# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/Troubles on the St. Lawrence

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TROUBLES ON THE ST. LAWRENCE
THE St. Lawrence is a river of many mysteries and troubles. Blood has often mingled with its waters, the blood of French and English, Christian and savage, soldier and martyr. From the lakes to the gulf its surface has been vexed by the keels of fighting fleets, and its shores have echoed to the roar of cannon. So late as 1838 it was a scene of hostilities, for in that year the British ship Sir Robert Peel was burned among the ​Thousand Islands by a harum-scarum band of men who wanted to establish a republic in Canada.
"Bill" Johnson, leader of this company, kept out of sight for some time after, his daughter Kate rowing him from one island to another, and keeping him in food during the search that the Canadians made for him. Part of the time he was at the Devil's Oven. It is told of Johnson that he was trapped on Wells Island by Captain Boyd, of the English army. "I'm fairly caught," he confessed, "and you've had a long row after me, so you must be thirsty. Take a drink and rest yourself." The officer dropped upon a bench and took a good tug at the outlaw's flask, while Johnson lighted his pipe and, holding the coal in a tongs over a barrel, remarked, in a matter-of-fact way, "Shall I go with you, or will you stay and go to hell with me? This barrel is full of powder." The captain excused himself, and scrambled for his boats along with his men, for Johnson had put the coal on the barrel-head, and it was eating into the wood. In a minute there was a big explosion, and a great smoke rolled from the cave-mouth. Captain Boyd hoped that it meant the last of Johnson; but that reprobate was out of sight in a new hiding-place before the oars of the red-coats were fairly in the water.
These islands have been famed in Cooper's "Pathfinder" and in the verse of Thomas Moore, who also celebrates the village of Sainte Anne in his "Boat Song." Near Prescott is the windmill, ​now a light-house, where a company of "patriots," under lead of a Polish exile, held out against Canada for several days, in the belief that the province needed to be "liberated" from something or somebody, while many Americans sat watching on their own side of the river, occasionally saying "Hooray!" There are tales of perilous descents by fugitives and Indians of the rapids that tourists view languidly from steamer-decks. Even now the habitant on its banks shudders when an owl cries, for he remembers the stories told by his grandmother, in the firelight, of feux follets and loups garous, which are demons that watch for the souls of the unrepentant and the unbaptized. On the pass of the Long Sault, on the river's left bank, occurred one of the stoutest fights in history. Learning that a large war-party of Iroquois had set off to destroy the infant colonies of Montreal and Quebec, the Sieur des Ormaux, better known by his baptismal name of Dollard, hurried away to stop the advance, and at least gain time for preparation. He had only sixteen white men and two faithful Hurons, and his shelter was of the hastiest and slightest; yet for three days of hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness this Spartan band withstood the assault of at least five hundred savages, greedy for their blood, and, although every man in the defences died, the Indians were so convinced of the futility of war against so brave a people that they went back to their homes. In the stillness of the night ​is it the rumor of the rapids, making the Long Sault, that is heard, or is it the sound of battle that nature would forget but cannot while evil spirits dwell on earth?
Nor have all the wicked spirits run away from the travellers with red guide-books, nor hidden among the trees when they saw the train or steamer coming, nor covered their ears or glared in envy when they heard some frenzied stranger making remarks into a dilatory telephone. Old residents near the Cape of Crows will tell you that the blackbirds that flap and squall among the mists are devils and bring bad luck to sailors, while there are bigger devils in the clouds that swirl around the cape, and devils in the earth likewise, for this region is occasionally shaken by earthquake. In 1663 an earthquake along the north shore was attributed by the Indians near Montreal to the return of the spirits of their ancestors from the happy hunting-grounds. The poor souls wanted a change of diet. As there was not game enough for both the living and the dead, the Indians fired their muskets to scare their parents back again. And, sure enough, the dead and good Indians ceased from troubling after a few months, and went back to the Sand Hills. That was a year of great distress to the people along the river. Every time the earth shook some of them remembered that they had not said their prayers, and others hurried to confess that they had sold fire-water to the Indians. The frightened ​ones were either driven to drink or turned from all but enough of it. There were many land-slides, and the river ran white as far as Tadousac. "Meteors, fiery-winged serpents, and ghastly spectres were seen in the air; roarings and mysterious voices sounded on every side." The Pointe aux Trembles and Les Eboulements preserve in their names the record of these quakes, while, for strange reasons, the Isle of Orleans has been full of goblins ever since.
