Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/405

 MT. 40.] TO T. W. HIGGINSON. 379

TO T. W. HIGGINSON (AT WORCESTER).

CONCORD, January 28, 1858.

DEAR SIR, It would be perfectly practica ble to go to the Madawaska the way you pro pose. As for the route to Quebec, I do not find the Sugar Loaf Mountains on my maps. The most direct and regular way, as you know, is substantially Montresor s and Arnold s and the younger John Smith s by the Chaudiere ; but this is less wild. If your object is to see the St. Lawrence Eiver below Quebec, you will proba bly strike it at the Riviere du Loup. ( Vide Hodge s account of his excursion thither via the Allegash, I believe it is in the second Report on the Geology of the Public Lands of Maine and Massachusetts in 37.) I think that our Indian last summer, when we talked of going to the St. Lawrence, named another route, near the Madawaska, perhaps the St. Francis, which would save the long portage which Hodge made.

I do not know whether you think of ascend ing the St. Lawrence in a canoe ; but if you should, you might be delayed not only by the current, but by the waves, which frequently run too high for a canoe on such a mighty stream. It would be a grand excursion to go to Quebec by the Chaudiere, descend the St. Lawrence to the Riviere du Loup, and return by the Mada-