Enterprise and Adventure/Over the Rapids
OVER THE RAPIDS.
On the 29th of April, 1810, a party of Englishmen embarked at Pointe du Lac, on Lake St. Frances, in Canada, in an American barge, or broad flat-bottomed boat, deeply laden with wood ashes, passengers, and baggage, with the intention of proceeding down the River St. Lawrence. The adventures of this little river vessel and its passengers have been related by one of the party in a narrative which, for exciting interest, may be compared with any of the most thrilling stories of disaster by wreck.
Above Montreal, for nearly a hundred miles, the River St. Lawrence, as is well known, is interrupted in its course by rapids, which are occasioned by the river being confined within comparatively narrow, shallow, rocky channels. Through these it rushes with great force and noise, and is agitated like the ocean in a storm. By some, these rapids have been admired for grandeur and appearance more than the Falls of Niagara. They are from half a mile to nine miles long each, and require regular pilots. On the 30th of April, the party arrived at the village of the Cedars, immediately below which are three sets of very dangerous rapids—the Cedars, the Split Rock, and the Cascades—distant from each other about eight miles. On the morning of the 1st of May, they set out from here. Their barge was very deep and very leaky; and the captain, a daring, rash man, refused to take a pilot. After they had passed the Cedar Rapid, not without danger, the captain called for some rum, declaring, at the same time, that all the powers could not steer the barge better than he did. Soon after this, the boat entered the Split Rock Rapids by a wrong channel, and, to their horror, the passengers found themselves advancing rapidly towards a dreadful watery precipice, down which they went. The barge slightly grazed her bottom against the rock, and the fall was so great as nearly to take away their breath. They here took in a great deal of water, which was mostly baled out again before they hurried on to what the Canadians call the "grand bouillie," or great boiling. In approaching this place, the captain let go the helm, saying, "Now for it; here we fill." The barge was almost immediately overwhelmed in the midst of immense foaming breakers, which rushed over the bows, carrying away planks, oars, and other articles. "About half a minute elapsed between the filling and going down of the barge," says the narrator of this story, "during which I had sufficient presence of mind to strip off my three coats, and was loosening my braces when the barge sunk, and I found myself floating in the midst of people and baggage. Each man caught hold of something: one of the crew seized me, and kept me down under the water, but, contrary to my expectation, let me go again. On rising to the surface, I got hold of a trunk, on which two other men were then holding. Just at this spot, where the Split Rock Rapids terminated, the bank of the river is well inhabited, and we could see women on shore running about much agitated. A canoe put off, and picked up three of our number, who had gained the bottom of the barge, which had upset and got rid of its cargo; these they landed on an island. The canoe put off again, and was approaching near to where I was, with two others, holding on the trunk; when, terrified with the vicinity of the cascades, to which we were approaching, it put back, notwithstanding my exhortations in French and English to induce the two men on board to advance. The bad hold which one man had of the trunk to which we were adhering subjected him to constant immersion, and in order to escape his seizing hold of me, I let go the trunk, and, in conjunction with another man, got hold of the boom, which, with the gaff and sails, had been detached from the mast to make room for the cargo, and floated off. I had just time to grasp this boom, when we were hurried into the cascades; in these I was instantly buried, and nearly suffocated. On rising to the surface, I found one of my hands still on the boom, and my companion also adhering closely to the gaff. Shortly after descending the cascades, I perceived the barge, bottom upwards, floating near me. I succeeded in getting to it, and held by a crack in one end of it; the violence of the water, and the falling out of the casks of ashes, had quite wrecked it. For a long time I contented myself with this hold, not daring to endeavour to get upon the bottom, which I at length effected, and from this my new situation I called out to my companion, who still preserved his hold of the gaff; he shook his head, and when the waves suffered me to look again he was gone. He made no attempt to come near me, being unable or unwilling to let go his hold, and trust himself to the waters, which were then rolling over his head."
The Cascades are a kind of fall, or rapid descent, in the river, over a rocky channel below; going down is called by the French, "sauter," to leap the Cascades. For two miles below the channel continues in an uproar, just like a storm at sea; and he was frequently nearly washed off the barge by the waves which rolled over it. "I now," continued the writer, "entertained no hope whatever of escaping; and although I continued to exert myself to hold on, such was the state to which I was reduced by cold, that I wished only for a speedy death, and frequently thought of giving up the contest as useless. My hands felt as if diminished in size one-half, and I certainly should (after I became very cold and much exhausted) have fallen asleep, but for the waves that were passing over me, which obliged me to attend to my situation. I had never descended the St. Lawrence before; but I knew there were more rapids ahead, perhaps another set of cascades, but at all events La Chine Rapids whose situation I did not exactly know. I was hourly in expectation of these putting an end to me, and often fancied some points of ice extending from the shore to the head of foaming rapids. At one of the moments in which the succession of waves permitted me to look up, I saw, at a distance, a canoe, with four men, coming towards me, and waited in confidence to hear the sound of their paddles; but in this I was disappointed. The men, as I afterwards learned, were Indians, who, happening to fall in with one of the passenger's trunks, picked it up, and returned to the shore for the purpose of pillaging it, leaving, as they since acknowledged, the man on the boat to his fate. Indeed, I am certain I should have had more to fear from their avarice, than to hope from their humanity; and it is more than probable that my life would have been taken, to secure them in the possession of my watch and several coins which I had about me."
