Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/295

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ST. JOHN AND THE SOUTH COAST
243

land Heights past Riverview Park, with its stilted memorial to South African War heroes. At a point where the high, rocky banks of the stream are contracted to a width of less than five hundred feet, two splendid bridges span a restless chasm. From this vantage-point we may observe the spectacle of a river flowing three ways at every change of tide—downward, on a level and upward. The dignified St. John having throughout its course of four hundred and fifty miles received the tribute of countless minions in Maine and New Brunswick,—having drained great lakes and wide inlets, is confronted in its augmented majesty by a tortuous channel-gate at the very jaws of the Bay of Fundy. This were complication enough for a river that had been swollen, then abruptly compressed. But the out-fall of the St. John is still further harassed by prodigious tides that rise here to a height of twenty-five feet. An engineer who in 1761 witnessed the phenomenon of a river turned back upon its course twice in every day, reported: "The current runs down till half-flood, and up till half-ebb. The falls are smooth every half tide for fifteen to twenty minutes. The greatest rise at the rapids is equal to half the rise of the tide." At low tide, the piled-up waters of the river are higher than the sea. At full tide the incoming flood of Fundy is higher than the river. Therefore the fall at the gorge is down-stream when the surge is toward the sea, and up-stream