The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-18 00:00:00

IRE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 18, 1860,

THE PRINCE'S VISIT TO CANADA

(From tho Special Correspondent of the Times.)
OTTAWA, CANADA WEST, SEPT. 3.
To continue my diary of the progress I must be-
gin with stating that his Royal Highness and suite
left Montreal on the morning of Friday the 31st,
at 8 o'clock. Notwithstanding the earliness of the
hour a good deal of public enthusiasm would doubt-
less have been manifested along his route to the
station, but it rained. It is taken quite as a matter
of course now that the rain is to attend at nearly,
all the ceremonies incident to the arrival, depar-
ture, and entertainment of his Royal Highness.
Processions under umbrellas, and Court suits and
uniforms swathed in macintoshes, have been the
normal state of things throughout from the first
day of the landing at Newfoundland down to his
arrival in this wild picturesque, most modern, and
most muddy capital of Canada. So the demonstra-
tion of popular feeling was rather damped out on
the morning of the departure from Montreal; for,
with whatever drizzle the weather may content
itself while the Prince remains at a town, it makes
no mistake at all about the matter when it heralds
his arrival or accompanies his departure. On those
occasions it may always be depended on for such
violent intensity as " the oldest inhabitant" has,
according to the colonial papers, declared repeatedly
he never saw before. The route the Prince took to
Ottawa was a sort of compound progress by rail
and boat alternately, though a mere nothing for
variety to the journey which he commences at 8
a.m. to-day, when he will have to scamper through
a wild untravelled country in a series of short stages
by carriage, rail, steamers, and canoes, emerging
at last upon Brockville, where he sleeps for the
night, to start at daybreak again to-morrow morn-
ing through the Thousand Islands for Kingston.
His route from Montreal was admirably arranged
to afford him the best and most picturesque view of
the country through which he passed. After once
leaving Montreal, with its quaint, tall, silent streets,
and marine limestone houses, there is very little
to see before you come to St. Anne's, and over this
part of the journey he accordingly went by
special train. The outlying country round Mon-
treal is not at all impressive. The land has all been
cleared, and has, accordingly, a close, well-shaven
aspect, the dull green uniformity of which is only
broken at rare intervals by rough timber hedges or
log huts, both of which seem about equally well cal-
culated for purposes of shelter. Now and then a
larger farmhouse than the rest was announced by
the hoarse screaming of the whistle, to drive the
cows off the line, or else a station was passed which
might with propriety have been used as a cowhouse,
if by any process known to carpenters it could only
have been made moderately weather-tight. But
beyond such poor stimulants to curiosity there was
nothing worth seeing, or at all calculated to inter-
rupt the dreary monotony of railway travelling
whether in Canada or the States.
At St. Anne's the Royal party alighted to pro-
ceed on board the steamer for Carillon, and at this
point there was a prospect worthy of attention, even
for those who had seen Halifax and St. John's, the
Saguenay, and the St. Lawrence. The St. Anne's
river is one of the most picturesque (at least at this
point) of all the many noble tributaries of the great
Canadian Father of Waters. The stream is wide,
dark, and rapid, hedged in by steep, lofty, richly-
wooded banks, and forcing a swift and devious way
through little nits and islands, all clothed with
trees down to the water's edge. A railway bridge of
singular beauty spans the stream, where two steep
headlands confine it to its narrowest limits, and
from this point the finest prospect can be gained.
You look down far beneath you on the quick black
sheet of water, closed in by hills and cliffs, and
studded over all its surface with beautiful little
islands, while higher up as on a slope is the summit
of the stream, marked by a dim, rough, tumbling
line of foam, where the rapids of St. Anne's, which
Moore has so immortalised in his Canadian boat-
song, begin their rush and whirl. As compared
with the rapids of the St. Lawrence, the great
breakers of the Long Sault, or the mighty rush of
the cascades, those of St. Anne's, of course, are no-
thing. But there is something wild, yet quiet in its
rich scenery, something in the equal solemn flow of the
rapids, which befits the plaintive music in which
Moore has sung them, and which makes the whole
scene seem not strange, but a beautiful prospect,
with which you were long familiar and had long
been parted from. From this, the quietest little
gem of Canadian scenery, his Royal Highness
went by steamer to Carillon. Here we again took
the railway across a wild, woody country, where,
amid the great forests of pine, the leaves of the
maple, already assuming their scarlet livery, tell
of the Indian summer being near at hand, and of
the woods arraying themselves in all the gorgeous
colours of Anierean scenery in the Fall. It is very
early in the season yet to see among the forests
here that rich confusion of bright colours of every
hue with which the almost Arctic winter of
Canada heralds its formidable approach. But the
late cold rains have hastened matters in the last
few weeks, and the deep green of the forests of
these regions is fast breaking into groups of reds
and yellows, and the flaunting fire weeds, wild
geraniums, and wood lilies arc nearly all withered
and gone.
After a run of 14 miles by rail the party- again
embarked on board the Phwnix and steamed away
to Ottawa. The whole day had been a sort of ex-
aggeration of April weather, with wind, hot sun,
and showers of heavy rain. But as the steamer '