Of the guiding-needle, which
succumbed to the potent influence exerted in those
hills of iron ore; heeding not the fact that the
disturbing agent is the iron on board of his own
ship, and not the magnetic oxide of the distant
mines.
The ship being now within the estuary of the
St. Lawrence River, must encounter many risks
before she reaches the true mouth of the river,
at the Bic Islands.
The shores along this arm of the gulf are wild
and sombre. Rocky precipices frown upon the
swift tidal current that rushes past their bases.
A few small settlements of fishermen and pilots,
like Metis, Father Point, and Rimousky, are
discovered at long intervals along the coast.
In these St. Lawrence hamlets, and
throughout Lower Canada, a patois is spoken which is
unintelligible to the Londoner or Parisian; and
these villagers, the descendants of the French
colonists, may be said to be a people destitute
of a written language, and strangers to a
literature.
While holding a commission from Francis the
First, king of France, Jacques Cartier discovered
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, during his first
voyage of exploration in the new world. He
entered the gulf on St. Lawrence's day, in the
spring of 1534, and named it in honor of the
event. Cartier explored no farther to the west
than about the mouth of the estuary which is
divided by the island of Anticosti. It was
during his second voyage, in the following year,
that he discovered and explored the great river.
Of the desolate shores of Labrador, on the
north coast, he said, "It might as well as not
be taken for the country assigned by God to
Cain."
The distance from Quebec to Cape Gaspe,
measured upon a course which a steamer would
be compelled to take, is four hundred and seven
statute miles. The ship first enters the current
of the river St. Lawrence at the two Bic
Islands, where it has a width of about twenty
miles. By consulting most maps the reader will
find that geographers carry the river nearly two
hundred miles beyond its usual current. In fact,
they appropriate the whole estuary, which, in
places, is nearly one hundred miles in width,
and call it a river - a river which lacks the
characteristics of a river, the currents of which
vary with the winds and tidal influences, and
the waters of which are as salt as those of the
briny deep.
Here, in the mouth of the river, at the Bics,
secure anchorage for vessels may be found; but
below, in the estuary, for a distance of more
than two hundred and forty-five miles, to Gaspe,
there is but one port of refuge, that of Seven
Islands, on the north coast.
