Brown waters, and other sketches

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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND

MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/brownwatersotherOOblal<rich

BEOWN WATERS
AND OTHEE SKETCHES

BROWN WATERS

AND OTHER SKETCHES.

BT

W. H. BLAKE

' All pleasures hut the angler's bring,
r th' tail., repentance like a sting.''

— Tho. Wkavbr.

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

OF CANADA, LTD., AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE

MCMXV

Copyright, Canada, 1915.

CONTENTS

PAGE.

I. Brown Waters 11

II. FoNTmALis 44

III. The Wing-footed or Shenting

One 73

IV. The Laurentides National Park 98
V. A Tale op the Grand Jardin 144

VI. Bullets and their Billets 162

VII. A Christmas Jaunt 199

VIII. Le long du Sentber 229

M312331

With acknowledgments to the Uni-
versity Magazine, where some of these
sketches have appeared.

To

the Companion who knows how to go
light and fare hard, who is friendly with
the rain, and finds no road too long.

Malbaie, May, 1915.

BEOWN WATERS
AND OTHER SKETCHES

BROWN WATERS

Mist-wreathed lakes, with the white
throat piercing the dawn ; or dark under
the noon-day breeze ; or flaming to the
western sky: the many-noted murmur
of water running swiftly over little
stones : dim thunder of rapid, swelling
and dying : sweet breath of a clean and
wholesome world. These kind memory
brings to us, — ^with the very feel of the
air, the wind's caress, the sound of its
going in the trees.

Beneath the snows of full thirty
winters, but not buried too deeply for
a swift resurrection, lies that evening
when you fished on and on, till the glow
faded above the northern hills and the
river lost shore-lines in the dusk. How
11

BEOWN WATBES

chill it was as you waded over knee to
reach the middle of the pool! How
cheerily the camp-fire lighted up the
tent, and the group at the door whose
calls to sup you heeded not ! Your dog-
ged fly fell farther and farther, reveal-
ing itself where the surface still held a
remnant of light, till, when hope was
perishing, came the answer that awoke
the pulse, — the strike of something huge
and invisible, — ^the slow retreat with
cautious heel sounding the way, — ^hails
for help which left the frying-pan de-
serted in a scurry for landing nets, — a
sudden flaming of birchen torches to aid
in play and gaffing, — the triumphal pro-
gress up the bank with your first six-
pounder !

The kind old uncle, excited as your-
self, harks back to unregenerate boy-
hood with his '* 'Fore God, Bill, he's as
big as a pig!" The man of science and
slow speech weighs him on every scale
in camp, measures length and depth and
12

BROWN WATERS

girth, works out an equation, undis-
tressed by cube-roots, and at last con-
fides to his pipe the awaited word,
**That . . . is the . . . largest trout
. . . I ever saw."

God bless all kind uncles who take
small boys fishing ! I suspect that their
own young hearts once thumped with
delight at such invitations, and that
they do but repay debts to an earlier
generation. It is not a small thing to a
lad that he feels himself at the whim of
his elders. They suppose him not to
*' understand" the whys and wherefores
of things, but in truth he does under-
stand, and very well indeed, that he is
often invited to content himseK with
mere shifts and evasions. Slights to
his intelligence must he endure, for
convention denies him the right of equal
speech. It would be too dreadfully sub-
versive of authority were he permitted
free utterance to his discontent. Sup-
pose that he should venture to brighten

2 13

BROWN WATERS

up a controversy by tumbling into it a
few modern ideas, as thus — '^You take
advantage of your age, measuring it in
your convenient way by years alone. It
is true that you are forty and I fourteen,
but, so far as I can discover, intellectual
development ceased with you a quarter
of a century ago. Come then, let us
reason together as contemporaries. If
your added years have brought you
anything more valuable than a certain
perf ectness of low cunning, — ^the adroit-
ness in attaining ends and avoiding
consequences of the old dog-fox, you
will be the better able to explain and
support the course of action that you
propose for me. To both of us alike the
interior angles of a triangle are neither
miDre nor less than two right angles, also
two and tWo make four, so you may pro-
ceed on the assumption that I possess
a competent apparatus for criticism. I
promise you an attentive, and even a
sympathetic hearing. On your part I

14

BEOWN WATERS

desire an assurance that my autonomy
will be respected"! It is to be feared
that the sounder the psychology and
logic, the surer the licking! Perhaps
things are better as now they are
ordered, but at least it cannot be amiss
to recall with gratitude the warmth
which suffuses a boy at being talked to
and treated as a reasonable being, —
delivery for him from a bondage that
makes "the happy days of childhood"
not the least miserable we spend in a
world scarcely overflowing with joyous-
ness.

But memory is able to respond to still
greater demands. Do you not recall the
middle joint and tip of an old bait rod,
fitted with a cross-piece of wood in lieu
of reel, and the July day when it jerked
ashore two dozen fingerlings? There
was one tremendous chap who weighed
nearly quarter of a pound, with such a
yellow belly. He came from a hole under
the bank where the water must have

15

BEOWN WATERS

been two feet deep, and the wonder of
it was that the uncle missed him. When
the fish were unbent, — for they stiffen
into the oddest curves in one's pocket, —
and were packed in grass and ferns, his
place was not at the top of the uncle's
basket, but at the very bottom, that
amazement and delight might be the
greater on the part of the women-folk.
Long afterwards (you will remember)
three little corpses made themselves
known in your waistcoat, where they
had lingered overlooked when coat and
trouser pockets were emptied of their
spoil.

At the age of nine (circa) you had
taken a full pass and honour course in
the finding, choosing, feeding and car-
ing for worms, and the manner of im-
paling them with economy and effect.
Post-graduate research had revealed
where lively and excellent ones may be
secured under the right kind of stones
along the edge of a stream, when the

16

BROWN WATERS

home supply fails. A page of writing
would not convey this knowledge. Every
student must discover for himself just
what the stones that form the roof of a
worm's house look like. They are gen-
erally so big that one can barely move
them, and you have to be pretty nippy
when your stone is overturned, for the
beasts love to deny you as much of them-
selves as they can, fairly dashing into
their tunnels and getting a purchase
there with heads or tails, and nothing
can be more annoying than to lose the
half of a good worm.

There was a sunshiny day on a larger
stream when the water lay cool and dark
under the apron of a dam, and you
found that a lad could insinuate himself
behind the flow at the expense of a brief
shower-bath. Among the trout lying
there in the shadow was a veritable half-
pounder, who showed the craftiness of
his years in stripping the hook three
times before you had him fast. This

17

BEOWN WATEES

brave fellow made a compelling rush for
the pool, — you following in such a com-
motion of fish and boy that you were
reproved for conduct unbecoming a
fisherman. The reproof was worse than
the ducking, but its bitterness was tem-
pered by the knowledge that the fish was
your sure prize did you but lie upon it
till life was extinct.

Another mountain brook of the bait
fishing days has a short and merry life.
The sea awaits it eighteen hundred feet
below, and but ten miles from its birth-
place : so does it hasten to the meeting.
In three leaps, one after other, the
white water falls two hundred feet to
dark pools, where the masses of eddying
froth look like that unfiUing pudding
confected of white of egg and apples
and air. At the first plunge a pot has
been hollowed out in the granite with
high sheer sides, unbroken save at the
narrow gateway where the stream
passes out to the next descent.

18

BROWN WATERS

This virgin spot was left unfished,
for the bed of the cataract was
the only path to it, but the idea of
attempting an assault was too enticing
to be abandoned. On a day of low water
a narrow and sloping ledge disclosed
itself which seemed to be accessible
from above. One who did not decline
any posture, or regard himself as barred
of any hold, might pass along this to a
point where a cautious drop would land
him on reasonable scrambling ground.
So much for getting down. The return
was not greatly considered, because
someone would be sure to come with a
rope if you were stuck below.

Circling mist continually refreshed
the ferns and mosses that found foot-
hold on the wet walls. Stray drops from
the fall stung like shot. The chasm was
thunderous with vibrations that made
one feel dizzy and insecure. Far over-
head the birches, fringing the blue
round of sky, waved in an unf elt wind.

19

BROWN WATERS

It was good to win back to the sun-
light, knowing that the thing had been
done, — a heavy basket to prove the wet-
ting of a line in those coveted waters.

Bait fishing merged into fly fishing
days. The ' ' ram 's horn, ' ' a two handed
greenheart with a double warp in the
second joint, passed on as a fit weapon
for a boy of fourteen ; a brass reel that
went complainingly and by jerks; flies
of many sizes, the outcasts from many
fly-books : such the equipment, and only
zeal to make up for its deficiencies and
for lack of skill. In those days the boy
of the party had a place firmly assured
to him in the background, where he was
much encouraged to adorn himself with
modesty and silence, yet was he never
denied the activities of paddling canoes
or poling rafts while his betters fished :
— capacities in which, by the way, it was
none too easy to give satisfaction. A
**plop" of the paddle, a bang on the side
of the canoe, a swing of the craft

20

BROWN WATERS

towards or away from a risen fish, and
he would not be disappointed of a suit-
able commentary upon his splendid, un-
failing endowment of stupidity. This
abounding quality had a chance to dis-
close itself also in the netting of fish.
What can be more annoying than to lose
a good trout after you have hooked him
with difficulty, played him carefully,
and brought him exhausted to the side
of the canoe ? Your part is performed,
your duty done ; all further responsibil-
ity rests upon the boy, whom you will
assist in his task with a stream of coun-
sel. Should he fail through precipitancy
or undue slowness, or through attempt-
ing to net by the tail instead of the head,
or by the head when it was an obvious
case for the tail exception, or if he
touches the line, or doesn't touch it when
anyone but a fool would have seen that
it was the right thing to do, — ^why there
and then and in every event you have
your boy, and you must indeed be a per-

21

BEOWN WATEES

son of little ingenuity if you cannot
fasten the whole black crime upon his
little soul.

But there are times, in the heat of the
day, when a boy is invited to link to-
gether the morning and the evening
rises, and very early hours when his
elders unaccountably fail to carry out
the overnight programme of *'up at
four," and leave him free of the lake.
Then the old ram's horn hurtled out a
fly to port and starboard which might
deceive a few unsuspicious trout. Little
green dog-eared note-books record in an
unformed hand catches of a dozen here,
a dozen there, with remarks as to wind
and weather, height of water, stage of
the moon and flies that found favour.
The yellow pages give crude plans of
lakes, with crosses to mark the good, and
double crosses the very good places.

Now and then, and doubtless as often
as deserved, someone who was once a
boy himself and remembered how it felt

22

BEOWN WATBES

lent you a better rod, and Ms advice
upon the management of it. When the
line cracked like a whiplash it was he
who taught you to count **one" for the
forward cast, "two and" for the back
cast, so that the fly might have time to
straighten out, — to use the wrist and
spare the arm, to make the rod work by
checking it near the perpendicular, to
strike reel down and play reel up, to cast
above and not at the water, how to out-
manoeuvre a wind or get line away with
trees behind you, to coax a short-rising
fish, to tie a fly and make a fisherman's
bend, that haste is of the devil and does
not make for speed, why science as well
as humanity bids you kill your fish when
taken. ' ' Taught, ' ' did I say : rather put
you in the way of learning, for a life-
time is not likely to exhaust the theory
and practice of fishing.

The days came when you were on
your own, and the chase of the fabulous
trout began. What planning, scheming

23

BROWN WATEES

and bargaining for expeditions to some
remote lake which rumour filled with
expectant fish the length of one's arm!
How much less the pleasure of it had
you been able to command all to your
liking, magnificently, with a wave of the
hand ! It was well for you then to learn
and lay to heart that the money we do
not spend buys for us the choicest of our
possessions. An easy economy was to
walk rather than drive over such roads
as led towards, but never to your des-
tination. A haycart carried impedi-
menta and canoe so far as mortal wheels
could go ; thenceforward you were your
own guide, motive power and maid-of-
all-work. The dunnage was packed in
bags to keep it dry and render it port-
able by strap on head, and the frugal
camper may like to know that a flour
sack, anointed with boiled linseed oil,
makes a better waterproof bag than the
shops supply at five times the price;
take you care, however, to give it some

24

BROWN WATEES

days of air and sun after oiling, or the
risk is run of spontaneous fire. Only
the indispensables went with you, for
there is no better corrective of the tend-
ency to add those things which ''may
come in handy," than the knowledge
that they will travel on your own back,
sustained by your own legs.

Sometimes the lake was found ; some-
times the forest kept its secret ; seldom
did the fabled waters yield even a three-
pound trout; never were the toils re-
gretted. Who goes out into the wilder-
ness goes not in vain if he see naught but
a reed shaken by the wind. Do not the
keener disappointments of life flow
from attainment rather than failure ?

No case of a fisherman striking for
a shorter day, or objecting to overtime
work, is discoverable in labour statis-
tics. He knows not the hours, nor con-
cerns himself with the devices that
measure them. At sunrise he sallies out
to fish till breakfast, and suddenly it is

25

BROWN WATERS

ten o'clock. The evening rise holds him
till his flies cannot be seen, but only the
broken reflections where they fall: an
expanse of time has slipped away which
would have served to carry him, on
leaden wing, through a penitential
round of duties, — calls, teas, a family
dinner, — ^he has not noted its passage.
In the first keenness of the opening
season, and where the trout were always
coming, it seemed to us but a small affair
to stand on a raft from rising till setting
sun, but I remember the happening of
a strange thing afterwards. One of two
stumbled ashore and fell: where he fell
there he lay.

**Why seek your ease, friend, with
fish to clean and balsam to gather?"

*' Because my absurd legs refuse any
longer to do my bidding!"

The science of fishing can be had
from books, the art is learned by the
catching and the losing of fish. Some
knowledge of the science adds immeas-

26

BEOWN WATERS

urably to the pleasure of the sport, but
the practitioner is the man to back for
score. Between the skilled and the very-
unskilled fisherman there is the widest
discrepancy. Of two rafts, each with
two rods aboard, that covered the same
ground for the same length of time, one
returned with six trout, the other with
eighteen dozen ! Therefore, in forming
an opinion of a water from description,
the rating of the observer is not the least
important thing to have in mind.

