Quebec, Lake St. John, and the new route to the far famed Saguenay.

f the mouth of the Saguenay, and the City of Quebec form the angles, upon the map of Canada, of an al- most equilateral ^teng^i^.'iWl!*"f ~' triangle, the three sides of which mark the route of the newest and grandest of Canadian summer tours.That portion of the trip represented by the base of the triangle and the lower half of its easterly side is famous wherever the praises of the Saguenay and the Lower St.Lawrence have been sung.Hitherto its only drawback has been the necessity of going twice over the same ground in one journey.Now all this has been changed.A few years ago the line of rail- way from Quebec to Lake St. John, which may be said to form the westerly side of the triangle, opened up to sportsmen the wildest woods and most plentifully stocked waters of the Canadian Adirondacks, and to tourists the far-famed yet mysterious Pikou- agami, or LakeSt. John, and its marvelous surroundings.Thousands of pleasure travelers, explorers, and anglers have taken advantage of the new railroad to visit the great inland sea and its mighty tributaries, and, like the visitors to the Saguenay, almost all of them returned by the way that they came.There was a gap in the present triangular tour, extending from ~\ its northerly angle at Lake St. John to Chicoutimi, nearly half way down the easterly side of the triangle, which has only just been filled by the construction of the new railway extension, that renders the arrangements for the round trip complete, without the necessity of alternate portages and shooting of rapids for a dis- tance of sixty to seventy miles.Now, well within the time heretofore occupied in making the Saguenay trip alone, tourists may visit by rail the far-famed Lake St. John, crossing the Laurentian Mountains, and passing the trout streams and lakes of the Can- adian Adirondacks by the way; may sleep overnight and take dinner and breakfast at the magnificent Hotel Roberval, Lake St. John, and may continue, early nextjnorning, by rail to Chicoutimi, and thence descend the Saguenay by steamer, and so return to Quebec by way of the St. Lawr£afcet, or, perhaps, by Intercolonial Railway from River du Loup.•* J * How this may be accomplished.and what else may be done by sportsmen and tourists in the interesting country traversed by the new line of the far northerly Quebec & Lake St. John Railroad it is the province of the following pages to describe.The tour commences and ends" with The City Iff Quebec, the ancient capital of New France^the one "walled city of the North," -"the sentinel city that keeps the gates of the St. Law- rence,"and amongst all the cities of the New World, as Pro- fessor Roberts correctly puts it, "the grandest for situation, the most romantic in]associations, the most distinctive and picturesque in details." " Quebec," says Joaquin Miller, " is the storehouse of American history, and the most glorious of cities,beautiful, too, as a picture."She stands at the very threshold of this strong and impatient New World, in this age of progressive activity and enterprise, like a little patch of mediaeval Europe, transplanted, it is true, upon a distant shore, but shutting out by her mural sur- roundings the influences that the whole of the surrounding conti- nent has failed to exercise upon her.There is scarcely a foot here which is not historic ground, which is not consecrated, by well-established fact or tradition, to the memory of deeds of heroism, of instances of undying piety and faith, from the scene of Champlain's landing in the Lower Town to found his infant colony, to the world-renowned Plains of Abraham on the heights above, where Wolfe died to gain, and Montcalm shed his blood in the vain endeavor to save, the half of a continent." The earliest explorers of the far West, European heroes of martial strife and strategy and their dusky chieftain allies, noble matrons and self-sacrificing missionaries, whose doings live for- ever in the burning pages of Parkman, Lever, Charlevoix, and Casgrain, have left behind them here monuments of their zeal forthe cause of religion and fatherland, or immortalized the ground which once they trod, the soil for which they fiercely contended, the spot where first they planted the symbol of their religion, or the dust which they reddened with their blood."Armed with a copy of the little guide-book from which the above extract is taken*, the.tourist will find his stay in the Gibraltar of America far too brief to enable him to take in all the attractions of the city and its environs, its many historic localities, its churches and convents, its university, with its valuable collection of old paintings and wellequipped library and museum, and the many beautiful drives, and excursions, by rail and steamboat, to the Falls of Montmorency, Lorette, La Bonne Ste.Anne, Levis, New Liverpool, St. Joseph, and the Island of Orleans.While taking in these and other attractions of the city and vicinity, the tourist may make his home in one of the most modern and most elegantly appointed hotels of the continent.Quebec's new hostelry, the Hotel Frontenac, commenced in 1892 and opened for the season of 1893, is due to the foresight and spirit of enterprise of the leading officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway.It occu- pies probably the finest hotel site in the world, on the far-famed Dufferin Terrace, under the shadow of the famous citadel, built by the Duke of Wellington, and yet from its high elevation over- looking the St. Lawrence and surrounding country for miles around, and stands where once stood the Chateau St. Louis, so famous in early Canadian history.It was erected by Champlain, the pious founder of Quebec, and later, was successfully defended against an English invasion by Count Frontenac, the French Governor, who, upon being summoned to surrender, told themessenger of the English Admiral to say that he would answer his summons by the mouths of his cannon.And he kept his word.The St. Louis and the Florence are also well-known and much frequented hotels."All Aboard" for Lake St. John.The through passenger trains for Lake St. John, to which hand- some parlor cars are attached, leave the neat and pretty new depot of the Quebec & Lake St. John Railroad, on St. Andrew street, at 8.30 A. m. daily during the summer season, thus affording ample time for passengers arriving the same morning by the early trains Chambers' Guide to Quebec.

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