The Montagnais tell of a giant, Outikon, who, being evil, fled before the cross of the missionaries from Les Islets Machins, where another cannibal monster succeeded him, and found a home at Lake Mistassini, where the Nashkapiouts live, who never pray and never wash; and to show his rage at Christians he stamps his feet every now and again, shaking the hills to their foundations. It used to be said that there was a volcano on the Height of Land, south of Hudson Bay, and that the earth-quakes followed its eruption.
The various saints who are invoked on such occasions do not keep the imps from congregating about the Pointe de Tous les Diables in its glooms and storms. Behind this cape is Cartier's land of gold and rubies, peopled by white men clothed in wool. (Legendary vikings?) Farther north is a race that frightened back the first explorers, a people who had only one leg apiece and not a stomach among them all. They lived on scenery. Better ​such than some of the more usual red men of a later date. There were the Hurons and Senecas, for example, who, after living in peace together at Hochelaga for years, suddenly fell to cutting one another's weasands and barbering one another's hair. This was a little before Champlain's arrival, and the traditionary reason for it is that a Seneca chief had refused to allow his son to marry a Huron girl. In high wrath at this slight, the young woman promised herself to any one who should kill the old man, and on these terms she was won by a young brave of her own tribe; but in the war that followed the Hurons were nearly exterminated.
And what shadowy craft beat about the turbulent river, with its sea width of mouth, in night and storm, or flit among the fantastic pictures of the mirage! There is the Flying Dutchman, who has been known to put in among the bays in the access of a fearful thirst, and sail away again, gnashing his stomach with his fists and talking improper language. And there is Roberval, who ascended the Saguenay and never came down in the flesh. He, too, skims over the river, against the wind, and with no wind, And Henry Hudson, abandoned by mutineers, with his son and six faithful sailors, in his open boat, amid the icy waters that bear his name in mocking compensation for his suffering,—does he not work his way up the St. Lawrence when, on every twentieth year, he sets off to hold revel in his beloved Catskills? In autumn the giant rock ​of Percé, through whose now fallen arches aloops used to sail, looks down on a phantom ship that has been cruising up and down the bay since 1711. It is one of the ships of Admiral Hovenden Walker that was hurled in a gale against Cap d'Espoir,—ignorantly yet fitly Englished into Cape Despair. Walker had captured an old sea-dog, one Jean Paradis, and had ordered him to guide his ships to Quebec, that he might surprise the French in that stronghold. Paradis stoutly refused, and in the attempt to ascend the river not only the phantom bark but eight transports were smashed on the Isle of Eggs, and a thousand red-coats slept on the bottom that night. This ghostly ship had the captain's wife on board, and as it strikes the rock an officer and a woman in white are seen at the bow, clasped in each other's arms, while the air is filled with wailing as the form of the vessel cracks and fills. The rock itself, three hundred and fifty feet high, has its own "haunt,"—a water wraith who climbs to the top and cries among the flocks of sea-birds.
Something is remembered of old Gamache, the wrecker, who has not troubled mariners much, it is true, since they found him dead in his cabin on the Isle of Wrecks, but who had been seen entertaining the devil off Anticosti, and who when chased by government cutters appeared to envelop his boat and himself in blue flame and dance off across the river, regardless of call or shot.
​More dreaded than these spirits is the woman of the o'er-kind eyes. She, too, affects the region of the Percé Rock, and appears in the twilight putting off from shore in a light boat, rowed with a singularly noiseless stroke by a man whose face is never clearly seen. She asks a passing captain to give her fare as far as Quebec, and, as these river-men are seldom so pressed that they cannot slack up for a passenger, the skipper backs his mainsail and takes the woman aboard, while the ferryman who has brought her rows away into the mist. She is queerly dressed, and wears a blood-red scarf,—one that is yet no redder than her lips. And immediately the woman begins to make eyes at the captain. Her interest seldom fails of a return, for a tenderness toward the sex is a fatal weakness in sailors, and soon the two are deep in talk in the shadow of the sail. Whether it is that the captain does not see the green light in her eyes, the cat-like gleam that sends a shiver through the crew, or whether the vessel goes wide of her course because all eyes are on the woman, it certainly happens that before eight bells have gone for midnight on passing vessels the ship is pounding to pieces on a reef and with a shrill laugh the woman has disappeared.