A much-fished lake near Murray Bay
has yielded good catches for at least half
a century, but, being deep, it is capri-
cious during the heats of summer. Those
who encounter disappointment some-
times fancy that they have missed the
lucky spot where others had better for-
tune. One fair fisherwoman, losing
patience, demanded in plain terms to be

taken to the place de Monsieur X .

The old gardien met the request by
shaking his grizzled head, gravely, cour-

27

BROWN WATERS

teously: — ^^Mademoiselle, la place de

Monsieur X se trouve dans sa

poignee!''

The water of this lake is so clear that
you can see the fish stir, well below the
surface, and it is plain that the motions
of rod and arm are visible to them, for
unless at dusk or in windy weather, they
will only rise to a far-thrown fly that
falls with some delicacy. In another
lake, of such marvellous translucency
that the pebbles on the bottom can be
counted as you float five fathoms over
them, it is scarcely worth while attempt-
ing to fish in the daytime. Those who
have studied the caprices of its herring-
like trout, recommend the uncomfort-
able hour of two o'clock in the morning
as the best in the twenty-four.

Lakes like these are exceptions in a
country whose waters take colour from
the peaty soil, from the mere tinge that
gives a dusky uncertainty in the deeper
places, running through many shades to

BROWN WATERS

the prof oundest blackness. Sometimes,
again, you will find a quality of dark
transparency through which the gleam
of a fish's side may be seen as he turns,
and sometimes an opacity which the eye
cannot at all penetrate. But dearest to
the fisherman's heart is the honest
brown water, natural and proper home
of the trout, — ^turning the sands beneath
to gold, of patterns that ever change and
fleet when the sun strikes through the
ripple.

The wisdom of many fishermen as to
weather has been garnered into a book ;
the sum of it, as one reverently admits,
is very wise indeed. Hearing, grow
wise also, so will you not be without
guidance in cold or heat, rain wind or
snow, when the flesh protests and the
spirit wavers. The weather for catching
fish is that weather, and no other, in
which fish are caught.

It seemed against reason to desert the
fireside when a northerly gale was bitter

3 29

BROWN WATERS

with stinging rain, but on such a day, in
a punt hardly forced by two men against
wind and sea, the white water thrashed
with a scant dozen feet of line, we fell
upon the fish in mid-lake, where never
a great trout had been risen before, and
killed eight that ran from two to five
pounds, in such time as was needed to
play them.

Another afternoon I recall, when it
blew so strongly out of the north that
the waves of a tiny lake again and again
nearly swamped us, when not the
thinnest wisp of cloud showed upon the
arch of blue throughout the long sum-
mer day, and everywhere the trout rose
as if they were never to see fly again, —
great fellows that ran and fought and
leaped till the wrist was tired with the
playing of them.

A famous pool, that has filled many a
page of a record book, is in best fettle
when the weather, as runs the old saw,
is ^^good for neither man nor beast,''

30

BROWN WATERS

and I have known trout rise merrily in
the white smother of May and Septem-
ber snowstorms.

The fact is that they may come at any
hour of the day or night, without wind
or with it, and that from any airt, in
heat or frost or thunder; or they may
deny you when every circumstance
seems to be most propitious. Nothing
so absurd is intended as that one kind of
weather is not better than another. Cer-
tain conditions are generally good, and
others are generally bad, but much of
the interest of the sport depends upon
those exceptions to rule which permit
hope and impose unresting vigilance.
Prolonged types of weather tend to
make fish lethargic, and a change, even
for the worse, is likely to render them
active. Where they have become biases
and uninterested, sunshine after lower-
ing skies, coolness after heat, a change
in the level of the water, anything that
breaks the monotony of their lives will
stir them.

31

BROWN WATERS

Not speaking absolutely (as who
would dare to do on such a subject?), it
may be said that trout are ready to feed
where and when experience tells them
food is to be had, if nothing hints that
danger is afoot. The fisherman himself
they do not fear, but his movements
probably suggest the presence of their
known enemies of the air or the land, —
ospreys, gulls, loons, kingfishers, bear,
otter, pekan. There is a discoverable
cause for their place and disposition at
any time, a cause based upon the facts
of their existence, but the difi&culty is to
find and follow the clue.

Sometimes the process of reasoning,
or instinct if you prefer it, seems plain
enough ; for example, every spring trout
re-educate themselves, and rather slow-
ly, to the taking of food on the surface.
It is a week or more after the hatch
begins before there is anything like a
free rise at flies or their imitations. As
though remembering the icy barrier

32

BROWN WATERS

that has confined them for half the year,
they hesitate to launch into the air, and
make but timid essays. A little later
they will leap with boldness a foot out
of water to seize their chief dainty, the
May-fly. Conversely this habit of feed-
ing asserts itself, but only occasionally,
after the reason for it no longer exists.
The fish are then in a lower stratum of
water, intent on other food; something
must happen to direct their attention
again to the surface. Later still, when
on the shallows spawning, the fly is
easily forced upon their notice and they
will take it greedily, but the poor, life-
less creatures are then unworthy of be-
ing caught or eaten.

Extremely sensitive to vibrations,
even a slight earthquake will put the
trout down more quickly and surely
than thunder. Though the observations
only extend to two instances, the conclu-
sion is in accord with the fact noted by
Mr. Seth Green that fish in an aquar-

33

BROWN WATERS

imn, while not affected by the loudest
noise, are disturbed and alarmed by a
mere tap on the glass.

Association with men who catch fish
for a living, without any great particu-
larity as to the means, introduces one to
the dodges of the poacher, — ^the deadly
** otter" and the manner of its use, the
nefarious *' devil," how to sink the fly
and what to sink it with, the virtues of
a well-adjusted fin, the way to guddle a
trout or land him without a net, how to
discover whether big fish are present
that will not show themselves for the fly.
There is a certain bait that no trout can
resist for a moment, that must fill a bas-
ket when every other allurement fails.
It is, — ^but I think that perhaps it would
be going just a little too far to tell. I
don't use it, and as an honest man,
neither would you. The information is
then of no practical value, unless you
are in need of yet another temptation,
that your moral fibre may be strength-
ened by resisting it.

34

BEOWN WATEES

Killing trout easily, without exercise
of wits, is but a dull business. Soon you
grow to appreciate the fish that have
cost you something ; — the brace of three-
pounders that came at the end of long
casting over untried waters; the great
fellow that was the sole reward of a two
days' paddle ; the coy monster for whom
you changed the fly seven times, — rest-
ing him like a salmon betweenwhiles ;
the one well-shaped and vigorous fish
from the lake placed, or rather mis-
placed, by tradition in a fold of the hills,
which it took three days to find; the
dozen of feeding fish that you managed
to get a quick line over; yes, even the
immense unknown that followed in your
deliberate fly for thirty feet, with the
wave of a submarine above his nose,
turned slowly, majestically, and disap-
peared forever !

There is nothing novel in the observa-
tion that the ways of women are strange.
Timid-bold: hardy cowards: angels

35

BROWN WATERS

rushing in where fools fear to tread. So
is it of fish. Terrified by the least move-
ment of the arm, shadow of rod and line,
an incautious footfall, touch of paddle
on gunwale. In another mood alarmed
by none of these, and perhaps seeking
shelter from the sun under your very
canoe. Where a cold mountain brook
mingles with a river is the pool of Les
Erables. Fishing at the meeting of the
waters, from a canoe held in mid-
stream, certain great trout were stirred
but would take none of the flies offered
them. Kneeling there and covering the
surface methodically, the idea slowly
emerged above the plane of conscious-
ness that something was touching my
left hand which lay in the water beside
the canoe, — a bit of smooth drift-wood
perhaps, gently agitated by the current.
After a little time some animation in
the movement led me to bend over and
look. Believe it or not as you will, but
one of the big fellows that I was trying
36

BROWN WATERS

to lure to the fly forty feet away was
nuzzling my thumb in the friendliest
manner. If the hand had been slipped
quietly back to the gill he could have
been gripped and lifted out by one will-
ing to abuse his confidence so shabbily,
but, at so surprising a sight, the arm was
raised and the fish sank. I go some way
towards proving the truth of the story
by refusing to round it to the perfection
of which it is obviously capable.

I remember casting long over a salmon
that lay in four feet of water, and either
was asleep or of a very churlish disposi-
tion, for he did not show the civility of
the slightest acknowledgment. Tired
of changing the fly, I waded out with
the half -formed idea of kicking him,
and got far enough for the purpose, but
found that it would be unwise to attempt
this when standing nearly waist deep in
a stiff current. As the fly dragged in
from a farther cast he took it, almost
between my legs, and a very pretty
37

BROWN WATERS

twenty-two pounder he was in spite of
his lack of manners.

Certainly fish are sometimes encour-
aged by disturbances. A companion
once improved his sport remarkably by
upsetting himself, canoe, gaffman, rod,
basket and landing net, into the middle
of a quiet pool, and I recall a superb
trout of nearly seven pounds weight
that rose immediately after a young
lady, with surprising aim, had hurled a
sardine can into the most sacred spot on
the river. It might be found effective
to pelt indifferent fish with stones as the
practice is in Scotland, but it may be
that the Canadian sense of humour is
insufficiently developed for this.

A very distinguished sportsman was
having a day on the Jupiter river in
Anticosti. Salmon were there and in
plenty, but the air was still and the sky
cloudless. The fisherman had been peg-
ging away long and fruitlessly in the
blazing sun when his host arrived.
38

BEOWN WATERS

''Je crois, Monsieur, qu'il ne vaut pas
la peine de continuer/'

''Mais oui, Excellence, on vous fera
une brise artijicielle/'

Two men were sent across the river
to cut young spruces, and with these
they proceeded to agitate the water
rhythmically till a very pretty ripple
covered the pool. The counterfeit was
accepted : forthwith the salmon began to
rise as though Nature herself had inter-
posed a screen between them and the
sun : the day was redeemed.

Fishing everywhere and always, you
will not go without reward. At the end
of long dead-waters a river turns sharp-
ly and gathers for a plunge of a mile
through the confining hills. My friend
was taking his turn on the beautiful
stretch of water above, where the large
trout are commonly found, and I was
working down from boulder to boulder
towards the beginning of the rapid.
Neither experience nor Indian tradi-
39

BROWIsr WATERS

tion, which is trustworthy within cer-
tain limits, held out hope in that quar-
ter. Trout of size, unlike salmon, do not
commonly harbour in the swift draw at
the tail of a pool, where exertion is
needed to maintain their position. Cast-
ing a little perfunctorily, it is to be
feared, and often glancing up stream
for the returning canoe, I was only kill-
ing time till they came to ferry me over
to camp. At an awkward corner, where
one would have to take to the steep bank
and force a way through undergrowth,
I hesitated. There was but one short
cast left above the broken water, dark-
ness was falling, hunger gnawed, clearly
it was not worth the uncomfortable
scramble, so — I went.

A rise! Again, and the barb went
home in something that gave as little to
the strike as though the fly were fast in
the bottom of the river. Instantly he
was off, — the weight of the stream be-
hind him, the reel pitching the highest
40

BROWN WATERS

note in its gamut. Before the run could
be elieeked he was in the grip of the
rapid with the reel nearly bare, and
tackle was tried to the uttermost to hold
him, and work him into easier water.
When a little line had been won back he
leaped clear, made another dash down
river, and all was to be done again. No
trout of his weight — within an ounce or
two of five pounds — ever made a freer,
bolder fight. This fish and seven others
were only part of the recompense
awarded to chuckle-headed persistency,
for the spot remains worthy of a visit at
a certain stage of the water, and no other
I have seen gives so fit a setting to the
capture of a trout. Here it was, in a
later year, that one larger by a quarter
of a pound, and as full of activity and
resource, died most gallantly after tak-
ing his full twenty minutes by the
watch. . . . On many a siumner day
the river will run as then, flawed by the
wind, carrying in its bosom reflections
41

BROWN WATERS

of mountain-peak and cloud, but she
who sat, head in hands, making part of
it all has gone to the far folk, and one
more gentle ghost fills a place by the
camp-fire where they sit who have lived.

When the sparks go up what songs
and stories do the trees crowd closer to
hear ! What debate on old themes ever
new ! From the habits of fish, their dis-
positions anadromous or katadromous,
one slips easily to the destiny of our
race, for who knoweth the spirit of man
that goeth upward, and the spirit of the
beast that goeth downward to the earth?
**0f providence, foreknowledge, will,
and fate ;

Pix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge
absolute.''

Strike in where you will and thresh
away till the red logs fall asunder, and
someone, rolling into his blanket, gives
the signal to knock out pipes and take a
last drink from the pail.
42

BROWN WATERS

The hooting of an owl, as he draws
nearer and nearer, curious at the fire,
the changeful murmuring of brown
waters, these but make prof ounder the
peace of the hills.

43

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To THE north of Quebec and at three
thousand feet above sea level the Sep-
tember nights are bitter cold, and a col-
lapsible stove, weighing perhaps four or
five pounds, is a necessity in camp. The
tent which without it would be a damp
and freezing cavern, becomes a most
cheerful and comfortable lodging, an
ambulatory home in the wilderness
where shelter and dryness and warmth
await one.

While the fire crackles, and the stove
grows red-hot, the three messieurs of
the party on their sapin couches smoke
and talk endlessly of fish and fishing.
By how many camp-fires are the same
questions propounded, and who shall

44

FONTINALIS

solve them ? Do the Laurentian waters
contain more than one species of fon-
tindlis, or may all the variations in
colour, form and size be accounted for
by differences of environment % Are the
heavy fish with underhung jaw, which
the habitants call iecs croches, merely
old trout, and at what age and why did
they begin to leave their fellows behind
in point of stature ? How comes it that
in one water the fish never exceed a cer-
tain size, while in another, where the
conditions appear to be no more favour-
able, a certain small proportion grow
indefinitely? May it be that the half-
pound trout and the five-pounder, which
you take in two consecutive casts, are of
the same age, and simply represent dif-
ferent degrees of ichthyic prosperity?
Granting that one fish comes into the
world better fitted than another for the
struggle of life, is the only other element
of importance the quantity and quality
of available food? Is the very large
4 45

FONTINALIS

trout one that has begun life with a
superior mental and physical equip-
ment, has been favoured by fortune, has
made the most of his opportunities, and
has early learned to prey upon his kind '?
Given such conditions how long will this
lord of his tribe continue to grow, and
what size will he attain?

