The mighty river, as it onward rushes
    To pour its floods in ocean’s dread abyss,
  Checks at thy feet its fierce impetuous gushes,
    And gently fawns thy rocky base to kiss. 
  Stern eagle of the crag! thy hold should be
  The mountain home of heaven-born liberty!

  True to themselves, thy children may defy
    The power and malice of a world combined;
  While Britain’s flag, beneath thy deep blue sky,
    Spreads its rich folds and wantons in the wind;
  The offspring of her glorious race of old
  May rest securely in their mountain hold.

On the 2nd of September, the anchor was weighed, and we bade a long farewell to Grosse Isle.  As our vessel struck into mid-channel, I cast a last lingering look at the beautiful shores we were leaving.  Cradled in the arms of the St. Lawrence, and basking in the bright rays of the morning sun, the island and its sister group looked like a second Eden just emerged from the waters of chaos.  With what joy could I have spent the rest of the fall in exploring the romantic features of that enchanting scene!  But our bark spread her white wings to the favouring breeze, and the fairy vision gradually receded from my sight, to remain for ever on the tablets of memory.

The day was warm, and the cloudless heavens of that peculiar azure tint which gives to the Canadian skies and waters a brilliancy unknown in more northern latitudes.  The air was pure and elastic, the sun shone out with uncommon splendour, lighting up the changing woods with a rich mellow colouring, composed of a thousand brilliant and vivid dyes.  The mighty river rolled flashing and sparkling onward, impelled by a strong breeze, that tipped its short rolling surges with a crest of snowy foam.

Had there been no other object of interest in the landscape than this majestic river, its vast magnitude, and the depth and clearness of its waters, and its great importance to the colony, would have been sufficient to have riveted the attention, and claimed the admiration of every thinking mind.

Never shall I forget that short voyage from Grosse Isle to Quebec.  I love to recall, after the lapse of so many years, every object that awoke in my breast emotions of astonishment and delight.  What wonderful combinations of beauty, and grandeur, and power, at every winding of that noble river!  How the mind expands with the sublimity of the spectacle, and soars upward in gratitude and adoration to the Author of all being, to thank Him for having made this lower world so wondrously fair—­a living temple, heaven-arched, and capable of receiving the homage of all worshippers.

Every perception of my mind became absorbed into the one sense of seeing, when, upon rounding Point Levi, we cast anchor before Quebec.  What a scene!—­Can the world produce such another?  Edinburgh had been the beau ideal to me of all that was beautiful in Nature—­a vision of the northern Highlands had haunted my dreams across the Atlantic; but all these past recollections faded before the present of Quebec.