Ringfield A Novel

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE HOLY WATERS

"…… the sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion."

In a country of cascades, a land of magnificent waterfalls, that watery hemisphere which holds Niagara and reveals to those who care to travel so far north the unhackneyed splendours of the Labrador, the noble fall of St. Ignace, though only second or third in size, must ever rank first in all that makes for majestic and perfect beauty.

It is not alone the wondrous sweep and curve of tumbling brown water that descends by three horseshoe ledges to a swirl of sparkling spray. It is not alone the great volume of the dark river above sent over, thrust down, nor the height from which the olive is hurled to the white below. So, too, plunge and sweep other falls—the Grand Loup in Terrebonne, the Petit Loup in Joliette, the Pleureuse, the Grand Lorette, the Tuque, the big and little Shawenigan, the half-dozen or so "Chaudière," the Montmorenci or La Vache, but none of these can equal the St. Ignace in point of dignified, unspoilt approach and picturesque surroundings. For a mile above the cataract the river runs, an inky ribbon, between banks of amazing solitariness; no clearing is there, no sign of human habitation, hardly any vestige of animal life. The trees stand thick along the edges, are thick towards the high rocky table-land that lies on either side; it is, in short, a river flowing through a forest. And when it drops, it drops to meet the same impassable wooded banks; it is now a cataract in a forest. Rocks are turbulently heaped upon one hand; upon the other, the three great ledges meet the shock of the descending waters and define the leap by boldly curved thick masses of olive, topaz, and greenish jelly. Where it is brown, it is nearest the rocky bed; where olive, more water is going over; and where green, it is so solid that twice a yard measure alone will penetrate the reach of rock beneath. The white of its flowing spray is whiter than the summer cloud, and the dark green of the pines framing it, shows often black against the summer blue. Its voice—roar as of wind or steady thunder—calling always—has silenced other voices. Birds do not build, nor squirrels climb too near that deep reverberating note, although the blue heron, fearless, frequently stands in summer on the spray-washed rock and seems to listen. Below the filmy smoke of rainbowed arches there is quiet black water, with circles, oily, ominous, moving stealthily along, and below these—a quarter of a mile down—the rapids, swift, impetuous, flashing, ushering in the latter half of the St. Ignace, here at last the river of life and motion, bearing stout booms of great chained logs, with grassy clearings and little settlements at each side, curving into lilied bays, or breaking musically upon yellow beaches, a River of Life indeed, and no longer a river of Death and Negation!

For in the countryside, the paroisse of Juchereau de St. Ignace, the upper part or inky ribbon of the river was frequently called by that gloomy name; a Saguenay in miniature, icy cold, black, solitary, silent, River of Death, who shall live in sight of your blackness?...