The very word *' trout" is one that
cannot be used without apology and ex-
planation. It is commonly known that
the brook trout of North America, sal-
velinus fontinalis, is of the charr and
not of the trout family, but the name is
probably too firmly fixed to be dislodged.
More unfortunately still the word is
ignorantly or carelessly used to cover all
the native charrs, including among
others the salmon trout, namaycush and
siscowet, the different species of salve-
linus, and the true indigenous trout of
the west, irideus. To complicate the
matter further a host of local names are
in use, so that where fishermen from dif-
46

FONTINALIS

f erent parts of the country meet and
compare notes, the first step must be to
settle upon a meaning for the terms
employed. How embarrassing then for
the sportsman, familiar with the proper
application of these names beyond seas,
who finds charr called ^^ trout," salmon-
trout * ^ salmon, ' ' bison * ' buffalo, ' ' wapiti
**elk," and ruffed grouse ^* partridge"!

The North American brook trout does
not seem to have prospered in European
waters, and more the pity, as he is a
beautiful fish and a game one. The
writer may be unfair to the brown trout,
but he ventures the opinion that fon-
tinalis takes the fly better, fights harder,
is more resourceful, and must be given
preference on the table. Many in-
stances come to mind of fish that played
for half an hour or longer, and fully
occupied the angler's attention for every
moment of the time.

Upon the difficult questions of growth
and maturity some guesses may be
47

FONTINALIS

hazarded. Where trout are supplied
with all the food they can assimilate and
every condition is favourable, they will
attain a weight of three pounds in as
many years, but what takes place in cap-
tivity gives little or no clue to the rate
of increase when they have to fend for
themselves. An instance may be record-
ed that shows what are the possibilities
of growth. Among the thousands of
lakes in the Laurentian country, there
are few indeed that do not carry trout.
One lake there was which seemed to be
absolutely barren, although it contained
plenty of food, and the reason for this
unusual condition of affairs was a very
obvious one. The small stream which
flowed out of it fell abruptly two hund-
red feet, and fish could not ascend it,
nor were there any communicating
waters above. The owner of this pre-
serve caused a number of small trout to
be carried up from below and liberated.
The age of these transplanted fish is a

48

FONTINALIS

matter of conjecture, but in point of size
they perhaps averaged nine or ten
inches. Two years later three-pound
trout were taken from the water thus
stocked. The sequel is interesting. In
the following season the fish had fallen
off in weight and were in very poor con-
dition, and examination showed that the
feed was exhausted. It will be noted
that, unlike their equals in neighbouring
waters, these fish were not provided
with an unlimited number of their
smaller brethren when other supplies
failed, and the rapid increase and sub-
sequent decrease in size of the members
of this colony seem to be fully accounted
for by the unusual situation in which
they found themselves.

For many months in the year, as I be-
lieve, almost the only item on the bill-
of-f are of the large trout is small trout
au naturel. A fish having the good luck
to attain a size which enables him to
practise cannibalism soon puts himself

49

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out of danger of being eaten. The
pounder is safe from the attacks of the
larger members of his family, and you
find him in their company, but the little
fellows seek to keep out of the way.
When casting in water which generally
holds great trout, the free rising of
small trout is regarded as an almost sure
indication of the absence of larger fish.
Conversely, the advent of a great trout
is often notified by the small fry leaping
into the air to avoid capture. Not seldom
too, when a little trout is being brought
in, a large one will follow him and per-
haps even contend with you for his pos-
session. I recollect a fisherman being so
irritated at the disregard of his fly, and
at the persistence of a big fellow in this
course of action, that he baited with a
six-inch trout, worked him towards the
hover of the monster, and then laid
down the rod and took out his watch.
The line at once began to run out slowly,
but the inclination to take the rod in

50

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hand was resisted until the time that
custom allows in the case of a pike had
expired ; then the bait had been gorged,
and the fish was played and landed.

Great trout there are, indeed, that
scorn every fly at all times, and in some
waters other lures must be used. Even
the Nepigon yields its best fish only to
the spinner or artificial minnow. Yet,
as you shall presently see, large fontina-
lis sometimes take the fly, and take it
readily. Tradition has it that some fifty
or sixty years ago a brook trout was
caught in the Rangeley Lakes, in the
State of Maine, which weighed thirteen
and a quarter pounds, but this I find it
impossible to verify. What appear to
be trustworthy records from the same
quarter, in the sixties, show fish of ten
pounds weight, but at the present day a
five-pounder is accounted a large trout.

Of the Nepigon wonderful stories are
told, and the books of the Hudson Bay
post at the mouth of the river contain
51

FONTINALIS

entries of the capture of trout of eight
pounds weight. I have seen two fish said
to have been taken in that region many
years ago. Mounted they are respec-
tively twenty-eight, and twenty-seven
and a quarter inches in length, and six
and a half, and six inches in depth. The
weights are given as twelve, and ten and
three-quarter pounds, but it is difficult
to believe that the larger of the two ex-
ceeded nine pounds when caught. If it
did, there has been an extraordinary
shrinkage, and experience shows that in
the process of mounting the tendency is
for skins to gain in length and lose in
breadth. Making allowance on the basis
of other observations, the original di-
mensions of the first fish would be,
approximately, twenty-six and a half by
seven and a half inches, a size which
appears to indicate a weight a little in
excess of eight pounds. The scales and
markings of these fish suggested the
idea that they were a cross between the

52

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brook trout and one of the salmon
trouts, and opinion favours such a pos-
sibility. Of true trout exceeding eight
pounds in weight I can only speak with
personal knowledge in a single instance,
and whatever prizes anglers of the past
may have secured, nowadays a five-
pound fish is rare enough, and one must
go far and fare hard for him.

The steady decrease in the average
weight of trout taken in waters natural-
ly stocked and systematically fished
seems to be very significant. In a cer-
tain river where record is kept of all
catches over a pound in weight, the
average of such trout in twenty-five
years has fallen from three pounds to
one and three-quarter pounds, although
about the same number of *' record" fish
are taken annually. In this water trout
of five, or even four pounds weight have
become uncommon, and six-pounders,
which were often met with in the early
days, chiefly exist as fish which the ang-

53

FONTINALIS

ler reports that he hooked but failed to
bring to net. Can the conclusions be
avoided that large trout are old trout,
that trout live to great age, and that
after a certain point growth is very-
slow? I am inclined to say that they
escape the common fate of mortals, and
do not die of old age. Certainly in some
forty years of fishing I cannot recall
seeing a dead or dying trout whose con-
dition could not be accounted for by
disease or injury. So great an authority
as Professor Agassiz said with regard
to the fontinalis of the Rangeley Lakes
that *^no man living knows whether
these six and eight pound trout are ten
or two hundred years old." If age
claimed its annual toll could one fail
from time to time to see dead trout in
waters frequently traversed, where
countless thousands of the creatures
live*? Other fish, notably carp, are
known to live indefinitely, and why not
trout ? A way of escape from this con-

54

FONTINALIS

elusion may be sought in the suggestion
that the mortality of trout from old age
takes place only in the winter, when the
conditions of existence are the hardest.
In that case their mortal tenements
might be disposed of and disappear un-
der the ice or during the spring freshets.
There is no evidence, however, to sup-
port such a view. It is a sobering
thought that the great trout may be far
older than the middle-aged fisherman
who seeks to outwit him, and that time
will sooner replace the angler than his
quarry. Definite proof may possibly be
secured, as in the case of the Pacific
salmon, by observing the annual growth
of the ear-bone, but, failing this, there
appears to be no way of arriving at the
facts but by marking trout and noting
their growth over a long period.

Many pipes were smoked, and the
stove burned cheerfully, died down, and
was more than once refilled, while the
talk pursued an even more devious way

55

FONTIXALIS

than do these rambling notes, but ever
kept returning to the original theme.
Meantime echoes of debate, drifting to
us from the men's tent, told that they
too were talking of fishing, and were at
the moment concerning themselves
chiefly with the practical questions of
tackle and methods. To a race of facile
speakers, it might be almost said of ora-
tors, one subject serves as well as an-
other for discussion, and a very fury of
controversy can be aroused as to the
best way to make pancakes, or to stop
a leak in a canoe.

It appeared that Mesgil — so I seek to
render phonetically the approved con-
traction of the good fellow's baptismal
name, Hermenegilde — had made report
on a certain little rod which he had
watched being taken out of its case and
equipped for action. The delicate
politeness of the French Canadian for-
bade any expression of adverse opinion
in the presence of les messieurs^ but he

56

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had looked doubtful as to the ability of
this pretty four and a quarter ounce toy
to lutter avec une grosse truite. Now,
under his own canvas roof, and with his
associates, criticism was unconfined,
and the rod was verily on trial for its
life. The body of opinion was evidently
to the effect that while it might be fitted
for the capture of les petites, or even les
moyennes, one were better armed with
a man's weapon when the affair was
with trout longer than one's arm, —
trout moreover that had lived their lives
in, and fought their way up so swift and
strong a stream. Had not Dr. S. taken
two hours and a quarter to bring a four
and an eighth pound trout to net in quiet-
er waters across the divide ! Two hours
and a quarter on a six ounce rod, and
where to seek for a better fisherman!
Figure it out for yourselves my friends
— ^this trifle of cane and glue and silk,
pitted against a fish weighing perhaps
two pounds for its every ounce. Would

57

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it stand the strain, and if so how long
might the struggle last? So waged the
dispute, till the clamour drowned the
rush of the stream over bar and boulder,
and nervous loons on the great water to
the south of us woke up and talked to
one another at the top of their voices
across the lake.

After a twelve-hour day on portage
and with paddle, sleep falls upon you
like an armed man, but on comparing
notes in the morning it appeared that
every one had been awakened about
midnight by the dismal cry of a lynx
from a mountain side a mile away. The
repose of the woods though refreshing
is seldom profound, and one rises quick-
ly to the surface of consciousness.

At five o'clock we broke camp, and
embarked breakf astless for the two hour
paddle to the other end of the lake. No
prudent navigator makes a crossing
between eight in the morning and four
in the afternoon, as in the day-time the
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winds sweep over the barrens and
through the mountain gorges with great
force, and render canoeing on the broad-
er waters dangerous. Sometimes too
a whirlwind, in the speech of the coun-
try a sorcier, appears unannounced even
in fine weather, and although the dis-
turbance is very local, it is violent
enough to upset the canoe that encoun-
ters it. The sandy margin which bore
our tracks of the night before, and which
the moose and caribou had made their
highway before we disturbed them, was
frozen, so that every footprint of man
and animal seemed to be cut there 'in
stone. A dense and chilly mist lay over
the water, and the drops from the
paddles froze on the gunwale. However
beautiful were the slow revelations of
islands and wooded promontories, and
the glow of the early sun on rising mist-
wreath and hillside splendid with
autumn colours, it was pleasant to land,
to straighten out cramped knees and

59

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warm numbed fingers while the prepar-
ations for breakfast were going for-
ward. Simple but satisfying meal!
Porridge, with a little grated maple
sugar to take the place of cream, a half
ration of bacon and almost the last of
our bread. Tea of course there was, for
to us in the woods the humblest fare
with tea is a repas, while an ample pro-
vision of food imgraced by tea is no
more than a houchee. With canoes,
tents, blankets, rifles and other impedi-
menta to carry over long portages
through a difficult country, it had been
necessary to come in light ; which means
that the dunnage bags contained only
bread, flour, oatmeal, pork, bacon, tea
and sugar, salt and pepper. Given a
sufficiency of these no one need com-
plain of his fare, but in making a close
calculation of quantities we had counted
upon the addition of game and fish, and
after a week of wandering nothing had
fallen to our rifles, even fish had been

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scarce. Something akin to starvation
was lurking not very far away, and
every member of the party had a keen
personal interest in the replenishment
of the larder.

We made camp where the river, flow-
ing out of the lake, begins a turbulent
career of thirty leagues to the St. Law-
rence. For a mile or two the current is
not too rapid for canoeing, and here, at
this season, great trout assemble on
their annual migration to the spawning
beds in the lake and the streams that
feed it. This at least was the somewhat
vague information upon which we were
going, and the expedition was conceived
for the purpose of testing the statement
that trout of fabulous size had been seen
or taken in the upper reaches of the
river. It is not so easy as one might
think to discover where the great trout
lie, or how best to fish for them, but it is
incomparably more interesting to attack

5 61

FONTINALIS

the problem in this way than to be guid-
ed to a spot and bidden to cast there.

When the tents were up and all was
snug we set forth pursued by rather
more fervent good wishes than usual.
''Bonne chance' ' was to-day something
beyond an expression of polite desire
that les messieurs would have good
sport. Careful fishing at the foot of the
first gentle rapid yielded nothing, and a
good pool below this was equally barren
of results. When another fine stretch
of water had been tried without a war-
rantable fish being raised, we began to
wonder whether we were not on the
chase of such a phantom as had lured
us into the wilds on many another occa-
sion. As food must be had, it was re-
solved that we should part company,
and that the occupants of the first canoe
should try for a shot at moose, caribou
or bear. There were many fresh tracks
of these animals; it was plainly their
habit to range along the banks and cross

62

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the river from point to point. Moreover
a fresh breeze blowing up stream would
give an easy approach if game were
sighted. Mesgil and the writer were left
to explore at leisure — a task be it said
quite as much to their liking as that of
their companions. The pool to which
we next dropped down looked well,
though it was scarcely so large as the
one which had just been drawn blank.
The river came into it with a strong
though quiet current, and was thrown
against the right bank by a reef of gra-
vel and boulders. As the canoe drifted
through without stroke of paddle, the
angler, who was covering as much water
as possible, kept lengthening cast to-
wards the bend, where oily eddies
circled just beyond the reach of his flies.
Some influence felt but not to be defined
was drawing towards this little bay, and
Mesgil seemed to feel it too, for he
responded with a turn of the paddle to
the ''a terre un pen," almost as soon as

63

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the words were spoken, and the instant
the fly fell over the coveted spot, there
was a heavy lunge at it. Mesgil can
always be trusted to do the right thing
in a canoe ; very silently and skilfully he
backed the craft to the bar of gravel,
where, after perhaps ten minutes of
varying fortunes, he had the satisfac-
tion of netting a trout of three and a
quarter pounds in the literal pink of
condition. This was rapidly followed
by one of two and a quarter, one of
three and three-quarters, and one of five
pounds. The last fish fought with great
determination, and came clear of the
water after a salmon-like rush. More
than once have I seen it affirmed in print
that the brook trout does not jump after
being hooked. This is probably true of
small fish, but trout of two pounds
weight and upward not infrequently
leave the water when on the fly. During
a season when attention was particular-
ly directed to the point it was observed

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that one great fish in three jumped after
being hooked. An extraordinary leap
I recall, which, to my eye and that of a
friend who was looking on, appeared to
measure not less than eight feet from
the point where the trout left the water
to the point where he returned to it. On
rare occasions, too, these fish will come
clear, or almost clear of the water to
take the fly, but for the most part they
do not show on the surface and take
much after the manner of salmon.

