As the last chant died away on the ear, it was like awaking from a dream of the remote past, to come out once more on the wide summer landscape lying at their feet, the long line of level sands, the stranded vessel, the still receding tide, the long stretch of gray uplands and dark green hills. But breakfast began to seem a welcome possibility, which quickened the steps of the travellers back to the steamer, where they found Mrs. Sandford in a little flurry of concern about their long absence, and more than ready, she declared, for her breakfast. And after their early rising and their long stroll, it scarcely needs be said how keenly they enjoyed the excellent breakfast of porridge, smelts, salmon, fresh rolls, and excellent coffee--not forgetting the blueberries for which the region is so famous. After breakfast there was still some time before the steamer could move. Flora hunted up her sketch-book, and went, accompanied by May and Nellie, to make a sketch on shore, while Hugh Macnab and Jack Armstrong, who insisted on coming, too, amused themselves by clambering up the rocky height above them, to see what sorts of plants might be growing among the crevices--for Hugh was something of a naturalist as well as a poet. The others, including Mrs. Sandford, preferred to remain on the deck of the steamer, watching the lumber vessel take in her load, and the swift return of the tide, nearly as remarkable for its speed as is the Scottish Solway, which has furnished the comparison:--
"Love flows like the Solway And ebbs like its tide."
As the girls sat there, a young, pleasant-faced _habitante_ came up to them, followed by two or three tiny children, glad to exchange a word with the strangers, and to offer for sale tiny canoes, which the inexperienced hands of the children had shaped, in imitation of the pretty toy canoes offered for sale at all the booths of French and Indian wares. They spoke no English, and May was too doubtful of _her_ French to try it, but Nellie and Flora opened a conversation with her, to her evident pleasure, for, in so secluded a spot, a talk with a stranger is an event. "Yes," she said, after telling the names and ages of the children; "yes, the summer _is_ very short, and the winter long and cold." But then her husband stays at home, and in summer he is away, working on boats, and that is evidently compensation--for he is "_un bon garçon_." And indeed she seemed a happy wife and mother, for the blessings of life, happily, generally counterbalance its privations. The girls gladly bought the tiny canoes, the "'prentice work" of the little childish hands, and, after an interested inspection of Flora's sketch, and many admiring comments thereupon, they parted--the travellers to return to the steamer, the children and their mother to return to their _cabane_, happy in their little store of silver coins. And now the tide has flowed in, up to the end of the weirs, the scattered passengers are collected on board, and the steamer, with screw revolving once more, glides swiftly out of Ha-Ha Bay, leaving behind all its rugged beauty and its primitive, secluded life; and turns up another bend of the fiord, towards the great hill curves that bound the vista. Point after point, bend after bend, succeed each other in bewildering succession, while the travellers feel once more how distinct is the stern sublimity of the Saguenay from the grand beauty of the St. Lawrence. The great, bare splintered crags that rear their grey, furrowed brows to the sky, the endless succession of pine-crested hills, craggy points, dark, deep gorges, and weather-worn and lichen-scarred rocks, contorted by fire and water into every conceivable form, seemed almost oppressive, at last, in their almost unbroken savage wilderness. Here and there green uplands and stretches of softer forest verdure, or sheltered valleys, with little settlements nestling in their laps, or clinging to the sheltering rocks, introduce a gentler tone; but the general impression is one of savage sterility, scarred by the traces of devastation on the fire-swept hills, bristling with dark tree skeletons, and by the sullen darkness of the stream itself. And now and then the sky grew grey, too, as a sudden squall swept down the gorge; and it was easy to associate with the wild mountain fiord the strange tales told to the early explorers, and to see in imagination the fur-laden canoes, with their silent, dusky paddlers wending their way down the rocky _cañon_, which the river seems to have hewn for itself with such difficulty, from the inaccessible solitudes behind, through the sea of rocks between these and the St. Lawrence.