we again took steamer on the Ottawa, and, the weather being finer, we had an opportunity of enjoying the scenery, which is very peculiar.  It has none of the wild features of grandeur which one associates with comparatively unknown streams, in a country where all is gigantesque.  There is nothing mountainous or craggy, but the banks and hills at the back being luxuriously wooded, and conveying the idea of being well tenanted, the absence of human habitations seems unnatural, and gives the solitude an air of mystery, only broken at long intervals by a bowered cottage or a wreath of smoke.  The most remarkable building is the French chateau of M. Papineau, very prettily situated on the northern bank, commanding an extensive view of the river, and looking in its isolation as though its occupant was a second Robinson Crusoe, and monarch of all he surveyed.  Night soon buried all scenery in its sable mantle, and, after sixty miles steaming, we reached Bytown, where we found friends and conveyances ready to take us over to Aylmer, there to sleep preparatory to a further excursion up the river early in the morning.  As the distance was only eight miles, we were soon at Mr. Egan’s hospitable board, from which we speedily retired to rest, so as to be ready for the morrow’s trip.