Such sport as I write of was too good
to be enjoyed alone, and with these four
splendid fellows lying side by side in the
bottom of the canoe and clad like the
autumn woods in scarlet and gold, I
reeled in and took up the paddle. A few
strokes brought us to the lower end of
the pool where the water shoals and the
bottom becomes visible. It was then that
Mesgil's sharper eyes caught sight of
some monstrous gray shadows a few
yards away on the starboard bow, and

65

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his '^0 sacre bateau, regardez les
truites!" sent my glance to the spot. I
can only swear to two, though Mesgil
affirmed that he saw a dozen. Having
very definitely determined to fish no
more, what happened in the next few
beats of the pulse was done without con-
scious volition. One hand laid the
paddle down, the other picked up the
rod. The tail fly swung loose from the
cross-bar of the reel, and was despatched
with one motion in the proper direction.
The smaller of the two fish rose, was
hooked, and Mesgil had his wish to see
the little rod lutter avec une grosse.
From the first moment there was no
doubt that this was a strong and unusu-
ally heavy trout, and he played after the
fashion of his kind. Mesgil delicately
and quietly worked the canoe to shore,
and held it steady during the awkward
business of disembarking while a fish
was running. By this time our trout
had gained an immense length of line,

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and was feeling the advantage of the
current below the pool. He had to be
worked into quieter water, and then
stubbornly contested every inch of the
return journey. Again and again did
he take the fly to the farthest limits of
the pool, but he neither bored nor sulked.
For many a year of free and strenuous
life his swiftness and dexterity in stem-
ming rapid streams, in pursuing
prey, in avoiding the attacks of enemies
had been the things that counted, and
in this, his final struggle, he used the
arts which had availed him. After what
seemed to be a very long time, but was
not and could not be measured by the
watch, the rushes became shorter, and
we caught a glimpse of a side glorious
with red and orange; then did we first
know, of a surety, that here at last was
the fish worth toiling and waiting for, —
the fish of dreams. Fighting to the end,
under the utmost pressure of tackle, he
came slowly to the bank, where Mesgil
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performed to admiration the task of
netting. One breathless moment there
was when it seemed that the capacious
landing net would not receive him, but
his day had come, the last impulse of his
powerful tail sent him home and in he
swung to meet the coup de grace.

Passing from the glamour of pursuit
and capture to the chill realm of figures,
let me conjure up a pale wraith of the
fish that lay between us on the grass.
Weight, eight and a quarter pounds;
length, twenty-five and three-quarter
inches; depth, eight and one-eighth
inches. The girth can scarcely have been
less than twenty inches, as his back was
very broad and he was in superb condi-
tion, but this I carelessly neglected to
measure. Mesgil and I, taking off our
hats, bowed low to the largest trout we
had ever seen, and the occasion being a
solemn one we recognized it by filling
our pipes from one another's pouches.

How different this from the pursuit

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of the sophisticated trout of the British
Isles ! No laborious stalking and dry fly
casting. No hair-fine tackle or tiny
lures. A variant of the Parmachenee
Belle on a No. 4 hook was this great fel-
low's undoing, and he rose within
twenty feet of the canoe on a bright day !
It may interest brothers of the angle
under other skies to contrast the condi-
tions under which their favourite sport
is pursued. As against the tedious wait-
ing for a favourable day, and the wary
approach to the feeding trout, we have
the voyage into a wild untravelled coun-
try, where transportation of that exigu-
ous provision which it is possible to
make for life and comfort is always a
serious affair. The indispensable canoe,
although the lightest of its kind, is no
mean burden on portages of three or
four hours between canoeable waters.
Then are there the fascinating uncer-
tainties of finding the fish in miles of
river, or in lakes of such a size that it

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would take many days of steady casting
to cover them with a fly. While small
trout are found almost everywhere, the
large ones may easily be overlooked in
some few square yards of water which
they occupy to-day and desert to-mor-
row, and there is room for exercise of
wits in discovering and attracting them.
I admit freely that extreme delicacy in
casting is not essential, and, so far as I
am aware, dry-fly fishing is not prac-
tised in Canada. Not only is there no
necessity for it, but I doubt whether an
exponent of that graceful art would
meet with much success. The most
effective work is done with the drowned
fly, and it appears to present the
strongest allurement when brought
through the water with a series of
quick and almost jerky motions, — sug-
gesting to the trout, as I think, the
movements of the tail or fin of a small
fish near the surface. To complete the
comparison, I allow that our heavier
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casting lines and larger flies give a bet-
ter chance of bringing trout to net,
though, on the other hand, we use lighter
rods which are incapable of putting a
very severe strain on a fish. While it is
useful to be able to command a long cast,
few trout are raised and effectively-
struck with a longer line than fifty or
sixty feet from the reel.

Late in the afternoon, when the
shadow of the high western bank was
falling across the pool, we returned to it
to find the fish still there and in the same
humour. What ^* record" might have
been made I cannot say, but when all the
trout had been secured that nine men
and a dog could dispose of, the time had
come to stop. A little more than two
hours of fishing gave us twenty trout
that weighed seventy-two and a quarter
pounds. The second best fish turned
the scale at seven and a half pounds,
while a brace weighing two and three-

71

FONTINALIS

quarters and two pounds on the same
cast brought both nets into requisition.

When the canoes discharged their
cargoes before the tents there was very
sincere rejoicing, and it was not long
before trout rolled in wet paper and
buried in the embers were being cooked
in the woodland style. To these the men
added a dish of boiled heads, a favourite
plat with them, and one that tastes much
better than it sounds. The dog who
shared our fortunes, after such a meal
as he was wont to dream of, lost the
pinched and anxious expression which
he had worn for many days.

Under the stars that night there was
great talk of things in the heavens
above, and the earth beneath, and the
waters under the earth, — ^but chiefly of
the latter ; and the little rod, declared to
have justified its existence, was restored
to its case as straight as a lance, with
never a winding started, in the enjoy-
ment of an established reputation.
72

THE WING-FOOTED OE SHINING

ONE

The worse the going, the better for the
horse. This paradox of the road is true
within its proper limits, and one should
not ask more of a paradox; but as the
saying seems obscure it may be well to
expound it. You readily grant me it is
the pace that kills. Never was animal
foundered at four miles an hour on the
longest course between daylight and
dark; look to him well, though, if you
urge him over the distance in haH the
time. Speed is impossible where ruts
are axle-deep, bridges rotten, hills like
the bouldered channels of a water-
course, but the sorer your own sides the
safer your horse will be. The humane

73

THE WING-FOOTED

man does well to snatch at such compen-
sation as this, for there is little of mere
physical delight in a day's travel on
those roads which le bon Dieu arrange.

The happy phrase, for which I ani
indebted to a philosopher of the high-
way, does not always apply, for the
government is apt to interfere with the
processes of nature on the eve of an elec-
tion. At the moment, I do not call to
mind any other useful by-product of
those political spasms which lead to so
much job and place hunting, and cause
such bitterness even in a quiet country-
side ; but it is at least something that the
honest fisherman travels more comfort-
ably.

Unfortunately for us, no recent need
had arisen to educate the minds of the
electors upon those great questions
which divide the Ins and the Outs, and
every one of our forty-seven miles de-
manded full credit for each constituent
rod and furlong. When, with twelve

74

THE WING-FOOTED

good leagues behind us, we labour up
the Grande Passe, and a thousand feet
nearer the hurrying clouds get a last
glimpse of the St. Lawrence, the late
afternoon sun is casting shadows over
the fertile valley of the GoufEre. A few
miles of deeply rutted road carry us by
the immense granite cliffs where eagles
nest undisturbed, and the steep defile of
the second pass gives the Coq more stiff
collar-work, even with his passengers
afoot. The summit attained, walking is
still to be preferred to driving in the
rolling and pitching buckboard, so do
we trudge through the sloughs of the
Cabane a Yves, and past the four cross-
ings of the Ruisseau des Chasseurs,
judging ourselves fortunate when we
sink only to the ankle.

If there be a horse in the province of
Quebec competent to conduct four
wheels intelligently and discreetly over
such a track, it is our long-legged, un-
comely gray, but the stream of admoni-

75

THE WING-FOOTED

tion, entreaty, encouragement and re-
proach from his driver ceases not. Be-
tween any two telegraph poles on this
highway of the King, but which His
Majesty in all and every executive mani-
festation leaves a Higher Power to
arrange, such discourse as this meets
the ear: — ^^ Coq-Coq-Coq-Coq-Coq-
Coqe-Coqe-Coqe! Ho donc-arrie-arrie!
Marche! Fais attention! Mangeur, sacre
mangeur, paresseux-Coq! N'aie pas
peur-arrete! Hue-hue-hue! Coq! Passe
done par Id-avance-Coq! Marehe — toi!
Ho - arrie - regarde hien-Coq-Coq-Coq-
Coq-Coq-Coqe-Coqe-Coqe! Marche!^'

Parhaps instruments of precision
might disclose a relation between these
commands and the movements of the
Coq ; it is not apparent to the unassisted
eye. Yet one does not like to think of
this excellent conversation as wasted : it
may in some indefinable way create a
sentiment, and have its use, like ser-
mons, and editorials, and magazine
articles.

76

THE WING-FOOTED

At length do we emerge from the
savanes to a region of gravel and sand
twenty-six hundred feet above sea-level.
Here, by reason of the nature of the
ground, and not because of human inter-
vention, the travelling is better; our
eyes can be spared to see that on these
heights the spring has barely arrived;
tamaracks are budding ; birches, aspens,
and alders begin to show leaf; cherry
and Indian pear are in bloom ; Labrador
tea and laurel hint at the flowers to
come. Mid-June is a month behind the
St. Lawrence littoral in plant and insect
life, and the fresh foliage of the spruces
is quite untouched by the pest of cater-
pillars which is browning the hillsides
below. It is not the least lovely spring-
coming to one whose happy fortune it
has been to welcome the season three
times before, in Devon, Yorkshire, and
Murray Bay.

This lateness of trees and flowers
promises ill for us in our quest of the
6 77

THE WING-FOOTED

Shining Ones, who only make holiday in
the air and sunshine when summoned to
the surface of the water by the manna
which the skies afford. No figure of
speech this, or at any rate none of mine.
The May-flies which swarm in such
countless numbers that the fish grow fat
on them, are here called les marines^ and
M. Sylva Clapin supplies me with the
meaning of the word. The conditions
which are favourable to the birth of the
black-fly, sand-fly, horse-fly and mosqui-
to, govern the coming of the May-fly as
well, and it is sadly the fact that he who
would pursue the gamest and most beau-
tiful of the charrs must make up his
mind to face the fourth plague of
Pharaoh.

The present moment is as good as
another to explain the alternative title
to this paper. Wise men are arrayed in
two camps as to the proper name of the
fish we are seeking, — some declaring for
salvelinus nitidus, and some for salve-

78

THE WING-FOOTED

linus alipes : there are again who sug-
gest that further research will show the
two sub-species to be identical. Rich-
ardson in his *^ Fauna Boreali Ameri-
cana" (1835) pictures both, and on the
basis of a comparison of specimens with
these plates, the authorities of the
Smithsonian Institute give decision in
favour of nitidus. To the untrained eye,
attracted too much perhaps by form and
colour, they appear to resemble alipes, —
a long and peculiarly graceful fish with-
out spots, — rather than nitidus, which
is stockier and strikingly spotted. It is
fair to observe, however, that Richard-
son's observations were made upon
dried skins, and we all know how rapid-
ly the life-hues of the charrs change and
fade. One is almost open to form his
own opinion upon the question, for a
scientific description discloses as the
only evident differences the somewhat
longer dorsal and pectoral fins of alipes.
All are agreed that we have here a vari-
79

THE WING-FOOTED

ety of the widely distributed Alpine
charr, and that the home of this stranger
is Greenland and Boothia Felix.

The thing that amazes and fascinates
one is that the wanderer should be dis-
covered in a lakelet forty miles from the
St. Lawrence and two thousand feet
above it, at so great a distance from his
true range. Two other lakes a dozen
miles away, and on a higher level, are
supposed to contain these fish, but only
a few have been taken and they have
never been properly identified. The Lac
de Marbre trout or marstoni, which ich-
thyologists do not class under alpinus,
have points of resemblance, but also vari-
ations greater than can be accounted for
on the basis of mere environment. The
Sunapee trout, a sub-species of alpinus,
also show a family likeness, and have
taken to themselves the title aureolus,
which one would have wished to confer
on our wing-footed ones if the field were
open. It is evident that there is a good

80

THE WING-FOOTED

deal of work for biologists before the
species and sub-species already men-
tioned are sorted out and placed in their
proper relation with arcturus and stag-
nalis. To attempt this is far beyond the
writer's abilities, nor would the reader
have patience with minute descriptions
of gill-rakers, opercles, and preopercles.
For the present purpose it sufl&ces to say
that we have to do with a new game fish
hitherto only found in the far north,
and brought here, as the song runs —
**How, you nor I nor nobody knows."
Other discoveries of these fish in
neighbouring waters adapted for them
would be by no means surprising. The
lake we are all too slowly approaching,
though it lies within a few yards of a
highway in constant use for over fifty
years, has always been regarded as bar-
ren of fish, but it may be explained by
the fact that these creatures only reveal
themselves for a few days every year, at
a time when not many fishermen venture

81

THE WING-FOOTED

into the woods, and all who can do so
leave them. After the hatch of the May-r
fly, and at least until the spawning sea-
son, it is impossible to get a rise or see
a fish moving ; and they appear to take
neither spoon nor minnow.

