THE PRINCE OF WALES'S TOUR.
After laying the foundation stone of the new Parliament House at Ottawa, the Prince of Wales held a levee, and then drove through the streets amid loud acclamations, and inspected the Canadian regiment en- camped in a field. After dejeuner, he went to the sides of the Chaudidre Falls, where by three wooden inclined planes rafts are conveyed from Chandler° Lake down to Ottawa river, a distance of sixty feet. The Prince and suite went down the slides, the people cheering lustily. He also rode on a raft down the " timber shoot," a contrivance for getting lumber down the falls of the Ottawa. The feat is thus described by the TIME8 correspondent-
" Of course every possible precaution was taken to insure strength and careful guides for the raft on which the Prince was to rush down the shoot. Only the immediate members of the suite and a few gentlemen, in all about twenty, were allowed to be on it. When these were fairly settled down, the Prince sitting on a raised plank, between the Doke of Newcastle and the Governor-General, the rope which held the mass of timber against the cur i
rent was cut, and instantly the raft began to move. At first it went with a slow, stately motion, but gradually as it entered the narrower parts of the shoot, where the incline began, the speed quickened, and every one held fast as the first jump and steep descent drew nearer. Before you could well say it was coming, the mass slid over the edge with an uneasy kind of gliding leap, and went rushing down faster and faster till there was another jump, and then a straight runwhichplunged the beams under water, wetting some of the suite to the knees, Quicker and quicker the banks flew by, al thronged with people cheering and waving handkerchiefs, -and faster and faster the raft plunged down, groaning and creaking, now half hidden by the boiling water, into which it dashed at the end of each shoot, gliding rapidly along the logs of the straight runs with jerks and thumps as if it was being forced over rocks, till it came to another jump and another steep incline, taking each one faster than the others in one grand headlong sort of flying whirl which gave a notion of irresistible, force, and made each passenger, as it were, a component part of raft and Rapids both. To go down the Rapids of the St. Lawrence is nothing, but to go down the Rapids of a timber shoot, to keep pace with the flying waters, and see them hissing and rushing up over the raft beneath your feet, is the most exhilarating adventure in all the repertoire of American travel. It is something which partakes of fly- ing and swimming ; the immense speed of the whole mass—the rush of the water, the succession of shoots ' stretching out before you like sloping steps of stairs, the delight of flying over these with the easy skim of a bird—the rough, long straights in which the raft seems to dive and founder, letting the water up beneath and over it behind till it is again urged forward, and then comes another incline of water which you whirl madly down as if you were in a swing. To steady yourself on the narrow plank amidships, and hold on with might and main as the timber snaps and works like a handle of reeds, gettting a momentary rest with each quick incline, and again thumping over the straights with sharp, uneasy, struggles, is to experience such a heap of new sensations as neither balloons nor divingsbells afford, such a whirl as only three-quarters of a mile down the great timber shoots of the Ottawa can ever give. All on the raft with the Prince, to whom (excepting the Governor-General) the sensation was as novel as it seemed beautiful and terrible, were delighted, and the only regret which his Royal Highness expressed when the raft at last did con- descend to stop in the centre of the river, below the Falls, was that the shoot was not at least a mile longer." At Toronto, the Orangemen had made arrangements to join the pro- cession with their insignia, but the Duke of Newcastle objected, and the Governor-General required the Mayor to advise him at Kingston, that the' party procession would be abandoned. Arrived at Kingston the Prince found the orangemen had erected two arches ; a refusal to land was the consequence, and, after lying off Kingston all night, the Prince proceeded on his way to Belleville. Before leaving, however, his Royal Highness expressed his regret to the American Volunteers that he was unable to receive them. Thither Mr. Flannigan, the leader, and some of the Orangemen followed ; but fortunately their advent was tele- graphed, and the train conveying the party being behind time, the reception was accomplished before their arrival. The news from King- ston created great excitement at Toronto, and the Orangemen declared they would follow the Prince everywhere, but some Americans in Canada protested that, in the event of their doing so, it must be by a short route over the. Niagara Falls.
The latest accounts from Toronto speak of the Prince's reception there, on the 7th instant, as exceeding any other for magnificence and enthu- siasm. The Orange demonstrations had been abandoned:
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