The accident happened at eight o'clock in the morning; in the course of some hours, as the day advanced, the sun grew warmer, the wind blew from the south, and the water became calmer. The shipwrecked man then got upon his knees, and found himself in the small lake of St. Louis, which is about three to five miles wide, and with which he happened to be familiar. With some difficulty he got upon his feet, but was soon convinced, by cramps and spasms in all his sinews, that he was incapable of swimming any great distance, and he was then two miles from the shore. He was now going, he thought, with wind and current, to destruction; and though cold, hungry, and fatigued, was obliged again to sit down to rest, when an extraordinary circumstance greatly relieved him.
On examining the wreck, to see if it were possible to detach any part of it by which to steer, he perceived something loose entangled in a fork of the wreck, and so carried along. This he found to be a small trunk, bottom upwards, which, with some difficulty, he dragged up upon the barge. After near an hour's work, in which he broke his penknife whilst trying to cut out the lock, he made a hole in the top, and, to his great satisfaction, drew out a bottle of rum, a cold tongue, some cheese, and a bagful of bread and cakes, all wet. Of these he made a seasonable, though very moderate use; and the trunk answered the purpose of a chair to sit upon, elevated above the surface of the water. After in vain endeavouring to steer the wreck, or direct its course to the shore, and having made every signal in his power, with his waistcoat and other things, to the several headlands which he had passed, he fancied he was driving into a bay, which, however, soon proved to be the termination of the lake and the opening of the river, the current of which was carrying him rapidly along. He passed several small uninhabited islands, but the banks of the river appearing to be covered with houses, he again renewed his signals with his waistcoat and a shirt which he took out of the trunk, hoping, as the river narrowed, they might be perceived; but the distance was too great. The velocity with which he was going now convinced him of his near approach to the dreadful rapids of La Chine. Night was drawing on; his destruction appeared certain, but it did not, he said, disturb him very much; the idea of death had lost its novelty, and had become quite familiar. He even felt more provoked at having escaped so long to be finally sacrificed, than alarmed at the prospect. "Finding signals in vain," he continues, "I now set up a cry or howl, such as I thought best calculated to carry a distance, and, being favoured by the wind, it did, although at above a mile distant, reach the ears of some people on shore. At last I perceived a boat rowing towards me, which, being very small and white-bottomed, I had for some time taken for a fowl with a white breast, and finally I was taken off the barge by Captain Johnstone, after being ten hours on the water. I found myself at the village of La Chine, twenty-one miles below where the accident happened, having been driven by the winding of the current a much greater distance. I received no other injury than bruised knees and breast, with a slight cold. The accident took some hold of my imagination, and for seven or eight succeeding nights, in my dreams, I was engaged in the dangers of the Cascades, and surrounded by drowning men. My escape was owing to a concurrence of fortunate circumstances. I happened to catch hold of various articles of support, and to exchange each article for another just at the right time. Nothing but the boom could have carried me down the Cascades without injury, and nothing but the barge could have saved me below them. I was also fortunate in having the whole day; had the accident happened one hour later, I should have arrived opposite the village of La Chine after dark, and, of course, would have been destroyed in the rapids below, to which I was swiftly advancing. The trunk, which furnished me with provisions and a resting-place above the water, I have every reason to think was necessary to save my life. Without it, I must have passed the whole time in the water, and have been exhausted with cold and hunger. When the people on shore saw our boat take the wrong channel, they predicted our destruction; the floating luggage, by supporting us for a time, enabled them to make an exertion to save us; but as it was not supposed possible to survive the passage of the Cascades, no further exertions were thought of, nor indeed could they well have been made," Of the eight men who passed down the Cascades, none escaped or were seen again but the writer, who some time afterwards published his singular narrative in a Liverpool newspaper, by the editor of which it was vouched for as true in every particular.
It was at this place that General Amherst's brigade, coming to attack Canada, were lost in September, 1760, the French at Montreal receiving the first intelligence of the invasion by the dead bodies floating past the town. It was said that the pilot who conducted their boats, being secretly favourable to the French, had committed the same error as the captain of the barge in the above narrative. He had intentionally taken the wrong channel, and the other boats, following mechanically and close upon him, were all involved in the same destruction. No less than forty-six barges, seventeen whale-boats, one row-galley with eighty men, besides artillery, stores, and ammunition, were then swept down these terrible rapids, and entirely lost.