The Esquimaux have a generic name
covering the northern charrs, — eekalook
peedeooh, and a specific name for niti-
dus, — angmalooJc, These, which may be
deemed euphonious under the Arctic
Circle, seem ugly mouthf uls to apply to
our beautiful and graceful aliped.
** Golden trout" suggests itself, and
nothing could be more descriptive, but
the name is already bespoken. The Latin
term is apt, for he is in very truth a
** shining one," but the translation
would scarcely answer for everyday use.
Until a better name be given I take the
liberty of calling him ^^Malbaie trout"
from the lake where he is found.

By this time the Coq is breathed, and
we must press on to the camp at Lac a

82

THE WING-FOOTED

la Galette, where one is sure of a pleas-
ant welcome, a comfortable bed, and the
best of country fare. Not an easy com-
missariat this to sustain, for chickens,
eggs, and even hay must be brought
from our host's farm at St. Urbain,
eighteen miles down the road we have
just travelled. Yonder disconsolate cow,
that has learned to eat many things be-
sides grass, is probably thinking of the
cold journey over the snow she will
make on a traineau in February to her
stable in the valley, or perhaps she
mourns the companion that wandered
too far from the house, and, as Madame
tells us, was '^devoree par les ours/'

In ''The Forest," Stewart Edward
White has written of the *' Jumping-off
place." I am not for trying to follow
lamely in his footsteps. Let his pen
paint for you the outpost in touch, faint-
ly and intermittently it may be, but still
in touch with London and Paris and
New York, with politics, stock-markets,

83

THE WING-FOOTED

courts, theatres, clubs, — the whole ap-
paratus of the town-dweller ^s life, but
where one step beyond severs you in-
stantly and completely from all of these.
By more or less regular means of con-
veyance you approach the jumping-off
place. Boats and trains abide their ap-
pointed times. Horses ply on roads
beside which runs a telegraph line. The
day has still twenty-four hours, the hour
sixty minutes. But now these slavish
subdivisions of time disappear. The
evening and the morning are the first
and every following day. Distance is
measured no longer by miles but by the
sun's ascension and declension, the ebb
of physical strength, the primitive needs
of food and repose. Things that filled
the whole horizon dwindle and vanish;
what was of no consequence becomes
serious and vital. Arms, and legs, and
lungs begin to matter, and money loses
its purchasing power.

84

THE WING-FOOTED

Somewhere in all this lies the magic,
not in the slaying of beasts and fishes, —
the magic that conjures up at sight of
this solitary house the vision of lakes
innumerable, — ^the tiny beginnings of
rivers, — far-stretching barrens lonely as
the sea, — ^mountain-tops from which all
earth and sky are possessed as your
own. Plain and broad before you lies
the trail that will carry you onward,
that will fork, and fork again, flicker
out and die at the Riviere du Chemin de
Canot, le Petit Lac Derriere la Cabane
de Medee, Lac des Neiges and Lac du
Sault, in the desolations of the Enfer
and the swamps of the Grande Savane,
or where lakes Trois Loups Cerviers,
Sans Oreilles and Couchee des Femmes
lie very silent in their encircling hills.

For this indeed is one of the chief
gateways into that great tract which the
province of Quebec, with high wisdom
and foresight, set apart near twenty
years ago '*as a forest reservation, fish

85

THE WING-FOOTED

and game preserve, public park and
pleasure ground." Administered as it
always has been, there is no reason why
the furthest generation should not con-
tinue here to find and enjoy what must
become rarer and more precious with
the years; nor can one think of any
legacy so unique and priceless to be
handed on whole and unwasted in per-
petual inheritance. So the founders
intended, for the Article reads :

**No person shall, except under lease, license,
or permit, locate, settle upon, use or occupy any
portion of the said park, nor shall any lease,
license or permit be made, granted, or issued
which will in any way impair the usefulness of
the park. ' '

With no little regret does one record
the passing of an Order-in-Council, in
July, 1912, authorizing a Pulp and
Power Company to build and maintain
a dam at the very heart of the park and
in perhaps the best game country to be
found within its borders,— the country
chosen for a visit of the Governor-

86

THE WING-FOOTED

General of Canada in the season of 1911.
The government will receive a rental of
a hundred and fifty dollars a year, and,
not to take very high ground, will prob-
ably lose more than this amount annu-
ally in shooting licenses alone. The
assigned reason for permitting this in-
vasion is that an industry established
at the mouth of a river which has its
source in the park finds, through mis-
calculation or lack of calculation, it has
not at all seasons an adequate supply of
water. Engineers admit that the pro-
posed dam will, at best, give only very
trifling assistance. There are men, and
no doubt very worthy and honest men,
who think that when they have said
** commerce before sport" the last and
only word on the subject has been
uttered. One would wish to suggest to
them that sport has a commercial side,
and one of great present and future
importance. Nor at this hour should it
be necessary to draw their attention to

87

THE WING-FOOTED

the fact that not only is there a commer-
cial side to sport, but a very desperately
sporting side to commerce.

Twelve miles of yet more villainous
road remain, which a planche, if it sur-
vive, will traverse in four hours, and
which may be done in less time on foot
with greater comfort and safety. Nei-
ther the steep pitches of the Cote des
Mouches, nor grievous alternations of
rut and boulder, nor trembling bridges
have terrors for the Coq or his master,
but the latter is seriously perturbed by
the prospect of meeting a certain dog of
very evil reputation at the journey's
end. We learn much of this animal from
Pommereau, how useless are attempts
to placate, how kindness is interpreted
as masked guile, how perilous in his
presence it is either to advance, stand
still, or retire, and how safety from his
horrid fangs can only be won by remain-
ing in the buckboard until he is tied up.
Borrowing a useful word where he finds

88

THE WING-FOOTED

it, Pommereau adds, — ^^et il ne faut pas
le laisser loose,"

The programme is indeed carried out.
The great brindled beast is made fast to
a comfortably stout post, whence he re-
gards us with bloodshot eye and twitch-
ing jowl. Sorrowing as it seems that a
disposition should be so perverted, in a
tone judicial and devoid of anger, Pom-
mereau addresses the poor ugly creature
who counts all mankind his enemy, — -
^'A — a — Ifi, mon cr — r — riminel!"

Here then are we at the Petit Lac
Malbaie, but do not be too sure of the
spot, for at least three other lakes also
bear the name. Soon shall be revealed
to us the truth about the stranger fish
that first made this their home some
hundreds of thousands of years ago,
when the last glacier that graved these
hill-tops and delved these hollows dis-
appeared, and the Laurentians were
two thousand feet lower than they are
to-day. What impertinence for the par-

89

THE WING-FOOTED

venu Man to beguile, examine, and eat
the descendants of this so ancient race.
May this, and other things, be pardoned
unto him.

The lake lies under a June sky of soft-
est blue. Diffused through the air, and
dulling the sun's light and heat, is a haze
so delicate that sometimes we thought it
vapour and sometimes smoke. Not yet
were we to know at what cost to many
an unfortunate soul this lovely veil was
cast over the little Fujiyama rising in
perfect outline across the water. By
the lake-edge wild cherry is in flower,
and the birches are sketching out their
new summer dresses. White spruces,
wearing the lovely green of springtime,
draw prim skirts about their modest
feet. Again we '^hear lake water lap-
ping," and click of reel, and swish of
line : our hearts are exceeding glad.

No trout this, coming to the fly like a
bar of sunlight and instantly gone:
never did trout rise so swiftly or show
90

THE WING-FOOTED

such colours. The stranger cannot be
mistaken, and you must be quick indeed,
if the barb is to be driven home. A
strike which would snatch the fly away
from the slower moving fontinalis is
barely fast enough for the Malb'aie
trout ; moreover, he gives you one chance
and only one. More alert at the next
rise, the fish is struck, and now other
differences are revealed. The struggle
is one of rapid, baffling turns, of taut
line and sounding reel, of prodigious
runs and unexpected jumps. There are
no moments of quiet tugging, no dogged
soundings nor sullen head-shakings. To
keep a steady and an even strain upon
this creature flashing hither and thither
in water or air, occupies you continuous-
ly and engrossingly. Nor is the battle
soon over ; with greater power and speed
he has also more endurance than the
brook trout, and outlasts him, weight
for weight. Opportunity for compari-
son is at hand, since the lake contains as

91

THE WING-FOOTED

fine trout as ever rose to a fly. Three
years ago a few score of fingerlings
taken from a neighbouring river were
placed in this water, then supposed to
be uninhabited. They came of a famous
breed, for the trout of the river run to
eight pounds and fight to the death. In
these new quarters they prospered on
the best of feed, and averaging to-day
nearly a pound and a half, are fat, lusty,
and in prime condition. They take the
fly with dash, play long and hard, and
are a very pretty handful for the fisher-
man ; still their distant cousins from the
far north are the bonnier fighters.

Let me now attempt to describe the
first Malbaie trout which the landing-
net brought in, as it lies before us on the
thwart. The scales, though small, are
quite visible, and each one looks like a
flake of gold, — pale gold, in which per-
haps there is some admixture of silver.
The colour is uniform, except that on
the back the gold predominates and on

92

THE WING-FOOTED

the belly the silver. The characteristic
spots of fontinalis seem to be entirely
lacking, nor is there any trace of vermi-
culation. The lateral line is strongly
marked, so that the creature's resplend-
ent garment appears to be made in two
pieces joined at the sides by the cunning
art of the goldsmith. The tail is forked,
but not very deeply, and in a gentle
curve. Dorsal, pectoral and ventral fins
are long, and they, with the tail, suggest
power and swiftness. In comparison,
the trout looks under-finned. The head
is small, and the body long and shapely.
Without the depth of the trout, there is
almost equal weight for length, by rea-
son of a roundness of modelling, which,
especially towards the tail, recalls the
mackerel.

The Malbaie trout, in this environ-
ment at least, are not anadromous.
Spawning in the shallows of the open
lake, they do not frequent the streams
which feed it or flow from it, nor are
7 93

THE WING-FOOTED

their young found therein. The brook
trout, which dwell in apparent harmony
with them, go down the decharge to
spawn, and at that season absolutely
desert the lake, but none of the stranger
fish are found among them. Not the
slightest evidence of cross-breeding was
noted, and this in a water barely a mile
long and not half a mile wide.

The specimen we have been examin-
ing was a female. Two or three times a
male gave us a vision of a side adorned,
as the eye caught it, with a band of vivid
scarlet two fingers broad running the
whole length of the fish below the lateral
line. The only one hooked beat the
angler fairly and got away. It is a
simple fact of natural history that the
gentler sex, whether you have to do with
trout, mosquitos, or suffragettes, bite
more freely than the males.

A few of the gauzy-winged May-fiies
were fluttering through the air, and a
few of the Malbaie trout were on the

94

THE WING-FOOTED

lookout for them. This was only an ad-
vance guard, and it was not imtil the
time of the gros coup de mouches, five
days later, that the surface of the lake
was everywhere broken by feeding fish.
One would like to know whether the
Malbaie trout have developed a new
habit of thus occasionally leaving the
depths under a new set of conditions, or
are merely following the custom of their
ancestors at Regent's Inlet.

Evening falls while we are at the foot
of the lake. A huge cow moose com-
pletes the wilderness picture by swim-
ming across the bay where we are fish-
ing, taking the land a few yards away,
and gazing at us long in stolid, stupid
unconcern.

Next day the Malbaie trout rose
rather more freely, and always in the
same swift, dainty fashion; their viva-
cious movements frequently bringing to
mind the rapid tactics of grilse fresh
from the sea. The fish, well scattered

95

THE WING-FOOTED

over the lake, were picked up here and
there, now a Malbaie, now a brook trout,
and both yielding to the butt only at the
end of an honourable contest. Such
sport makes one forget fatigues, and
fills a pleasant page for memory to turn
of a winter evening. . . .

Time reluctantly to depart, but first
the reckoning: ^'We are much in your
debt. Monsieur, and for more than lodg-
ing and food: for these what do we owe
you?"
**You speak of what you owe me?"
''Of that precisely. Monsieur."
''But, Monsieur, you owe me no-
thing."

"It is not reasonable: you have
brought eggs and milk and bread a long
thirty miles for our better entertain-
ment, and you yourself were on the lake
before sunrise and for ten hours have
paddled us in your chaland,"

"You are good enough. Monsieur, to
say that you have been pleased : pray be

96

THE WING-FOOTED

assured that this was still more pleasant
for me. I must entreat you not to spoil
it. " And so it had to be.

Here and there the ancient virtue of
hospitality survives, — ^in stately hall, in
cabin of hewn logs, but whether admin-
istered by peer or peasant it is one and
the same thing, nor can the quality of it
be mistaken.

While the woods held us many things
were happening in the world of men, but
nature remained singularly unstirred.
Our neighbours to the south, in the
choosing of a presidential candidate,
had once again exhibited the simplicity
and dignity of Republican institutions ;
Arnold Bennett was delivered of a fresh
masterpiece. Yet no echo troubled the
solitudes. Only had been announced in
the sky the burning of unhappy Chicou-
timi.

97

THE LAUEENTIDES NATIONAL
PAEK

Less than forty miles from the oldest
city on this continent north of Mexico,
one may shoot or photograph bear,
moose and caribou, catch trout that no
ordinary fishing-basket will contain,
observe beaver, otter, mink, and foxes
going in peace about their daily avoca-
tions, watch eagles and other bird-
fishers plying their trade, and march
through leagues of breezy highlands
where the print of a human foot would
bring to the face that look of amazement
that one remembers in the old wood-cuts
of Robinson Crusoe at the first intrusion
on his island domain. The purposes of
this article are to explain how such

98

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

things can be in tMs mucli commercial-
ized world, to express appreciation and
gratitude to the government of the pro-
vince of Quebec for making them pos-
sible, and strive to strengthen the senti-
ment for their continuance and exten-
sion.

