Note 96 — PETER KALM’s TRAVELS. (continued 2)

The water-fall near Montmorenci is one of the highest I ever saw. It is in a river whose breadth is not very considerable, and falls over the steep side of a hill, consisting entirely of black lime-slate. The fall is now at the bottom of a little creek of the river. Both sides of the creek consist merely of black lime-slate, which is very much cracked and tumbled down. The hill of lime-slate under the water-fall is quite perpendicular, and one cannot look at it without astonishment. The rain of the preceding days had encreased the water in the river, which gave the fall a grander appearance. The breadth of the fall is not above ten or twelve yards. Its perpendicular height Mr. Gaulthier and I guessed to be between a hundred and ten and a hundred and twenty feet; and on our return to Quebec, we found our guess confirmed by several gentlemen, who had actually measured the fall, and found it to be nearly as we had conjectured. The people who live in the neighbourhood exaggerate in their accounts of it, absolutely declaring that it is three hundred feet high. Father Charlevoix96 is too sparing in giving it only forty feet in height. At the bottom of the fall, there is always a thick fog of vapours, spreading about the water, being resolved into them by its violent fall. This fog occasions almost perpetual rain here, which is more or less heavy, in proportion to its distance from the fall. Mr. Gaulthier and myself, together with the man who shewed us the way, were willing to come nearer to the falling water, in order to examine more accurately how it came down from such a height, and how the stone behind the water looked. But, being about twelve yards off the fall, a sudden gust of wind blew a thick fog upon us, which, in less than a minute, had wet us as thoroughly as if we had walked for half an hour in a heavy shower. We therefore hurried away as fast as we could, and were glad to get off. The noise of the fall is sometimes heard at Quebec, which is two French miles off to the southward; and this is a sign of a north-east wind. At other times, it can be well heard in the villages, a good way lower to the north; and it is then reckoned an undoubted sign of a south-west wind, or of rain. The black lime-slate on the sides of the fall lies in dipping, and almost perpendicular strata. In these lime-slate strata, are the following kinds of stone to be met with.