The picturesque StLawrence . orth of forest. XIII THE ST. LAWRENCE IN WINTER ABOVE Quebec the river is icebound fromearly December until April. Below Que-bec there is ice in plenty, too; but it does notfreeze hard and fast from shore to shore. Withthe ebb and flow of every tide the broken tViassesgo surging now down, now up; and while navi-gation on the lower river is not impossible, onlyone or two government boats continue other traffic is abandoned, and the ocean-going vessels do not resume their trips muchbefore the first of May; for there is a long after-math of winter in this g
The picturesque StLawrence . orth of forest. XIII THE ST. LAWRENCE IN WINTER ABOVE Quebec the river is icebound fromearly December until April. Below Que-bec there is ice in plenty, too; but it does notfreeze hard and fast from shore to shore. Withthe ebb and flow of every tide the broken tViassesgo surging now down, now up; and while navi-gation on the lower river is not impossible, onlyone or two government boats continue other traffic is abandoned, and the ocean-going vessels do not resume their trips muchbefore the first of May; for there is a long after-math of winter in this great waterway. Therivers quieter portions, and the various streamsand broad lakes that are tributary to it freeze toa great thickness. The ice breaks up at differenttimes in different localities, so that the series ofice-shoves the St. Lawrence experiencesextends over several weeks. As the ice crowdsalong down the channel it jams and piles upand often forms bergs of enormous size. At notime is the aspect of the river ?Jo The St. Lawrence in Winter 241 I chose to make a pilgrimage to this northernwaterway in February, because I had a fancythat then I would find winter most impressive—that all the accumulated snows of the precedingmonths would be on view, and that frost andkeen winds would be as rampant as they are inthe bitterest days of the season in Boston orNew York. But the valley of the St. Lawrencehas not, after all, a climate so radically differentfrom that of our adjacent states as we are in-clined to imagine. Spells of soft weather inFebruary are almost a certainty, and even aJanuary thaw is looked for with a good deal ofconfidence. But the natives all afiirm thatwinter does not relax its grip for good untilMarch seventeenth. I at first wondered whythey named this date with such exactness andassurance. When I asked for a reason theymentioned that the seventeenth was St. PatricksDay. So much warmth is developed on theoccasion that not even a Canadian winter ca
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