No one who has read Colonel Wood's
plea for the creation of animal and bird
sanctuaries can fail to have been moved
by his words, spoken from the very heart,
as to the cruel and reckless slaugh-
ter of our ^ kittle brothers'' who people
and make interesting the great out-of-
doors. Those who wish him success in
his hiunane endeavour should not need
to be persuaded that what has been al-
ready gained in this direction ought to
be most firmly held. Interests, however
powerful financially and politically,
should not be allowed any foothold in
those reservations now set apart for the
health and pleasure of men and the well-
being of animals. What might appear
99

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

to be a harmless concession to dam a
river's headwaters would have very in-
jurious and far-reaching consequences
on both fish and game, and would, in
effect, defeat the purposes for which the
Park was brought into existence. One
invasion would assuredly be followed by
another, for here as ever il n'y a que le
premier pas qui coute.

It was in the year 1895 that the idea
took form of setting apart some two
thousand five hundred square miles of
the wild and mountainous country north
of Quebec and south of Lake St. John,
as *^a forest reservation, fish and game
preserve, public park and pleasure
ground." At a later date the area was
increased, imtil now some three thou-
sand seven hundred square miles are
removed from sale or settlement.

An important, though indirect, ob-
ject was the maintenance of water-level
in the dozen or more rivers which take
their rise in the high-lying plateau

100

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

forming the heart of the Park. A very
breeding-ground of streams this is, and
a good walker may visit the birth-places
of half their number in a day's tramp.
His way for the most part will lie ankle-
deep through saturated moss, intersect-
ed in all directions by game trails, where
the stoutest boot or moccasin that the
wit of man has devised will fail to
exclude the universal element. Here,
in their infancy, rivers run north which
ultimately turn and flow into the St.
Lawrence, and others flow south whose
waters, at the last. Lake St. John will
receive. Only a few yards and no great
elevation divide streams that are to be
a hundred miles apart when the great
river takes them to itself, nor is there
any man who knows what fortunes be-
fall them through the whole course of
their short but stormy lives. Though
the assertion may appear to be almost
ridiculous, there is work for the ex-
plorer in this region. Blank spaces on

101

THE LAUEENTIDES PAEK

the map invite, which may yield discov-
eries in the way of game and fish, of
mountains that no foot has trodden, of
waters that no paddle has stirred and
where no fly has fallen, of forests un-
touched by the axe.

The true range of the Laurentians is
distant from the shore of the St. Law-
rence some twenty miles, and of those
who spend their summers at watering-
places on the north shore not one in a
thousand spares time from the amuse-
ments of society to make its acquaint-
ance. The nearer and gentler slopes shut
out the great mountain masses that
march sou '-west and nor '-east from
Quebec to the Saguenay, so that one who
does not go out to seek for them might
easily be ignorant of their existence.
Those who commit themselves to the sea,
and adventure so far as Ha Ha Bay, get
some glimpse of the range in the
Saguenay 's wonderful chasm, but there
it is sinking to a lower level. They do

102

THE LAUEENTIDES PAEK

not guess that the Murray descends
through a still grander and more beau-
tiful gorge on its wild way to the sea. A
mere handful of people have thought it
worth while to push back forty miles
from Murray Bay to see the tremendous
rock walls of this canyon, the stupen-
dous and unscalable precipices where
the Decharge de la Mine d 'Argent
falls hundreds of feet from the rim, like
silver poured from a crucible, pauses
and falls again.

As to the heights of these mountains
one searches in vain for authentic
figures. Eboulements and Ste. Anne,
both near the shore of the St. Lawrence,
rise over two thousand five hundred
feet, and one peak in the valley of the
Gouffre is credited with a height of
three thousand two hundred feet, but
these elevations are greatly exceeded as
one journeys inland. Observations with
several aneroids show that the St. Ur-

103

THE LAURENTIDES PAEK

bain road, the only highway that crosses
the mountains, is three thousand feet
above the sea at a point some thirty-five
miles from Bale St. Paul, while the sur-
rounding hills might be credited with
another fifteen hundred feet. It seems
to be within bounds to place the altitude
of a series of mountain-tops in the
country of Charlevoix at from four
thousand to four thousand five hundred
feet, to assign a height of two thousand
five hundred feet to the interior plateau,
and to say that most of the rivers rise
about three thousand feet above the sea.
As these assertions are not in accord
with prevailing impressions, it would be
interesting to have a more accurate de-
termination than can be made with a
pocket barometer.

The outlines of these ancient hills
have been fiattened and rounded by the
age-long grinding and chiselling of
glaciers, which have also built up huge
moraines, and strewn the country with

104

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

boulders. One such moraine I recall,
which runs for a mile, as level and
straight as a forty-foot railway embank-
ment through a land of muskeg and fal-
len timber, giving the only good footing
that is to be found on an old Indian
portage.

The last of the Montagnais Indians
vanished from this place about twenty
years ago, but one finds here and there
traces of their camps and caches, and
may still follow, though with difficulty,
their winding, nearly obliterated trails.
If he is possessed by the demon of speed,
which ceases not to whisper **f as-
ter, faster" in our ears, he maybe disap-
pointed to find that a full day's march
in this country only means such a dis-
tance as his motor, without police inter-
ference, would accomplish in a quarter
of an hour. Haply though he may be
able to appreciate the spirit of the old
Connaughtman's comment on the rac-
ing-cars whirling past the door of his

105

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

cabin ; ^^ Sure sor, if ye was to go as fast
as that ye'd be gettin' there too soon/'
So dispositioned he may understand the
charm of travelling where there is
leisure for observation, and where the
sun and his stomach are clocks enough
for all reasonable and necessary pur-
poses.

If the way lies along a chemin debar-
rasse there will be no trees to block the
passage of a canoe, but nothing is cut
that can by any possibility be stepped
over. As board and lodging must be
carried on the back, two miles an hour,
not including stops, is an excellent ratq
of progress, nor will there likely be
quarrel with the woodland custom of
halting for five minutes or so twice in
the hour. Indeed, unless somewhat
hardened to the trail, he may have to cry
for mercy before the end of the bauche
is reached. This local word does not
seem translatable, unless indeed it can
be rendered by '^ jag."

106

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

The unit for rapid travel is three men
in a light canvas-covered canoe, and
everything but actual necessaries must
be sternly rejected if the party is to go
straight forward without doubling at
the portages. The order of march is, one
man for the canoe, one for the tent, pro-
visions, and cooking outfit, and the
*' Monsieur" going light, with personal
baggage, blanket and such other trifles
as rifle, glasses, rod and camera. Tra-
velling in a northerly or southerly direc-
tion there are waterways which may be
more or less utilized, and it is much
easier to go from the St. Lawrence to
Lake St. John than it is to cross the
Park from west to east, although the
distance, as the loon flies, is about the
same. A rather careful estimate of the
time required for the latter trip was fif-
teen days, and it would be fifteen days
of exceedingly arduous work, with every
kind of hard going that the wildest and
wettest country can afford, and without
107

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

the assistance even of a blazed trail. The
sixty miles stretch out to one hundred
and fifty by the devious route which
would have to be followed.

This seems rather a forbidding pic-
ture of a tract that the government has
set apart as a '^public park and pleasure
ground," but that is only at the first
glance and to the faint-hearted one.
Were it not for the outworks that
nature has built to guard her citadel,
were it not for the difficulties that have
to be overcome in the old-fashioned way
by strength and skill of hand and
foot, these wild places would be over-
run by board-floor and cocktail camp-
ers, by men with automatic rifles who
shoot everything, including their com-
panions, on sight, or take, for a record,
fish that they cannot use, and by tourists
who think it amusing to set on fire a
noble birch or moss-draped spruce to
make a ' * forest torch. ' ' Thank the gods
that be, no motor-roads conduct to this

108

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

paradise, no easy canoe-route offers, but
he who would enter must win his way
thither in the manner of his fathers, —
and so may it be to the end of time.

The dead-waters in the upper reaches
of the rivers are sometimes navigable,
and the lakes that lie in one's path give
a few welcome miles of paddling, nor
should it be understood that all of the
walking is bad. Here and there are
stretches of dry, moss-covered barren
where the foot falls soft and silently,
with scarcely bush, stone, or tree com-
pelling one to step aside, or slacken the
round three miles an hour.

The Grand Jardin des Ours, perhaps
the largest and certainly the best known
of these barrens, is hardly less than a
hundred square miles in extent, and
when the ice takes in early November
the caribou make it their great rallying-
ground, attracted thither by the moss
upon which they subsist in the winter
time. Even within the last few years

8 109

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

bands running into the hundreds have
been seen on the snowy mountain-sides,
and, without much difficulty, have been
approached and photographed. These
animals, so wary in summer and in the
early autumn, appear to gain confidence
by their numbers, and are easily stalked,
and all too easily shot. It is to be feared
that too great an annual toll is taken,
and that the herd is being diminished
by more than the amount of its natural
increase. At the same time it must be
remembered that for fifty or sixty years,
and perhaps for a much longer time,
sportsmen from every quarter of the
globe have visited this famous ^^ Jar-
din," and have seldom failed to carry
away a good head ; also that in the days
when this was everyman's land, and
scarcely any restrictions were enforced
as to season or amount of game, the
slaughter must have been much greater
than it is to-day. Perhaps, then, there
is no cause for immediate alarm, but the
no

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

situation deserves to be carefully
watched so that a remedy may be ap-
plied in time. Slightly more stringent
regulations, the allowance of one cari-
bou instead of two, the forbidding of
shooting in December and January
when the bulls have lost their horns
would ensure excellent sport in this re-
gion so long as the Park exists and is
administered as it is to-day.

There is, however, very serious men-
ace to the caribou in the unfortiuiate
fact that the great timber-woK has at
last discovered this happy hunting-
ground, and has taken up his abode
there. These murderous creatures do
not kill for food alone, but appear to
slay for the love of slaying, and if man
is to be able to gratify his primitive in-
stincts of a like kind in this place he will
have to find means to rid himself of
these rivals. So swift and cunning is
the wolf that it is regarded as impossible
to shoot or trap him, and his habit of
111

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

feeding only upon his own fresh kill
makes poisoning extremely difficult.
Already it would seem that there are
fewer caribou in and about the ** Grand
Jardin, ' ' but the marked increase in the
number of moose may be one cause of
this. Moose and caribou do not dwell
together in amity, and the latter, the
most inveterate wanderers that the
earth knows, are possibly seeking other
pastures in some remote part of the
Park which the moose do not frequent,
and where it would be difficult for man
to follow them.

Before the days of the Park the moose
were almost exterminated throughout
this region, but a few must have escaped
slaughter in some inaccessible fastness,
and under a careful and intelligent sys-
tem of protection they have multiplied
exceedingly. At the present time it is
not imcommon to encounter three or
four cows in the course of a day's walk,
and these lumbering creatures scarcely

112

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

take pains to keep out of your way. Man
may not shoot them, and only unpro-
tected calves have anything to dread
from the wolves, so that they are in the
happy position of having no enemies.
Whatever the fate of the caribou may
be, it seems probable that in a few years'
time there will be as good moose-shoot-
ing here as in any part of New Bruns-
wick, nor is there the slightest fear that,
under reasonable exercise, it will ever
be exhausted. This branch of sport is
new to the country, and the art of call-
ing has not been developed, so that
tedious watching and hard stalking are
the only means of securing a head. No
horns have been brought out yet which
rival the New Brunswick antlers, much
less those of the Alaskan alces gigas.
Anything over fifty-five inches is an un-
usually good panache for Quebec, that
is to say, ten inches less than a fine New
Brunswick head, and twenty inches less
than the prodigious antlers of the West.

113

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

I am tempted at this point to give two
narratives from eye-witnesses which
exhibit in how different a spirit men
may go into the woods after game. The
hero of the first episode on sighting a
band of six caribou bade his man sit
down to give him a rest for his rifle. He
then fired, and continued firing till all
were killed. When his companion made

to walk towards the animals, Sir

said to him roughly : —
*' Where are you going?"
'*To cut up the caribou."
*' . . . I don't want them."
This is, but should not be, the end of
the first story. The other is pleasanter
to hear. A gentleman from the United
States wished to add a caribou head to
his collection, and after the usual hunt-
ing vicissitudes and disappointments
succeeded in doing so. On the way out
he and his man almost ran into a moose
which carried very fine horns. The
license permitted him to shoot, and the

114

THE LAUEENTIDES PAEK

rifle was pressed into his hand with an
urgent request to fire. **No, I have a
moose and don't want another; give me
the camera," and he actually succeeded
in ** snapping" the dazed creature twice,
at a range of thirty feet.

If one were to assert that there are
fifteen hundred lakes in the Park there
is none that could gainsay him, and rea-
soning from the known to the unknown
this does not appear to be a very extra-
vagant estimate. Of course many of
these are mere ponds and beaver dams,
but there are not a few of six or eight
miles in length, upon which it is wise to
be very cautions in anything but the
most settled weather. Squalls drop from
the mountain-tops with sudden aston-
ishing violence; the **old hand" skirt-
ing the shore and taking no chances
often makes a quicker crossing than he
who ventures on the direct line.

Very few of these lakes do not carry
trout, and in addition to trout at least

115

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

two species of Alpine charr have been
identified, while the tourilli is also
found. Here, then, is diversion for
every man who can throw a fly, — no
other fishing is allowed, — ^nor is there
any reason why it should not endure in
mternum. The only quarrel that the
fisherman is likely to have with the
sport is that his fish may come too easily.
It is no extraordinary feat to take five
or six dozen trout in an hour, but it is
to be hoped that a very few experiences
of this kind will satisfy. When it comes
to be a question of three and four
pounders, with reasonably light tackle,
the angler has a very pretty struggle on
his hands for ten minutes or longer, and
will carry away a picture of taut line
and singing reel, of swirling brown
water and gray rocks set in solemn
green and roofed with blue and white,
which he may summon back at will to
muse over when the winter fire burns.

