field till they get the view of the falls, and the view of Quebec also, from the other side.  It is worth the twenty-five cents and the hire of the carriage also.  Immediately over the falls there was a suspension bridge, of which the supporting, or rather non-supporting, pillars are still to be seen.  But the bridge fell down, one day, into the river; and—­alas! alas!—­with the bridge fell down an old woman, and a boy, and a cart—­a cart and horse—­and all found a watery grave together in the spray.  No attempt has been made since that to renew the suspension bridge; but the present wooden bridge has been built higher up in lieu of it.

Strangers naturally visit Quebec in summer or autumn, seeing that a Canada winter is a season with which a man cannot trifle; but I imagine that the mid-winter is the best time for seeing the Falls of Montmorency.  The water in its fall is dashed into spray, and that spray becomes frozen, till a cone of ice is formed immediately under the cataract, which gradually rises till the temporary glacier reaches nearly half way to the level of the higher river.  Up this men climb—­and ladies also, I am told—­and then descend, with pleasant rapidity, on sledges of wood, sometimes not without an innocent tumble in the descent.  As we were at Quebec in September, we did not experience the delights of this pastime.

As I was too early for the ice cone under the Montmorency Falls, so also was I too late to visit the Saguenay River, which runs into the St. Lawrence some hundred miles below Quebec.  I presume that the scenery of the Saguenay is the finest in Canada.  During the summer steamers run down the St. Lawrence and up the Saguenay, but I was too late for them.  An offer was made to us through the kindness of Sir Edmund Head, who was then the Governor-General, of the use of a steam-tug belonging to a gentleman who carries on a large commercial enterprise at Chicoutimi, far up the Saguenay; but an acceptance of this offer would have entailed some delay at Quebec, and, as we were anxious to get into the Northwestern States before the winter commenced, we were obliged with great regret to decline the journey.

I feel bound to say that a stranger, regarding Quebec merely as a town, finds very much of which he cannot but complain.  The footpaths through the streets are almost entirely of wood, as indeed seems to be general throughout Canada.  Wood is, of course, the cheapest material; and, though it may not be altogether good for such a purpose, it would not create animadversion if it were kept in tolerable order.  But in Quebec the paths are intolerably bad.  They are full of holes.  The boards are rotten, and worn in some places to dirt.  The nails have gone, and the broken planks go up and down under the feet, and in the dark they are absolutely dangerous.  But if the paths are bad, the road-ways are worse.  The street through the lower town along the quays is, I think, the most disgraceful thoroughfare I ever