116

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

Nowhere in the world do the fontina-
lis grow to a larger size than in these
waters. Dr. Henry writes of a seven-
teen-pound trout ^4n very poor condi-
tion," which he took in the Jacques Car-
tier river some eighty years ago (surely
the king of his tribe!), and this river
yields trout of eight or nine pounds
weight to-day. All the streams that rise
in the Park contain heavy fish, and
many of the lakes as well, but in the lat-
ter they generally refuse the fly, or keep
themselves out of reach of its tempta-
tions. Stories told by Andre this, or
Mo'ise that, of great fellows longue de
meme et large comme ga, taken from
some lake that he wishes you to visit, are
generally found to be based on winter
catches made through the ice. It is an
odd fact that success in this winter fish-
ing can only be expected in fine and
bright weather. We city folk, who have
trained ourselves to pay as little atten-
tion as possible to the influences of sun-
117

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

shine, humidity, barometric pressure
and east wind, would laugh at him who
made practical application of the wise
old saw, **Do business with a man when
the wind is in the north-west. ' ' Animals
and fish are delicately sensitive to me-
teorological conditions, while there only
remains to most of us an uneasy con-
sciousness of these which we cannot turn
to useful account. Yet are we not with-
out some disappearing trace of the sense
which foretells weather: Helen Keller,
seated by her fireside, and lacking the
guidance of hearing, smell or sight, is
aware of impending changes and an-
nounces the arrival of the rain.

The countless, or uncounted, lakes
and streams of the Park are ministered
to by a very heavy rainfall. Perhaps
there are two inches in the highlands for
one on the shores of the St. Lawrence ;
certainly it is the saying of the country-
side that a foot of snow dans les parois-
ses means two feet in the mountains. In

118

THE LAURENTIDES PAEK

winter the snow smooths out your way
through the woods, for all the fallen
timber, stones, and underbrush are
deeply buried. Should you follow in
summer such a winter trail, you must
look for the blazes eight or ten feet
above the ground. Even in the summer-
time the extremes of temperature are
very great. Snow falls occasionally in
July and August, and almost any clear
still night there may be frost. It is
astonishing to observe a thermometric
range of sixty or seventy degrees on a
perfectly fine day, but at this height
above sea-level, and with no blanket of
humidity to shield from the sun by day
or keep in the warmth by night, you may
pass from ten or twelve below freezing
at five in the morning to ninety in the
shade at eleven. More marvellous still
is it that the human frame adapts itself
quickly and easily to such variations,
and that in so pure and fine an air, with
plenty of hard work and a spare wood-

119

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

land diet, a whole series of minor ills
which afflict the townsman are absent.

Here may we learn some of the secrets
of right-living from our countrymen
of French Canada, and the way to
healthier, happier, and longer lives.
Would you care to try conclusions on a
forest trail with one of these dried-up,
unmuscular-looking fellows who will
never see fifty again ! It is true that in
heel-and-toe walking on the highway
you might give him a mile in five, but
through and over fallen timber, in mus-
keg and alder-swamp, up the rough hill-
sides and across streams on slippery
logs, he will have you beaten, though he
carries twice your load. Perhaps early
hardships kill off the weaklings, and
only the fittest survive, but, however
this may be, here are men nearing four-
score who can do an amazing day's
work. Such a one, after driving forty-
two miles over bad and hilly roads with
a heavy load, turned his horse home-

120

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

ward late in the afternoon; another
thirteen miles covered, he found that the
doctor was needed, and drove twenty
miles to fetch him, — seventy-five miles
between eight in the morning and one
the next morning for a man well over
seventy and a horse rising seventeen.
To this pious soul the reason is very
plain why he and his horse are never
sick nor sorry, and he will tell you rev-
erently that one who has not been stayed
by his own affairs, by fatigue, or winter
storms from helping a neighbour in
time of need shall neither lack health
nor a sound horse ; for so will the good
God order it.

A sturdy little beast twenty-one years
of age has been known to cover this
same forty-two miles in five hours, and
a gaunt long-legged gray that was bowl-
ing in at a good pace had, as I found, put
one hundred and eighty miles behind
him in four days, — twice pulling his
buckboard up three thousand feet of

121

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

hills over what the reader might some-
times hesitate to call a road. A friend
of eighty, still of sound mind and mem-
ory, was a grown man when his great-
grandfather died at the age of one
hundred and five, and this ancestor came
as a child to La Nouvelle France. It
may be that as a boy he looked out won-
deringly over the St. Lawrence on that
June morning when the great fleet of
one hundred and forty-one ships of the
line and transports passed up on the
tide bearing Wolfe to his triumph and
death. A ^4ink with the past" indeed,
that a living man should remember the
accounts of an eye-witness concerning
events which took place before the fall
of Quebec !

To this same old friend I once put
some questions about an aged woman
who was picking up sticks by the road-
side. With a shade of reluctance, due
doubtless to the fact that there was not
after all many years between them, he

122

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

admitted that she was ''pas mal vieille,"
which was no more than the truth, as
she was eighty-four. * ' Poor old thing, ' '
said I, ^*and where does she live?" He
pointed with his whip to a little cottage
on the hillside. *^ And does she live there
all alone r' ^'But, no, she tends her
mother. ' ' And true it was.

Nicolas Aubin in the full strength of
manhood felled, trimmed, sawed, split,
and piled three and a half cords of birch
a day for six consecutive days, and had
time left to help an old companion to
complete his tale. Thomas Portin, hav-
ing driven an axe clean through his foot,
hopped fifty miles home through the
wilderness and the March snows, hum-
ming old world songs when the pain
kept him sleepless at night that he might
not distress his companion by groaning.
So one might continue to recount Hom-
eric deeds, if much did not remain to be
told about the Park itself.

123

THE LAURENTIDES PAEK

election in favour of virtue. Thus he
becomes a faithful servant both of the
government and his employer, and a
really effective unit in the protection of
the Park. The lessee, in turn, will
neither practise nor tolerate any in-
fringement of the laws which would
imperil his lease or deplete of fish and
game a country which he intends to re-
visit. He might not be actuated by these
motives if he entered the Park casually,
and considered nothing but his own
sport or pleasure.

The plan adopted ranges together in
identity of interest all those concerned
in conservation, and though better and
higher reasons exist for obedience to
law and for moderation in sport, is it not
well to enlist selfish considerations if
they make for the object it is desired to
attain ^ It may be added that the lessee
has reasonable assurance of the exten-
sion of his privileges if they are not
abused, and he knows that he will be

126

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

moderate areas to individuals and to
clubs. The first requirement of these
grants is that the lessee shall appoint a
guardian, approved by the department,
and shall cause the conceded territories
to be protected in an adequate and satis-
factory manner. Having a direct and
personal interest in the results, he is
careful to see that the guardian does not
fail in his duty, and he is able to form a
very correct judgement upon the point
from his observation of conditions from
year to year. The guardian, for his
part, is immediately answerable to an
individual who pays his salary and con-
trols expenditures for building camps,
cutting trails, making punts and sup-
plying firewood. Perquisites of this
kind are likely to depend to a large
extent upon his own honesty and dili-
gence; he contrasts his former precar-
ious living as trapper or braconnier
with the assured competence which he
now earns more easily, and makes his

9 125

THE LAUEENTIDES PAEK

election in favour of virtue. Thus he
becomes a faithful servant both of the
government and his employer, and a
really effective unit in the protection of
the Park. The lessee, in turn, will
neither practise nor tolerate any in-
fringement of the laws which would
imperil his lease or deplete of fish and
game a country which he intends to re-
visit. He might not be actuated by these
motives if he entered the Park casually,
and considered nothing but his own
sport or pleasure.

The plan adopted ranges together in
identity of interest all those concerned
in conservation, and though better and
higher reasons exist for obedience to
law and for moderation in sport, is it not
well to enlist selfish considerations if
they make for the object it is desired to
attain ? It may be added that the lessee
has reasonable assurance of the exten-
sion of his privileges if they are not
abused, and he knows that he will be

126

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

compensated for moneys properly ex-
pended, if the government sees fit not to
renew his term.

When the Park came into existence
the eastern part of it was much exposed
to attacks by poachers, who spared nei-
ther fish nor game ; a few years longer
and it would have been beyond saving.
One by one clubs came into existence,
until to-day seven of them form a cordon
stretching along and guarding the boun-
dary, with a result which has more than
justified their formation, and the pri-
vileges which have been accorded to
them. The guardians cooperate with
one another under the general guidance
of a most competent inspector, and the
striking increase in fish, fur, and fea-
ther, is apparent not only in the region
immediately protected, and in the in-
terior of the Park, but also outside its
boundaries. Trappers who fought bit-
terly against being excluded from this
part of the public domain have become

127

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

reconciled, as they find that the overflow
of wild life into the surrounding coun-
try enables them to bring more pelts to
market than they did in the old days.
Guardians, gillies, carters, porters, and
canoemen live in whole or part on pro-
viding fishing and shooting for about
one hundred persons, who leave each
year not less than ten thousand dollars
in their hands. Under no other arrange-
ment could the conceded territory
afford sport, and a living, to so many
people, and in no other way would the
balance between resources, and their use
for legitimate purposes, be so nicely
maintained.

On the western border of the Park the
same system has been adopted, with, as
it is said, the same excellent results, but
of this I am not able to speak from per-
sonal knowledge and observation.
Twenty years ago bear had nearly dis-
appeared; now they are plentiful.
Beaver were almost exterminated ; they

128

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

have become a nuisance. A dam or lodge
was a curiosity worth walking several
miles to visit; to-day the animals may
be seen at work on every stream. The
numerous dams present a series of im-
passable obstacles to trout moving to
and from their spawning-beds. They
have also raised the level of many lakes,
drowning the timber and destroying the
feeding grounds of the large game. Be-
yond any question their presence in such
numbers injures the fishing and shoot-
ing, does damage to the forest and
makes the country wetter and more dif-
ficult to traverse. Where one finds
several hundred yards of a familiar
trail under water, and is obliged to make
a detour through the thick woods, his
admiration for the sagacity, diligence,
and pertinacity of the beaver sensibly
wanes, — these excellent virtues are
sometimes uncomfortable to live with.
The administration would do well for
the Park were it to keep the beaver

129

THE LAUEENTIDES PAEK

within reasonable bounds, and might
easily derive a handsome revenue from
this source.

In this high-lying country the timber
is too small to attract the lumbermen,
and even as pulpwood it probably has
but little value. Where the growth is
slow the annual rings are close together
and the wood is hard, resinous, and un-
suitable for the mill. The few spruces
of any size that exist are much scattered
and are situated in such remote places
that it would not pay to take them out.
A very large part of the wooding is
small deciduous timber of no present or
prospective value where it stands. It
does not seem too much to hope that the
forest will long be spared, and certainly
the loss and gain should be carefully
measured before the axeman is given his
will of it. The government is in a posi-
tion to enforce additional and strict
regulations with regard to any cutting
that may be permitted; how desirable

130

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

this would be appears by the considered
opinion of a man whose quaKfications to
make a statement on the subject are
absolute, — that for every dollar's worth
of lumber brought to market in Canada
twenty dollars' worth are destroyed by
fire.

It is probable that the whole country-
side was burned over many years ago, —
perhaps at the time of the great Sague-
nay fire, and that in the barrens already
spoken of the soil itself was consumed.
An Indian trapper of great age, who
died a generation ago, afl&rmed that
these were en hois vert in his youth. If
his story is true it gives convincing
proof that a century does little or noth-
ing towards repairing the damage to the
humus. The moss with which the bar-
rens are now covered burns like tinder
in dry weather, nor is it replaced in
twenty-five years. Spare a moment then
to extinguish your camp-fire, and see
that the match with which you have

131

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

lighted your pipe is out before you
throw it down. A little carelessness
when the conditions are ripe would
make of these plains and hillsides a
blackened desolation, which the caribou,
deprived of their winter pastures, would
be forced to desert.

Nothing can surpass the September
colours of this moss-country. The moss
itself, — ivory-white, gray, lavender, and
in the swales green and rusty red, is
divided into parterres by the mountain
laurel, Labrador tea and blueberry,
every leaf of which becomes a perfect
crimson flame. Wild currants and goose-
berries are dressed in copper and
bronze. Upon the luminous yellow of
the birches it seems as if the sun were
always shining, while here and there
among them an aspen shows translu-
cently green. The little solitary white
spruces, despising change, satisfy them-
selves with a flawless symmetry of out-
line which makes their sombre black sis-

132

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

ters in the background look still more
ragged and unkempt. Blue, deepening
to purple, covers the distant and yet
more distant ranges.

Yet a very little while and the scene
will change. On the long slopes where
the moose browse, the dwarfed red
birches will stand a-shiver, their gar-
ments at their feet ; with the coming of
the snow all colour but the darkening
green of spruce and balsam departs
out of the land. Then the silence will
fall, — ^not the mere lessened noise which
we are accustomed to call silence, but an
utter and all-enveloping soundless-
ness, without rustle of leaf, twitter of
bird, or murmur of water, that fairly
appals the soul. He who has stood soli-
tary, and strained his ear in vain for
some faint vibration of the air, will not
think it strange that panic fear may
(descend on one who finds himself alone
in this great stillness. So it happened
to Johnny Morin in the old days when

133

THE LAURENTIDES PAEK

the winter mails were carried sixty
miles over the snow to the Lake St. John
settlements. The regular postman One-
sime Savard fell sick, and Johnny, as
stout a walker as ever slipped on a snow-
shoe, took his place. Long before day-
light, with pack on back, he left the last
habitation behind him; by noon, with
half his journey done, he was nearly
thirty miles from the nearest human be-
ing. Has the reader ever been five miles,
one mile, half-a-mile, from his next
neighbour? A horror of loneliness and
silence fell upon him, and he fled back
in his own tracks for twenty miles to a
little cahane built by himself for trap-
ping where he rested, and cooked a pan-
cake of flour and pork. Heartened by
the food, and fearful of ridicule should
he return without accomplishing his
errand, Johnny steeled his heart, tight-
ened his belt, and turning north again
covered his second fifty miles without
halt.

134

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

Providence be thanked, we are not as
yet a people overmuch given to luxury
and gourmandise. May the time be long
deferred when this can be charged
against us ! If we prize the good things
of life in their place and season, we are
yet able for a greater gain to shed super-
fluities with cheerfulness, and like the
philosopher to wear either fine clothes
or rags. All that the gods give us they
sell us, nor can we hope to get the better
of this economic law. If you would ap-
preciate herrings and boiled potatoes,
be discriminating with champagne and
foie gras. If you are to enjoy a twenty-
five mile walk after the age of fifty, shun
the insidious tram-car, and resist the
fascinations of your own, or your
friends', motors. Burgundy is a noble
and heartsome drink, and long may the
vines flourish that yield it, but see that
you keep your taste for spring water un-
impaired.

135

THE LAURENTIDES PASK

May one introduce at this point a
reflection on the virtues of temperance *?
Wine makes glad the heart of man, but
it plays the mischief with his wind, and
destroys the delicate adjustment be-
tween hand and eye upon which his com-
fort and perhaps his life depend. I
have yet to meet a thoroughly good man
in the woods, white, red, or haK-bred,
who would touch alcohol until his day's
work was done.

The voyager who attempts to assimi-
late his life in tents to his life in town
fails rather miserably and misses the
charm of both. If he is not ready to pay
the price, it were better for him to re-
main within striking distance of modern
means of transport, soft beds, and en-
trees. Let it not be thought, however,
that the Park bill of fare is always a
Spartan document. There are woodland
dishes that might give new ideas to a
Brillat-Savarin. Where can you find a
better bird than the ruffed grouse,

136

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

though a black-duck in condition runs
it close ? Bear steaks are apt to make a
man forget prudence; caribou tongue,
caribou liver and bacon, and caribou
saddle add not a little to the sum of hu-
man joy. Moose soup has a distinction
and flavour that no other soup possesses.
A great trout enveloped in wet paper
and cooked in the ashes creates a pro-
found impression on persons of taste
and sensibility, while the same creature
lightly smoked, and prepared for the
table a la Finnan haddie, almost causes
one to overlook the absence of eggs and
bacon at breakfast. If you weary of
trout from the frying-pan, try them
boiled in the company of an onion, or
cunningly made into a ragout with pota-
toes, biscuits, and pork. The consump-
tion of the vegetable at once most loved
and most dreaded is attended in this
happy land with no regrets, and glanc-
ing at him in this oblique manner, asso-
ciated perhaps with a hard-tack for
137

THE LAUEENTIDES PAKK

luncheon, it were well to leave the sub-
ject rather than pursue it to what must
be anti-climax.

Some years ago the government con-
veyed a small herd of wapiti to a suit-
able place, and there released them. Be-
ing strong, healthy creatures it was sup-
posed that they would readily adapt
themselves to their environment, and
would be an interesting addition to the
fauna of the Park, but the experiment
wholly failed, as these superb deer, bred
in captivity, refused to become wild
again or to do for themselves. After a
year in the woods they showed no fear
of man, but only a certain graceful tim-
idity which did not prevent them from
taking food out of the hand. During
the summer they prospered and grew
fat, but in winter they were very help-
less, and would have starved had they
not been supplied with fodder. Wander-
ing at length out to the settlements, they
did such damage to crops that the finest

138

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

bull was slaughtered by an indignant
habitant, and the rest of the herd had to
be taken back whence it came. It ap-
pears that all the members of the deer
tribe can be easily tamed, and being
tamed, that they can scarcely be restored
to the point of view of the wild creature,
— a process, by the way, for which the
English language lacks a word.

The Park can be approached on the
west by the Lake St. John railway, on
the south by the old Jacques Cartier
road, and on the east by the St. Urbain
road, but were it not for what the gov-
ernment has done to assist those who
wish to visit it, an individual equipment
of tents and canoes would be necessary
in every case. Much in expense and
labour is saved by the fact that the
administration has erected and main-
tains lodges and rest houses where ac-
commodation may be had at moderate
charge, and an outfit obtained for more
distant excursions. Thus it has been

139

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

made possible, without any great pre-
paration, to shoot and fish within this
preserve, or travel through it for the
pure joy of seeing the myriad lakes, the
untamed rivers, the far-stretching bar-
rens girt about with granite hills that
were old when the world was young.

The wise man will see to it that noth-
ing that is not of indispensable daily use
goes into his dunnage-bag. He will know
that tinned delicatessen are better left
on the grocer's shelves, and that an
overcoat is as useless in the woods as a
silk hat. Others it is vain to attempt to
teach, — ^they must go to school at the
feet of experience.

The first step of one who desires to
enter the Park should be to communi-
cate with the superintendent, Mr. W. C.
J. Hall, at Quebec. Mr. Hall, to whom
every sportsman must feel indebted for
years of unsparing work spent in the
organization and administration of this
reserve, will assign to the applicant time

140

THE LAUEENTIDES PARK

and place for his visit. As there are
nearly three thousand square miles of
unleased territory to choose from and
exclusive but limited rights are confer-
red, there will be no possibility of being
made the mark of another's rifle. Should
the eastern side of the Park be selected,
the chief inspector. Monsieur Thomas
Fortin, will be instructed to engage men
and arrange all the details of the shi-
kari. How a sportsman may expect to
fare in his hands will appear by Earl
Grey's entry made in the visitors' book
at La Roche on September 9th, 1911,
which I take the liberty of copying: **I
desire to thank the provincial govern-
ment of Quebec for having given me the
opportunity of visiting, as their guest,
the Laurentides National Park, and to
acknowledge the great pleasure which I
have derived from all I have seen and
done ; and my regret that I cannot stay
here longer. I also desire to congratu-
late the government on their good f or-
10 ui

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

tune in securing as their Chief Ranger
Thomas Fortin, whose attractive char-
acter, unrivalled experience, and per-
sonal charm make him a delightful com-
panion. I would like also to congratu-
late them on the wisdom of their policy
in establishing so large a reserve, as a
protection for various breeds of wild
animals which would otherwise be in
danger of extinction, and as a place of
rest, refreshment, and recreation for
those who love the quiet of the
* Wilds.' ''

It is upon the intelligence and honesty
of such men that the preservation of the
Park, and the realization of the ideas
which brought it into existence, must
chiefly depend ; but every Canadian who
loves the free life out-of-doors, who de-
sires to see the creatures of the woods
and waters protected, who places these
things before the getting of dollars by
the immediate and destructive exploita-
tion of our every natural resource, has

142.

THE LAURENTIDES PARK

an interest for himself and his children
in keeping these great pleasure-grounds
inviolate, and a duty to exert such
ability and influence as he may possess
to that end.

143

A TALE OF THE GEAND JARDIN

His story comes back to me in sharp and
vivid outline, though I look across years
not a few to the telling of it, and to our
little tent pitched high and lonely in the
Grand Jardin des Ours. Who can say
what share time and place, the wild
August storm, and my friend's emotion,
had in etching the picture so deeply on
memory? Perhaps the impression is
not communicable; perhaps it may be
caught, if you will consent to make camp
with us in those great barrens that lie
far-stretching and desolate among the
Laurentian Mountains.

We had been fishing the upper reaches
of one of the little rivers that rise in the
heart of the hills, quickly gather volume

144

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

from many streams and lakes, loiter for
a few miles in dead-waters where a
canoe will float, and then plunge two
thousand feet, through amazing gorges,
to the St. Lawrence and the sea. An
evening rare and memorable, when the
great trout were mad for the fly ; more
than a dozen of these splendid fellows,
a man's full load, lay on the bank, where
they rivalled the autumn foliage in
crimson, orange and bronze. This first
good luck came after many barren days,
the smoke-house of bark was still im-
fiUed, — so it happened that we did not
leave the river till the darkness, and the
thunder of an oncoming storm put down
the fish. From the towering cumulus
that overhung us immense drops
plumped into the water like pebbles, and
the steady roar of the advancing squall
v^arned us to hasten. Gathering up the
trout we dashed for the tent, to find it
well-nigh beaten to the ground by the
weight of the wind and the rain. Though

145

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDEST

a clump of stunted spruces to windward
gave a little shelter, we had much ado
to keep the friendly canvas roof over
our heads by anchoring it with stones.

After putting on dry clothes we ex-
plored the provision sack, discovering
nothing more inviting than pork and
crumbled biscuit. Tea there was, but
even an old hand could not boil a kettle,
or cook fish, in such a tumult of rain and
wind. Three weeks of wandering had
brought us to the lowest ebb, and our
men, who had departed in the morning
for an outpost of civilization where sup-
plies could be obtained, would scarcely
return in such weather. We guessed,
and rightly as it turned out, that they
had chosen to spend the night at La
Galette, the nerve-extremity, respond-
ing faintly to impulses from the world
of men, where the gossip of the country-
side awaited them.

So were we two alone in one of the
loneliest places this wide earth knows.

146

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

Mile upon mile of gray moss ; weathered
granite clad in ash-coloured lichen ; old
hrule, — the trees here fallen in wind-
rows, there standing bleached and life-
less, making the hilltops look barer, like
the sparse white hairs of age. Only in
the gullies a little greenness, — dwarfed
larches, gnarled birches, tiny firs a
hundred years old, — and always moss,
softer than Persian rug, — moss to the
ankle, moss to the knee, great boulders
covered with it, the very quagmires
mossed over so that a careless step
plunges one into the sucking black ooze
below.

Through the door of the tent the light-
ning showed this endless desolation, and
a glimpse of the river forcing its angry
way through a defile.

When the sorry meal was over we
smoked, by turns supporting the tent
pole in the heavier gusts. My companion
was absent-minded and restless; he
seemed to have no heart for the small
147

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

talk of the woods, and to be listening for
something. Breaking into an attempt
of mine at conversation, he asked
abruptly : —

^^Did you ever hear about the disap-
pearance of Paul Duchene'?"

The name came back to me in a misty
way, and with some tragic association,
but the man himself I had never known.
Any sort of a yarn was welcome that
would take one's mind off the eeriness
and discomfort of our situation, and

H required no urging. He spoke

like a man who has a tale that must be
told, and I try to give you neither more
nor less than what he said : —

^'Duchene was in camp with me years
ago, in fact it was he that brought me
into this country in the old days before
trails were cut, and when no one came
here but himself and his brothers, and
a few wandering Montagnais Indians.
The Duchenes were trappers, and they
guarded the secrets of the place very

148

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

jealously, which was natural enough as
it yielded them game and fur in plenty.
Though he showed me good sport, it was
quite plain that he never told all that he
knew. The paths he followed, if indeed
they were paths, were not blazed. He
seemed to steer by a sense of direction,
and from a general knowledge of the lie
of the mountains, valleys and rivers.
Seldom did we return by the way that
had taken us to the feeding-grounds of
moose or caribou. Duchene was con-
temptuous of easy walking, and almost
seemed to choose the roughest going, but
he jogged along in marvellous fashion
through swamps and windfalls, with a
cruel load on his back. The fellow was
simply hard as nails, and, measured by
my abilities, was tireless.

'^Looking back to that autumn, it
strikes me that there was something de-
monic in his energy. Food and rest did
not matter to him. He was always ready
to go anywhere, — leaving me to follow
149

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

as best I could; and though I was a
pretty stout walker, and carried but
little compared to him, it was only
shame that kept me from begging for
mercy on the long portages.

**Only a few weeks after our trip to-
gether Duchene went out of his mind,
and took to the woods. For ten days he
wandered in the mountains without
food, gun or matches, but he appears to
have partially regained his senses, and
made for La Galette, where he arrived
in a very distressing condition. Under
his father's roof he fell into a harmless,
half-witted existence, which lasted for
several months. With the spring the fit
came upon him again and he disappear-
ed. The brothers followed his trail for
days, but lost it finally in the valley of
the Enf er, nor were they ever able to
discover further trace of him. No man
knows what end he made, nor where in
this great wilderness his bones are
bleaching.

150

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

**Tou have heard, perhaps, the belief
of the Montagnais, — strange medley of
Paganism and Christianity, that those
who die insane without the blessing of a
priest become wendigos, — werewolves,
with nothing hiunan but their form,
soulless beings of diabolic strength and
cunning, that wander for all time seek-
ing only to harm whomever comes their
way. A black superstitious race these
Indians are, and horribly sincere in
their faith. They shot down a young
girl with the beads of her rosary, be-
cause her mind was weakening, and they
thought thus to avert the fate from her,
and themselves. You would not doubt
the truth of this, had you seen the look
in the eyes of the man who told me that
he had been a helpless witness of the
murder.

**I have never spoken of what hap-
pened to me the following summer, be-
cause one does not like to be disbelieved :
perhaps to-night, with the storm-hags

151

A TALE OF THE GRAND JAEDIN

abroad and the voices of the sky filling
our ears, you will understand. Our tent
is pitched so near that infernal spot, —
the whole thing takes possession of me
again. I keep listening —

'* You know the Riviere a I'Enfer, but
you have not seen its head-waters, and
never will if you are wise. A queer lot
of tales old and new, but all pointing to
prodigious trout, took me past the
mouth of the canyon that gives the river
its name. A bold man might follow this
cleft in the mountain, but he would go
in peril of his life; the precipitous
ascent on the left side is safer, if not
easier.

**Duchene would not guide me there,
but he gave an extraordinary account of
the fishing in the lake which is the
source of the river. There is an Indian
tradition, and these traditions usually
have a foundation of some kind, that it
contains trout of tremendous size. Du-
chene asserted that stout lines he had set

152

A TALE OF THE GEAND JARDIN

through the ice, in the morning were
found broken. Trying again, with the
heaviest gear, his tackle was smashed as
easily. Heaven knows what the lake
holds ; nothing came to my fly but half
a dozen ink-black trout a few inches
long.

*^ Very little over a hundred years ago
it was firmly believed that an active vol-
cano existed not far from here, and this
lake, at the very summit of one of the
hills to the northwest of us, fills to the
brim what looks like an old crater.

*'The good fellows who were with me
did not seem to like this fancy of mine
to push to the source of the stream, but
I cannot say whether this was due to the
uncanny reputation of the place, or to
the fact that we had nothing but Du-
chene's vague description, and the flow
of the water to guide us. It was a heavy
task to get a canoe up to the lake
through that difficult country, and it is
very safe to say that mine was the first

153

A TALE OF THE GEAND JAEDIN

craft ever launched on its gloomy sur-
face.

^*I began fishing at once, but nothing
stirred ; this was what one might expect
in water without a ripple, beneath a
cloudless sky; there could be no fair
trial under such conditions, before the
time of the evening rise. I made some
soundings, but my two lines together
did not fetch bottom a hundred feet
from the shore. The slope under water
is very steep, and huge fragments of
stone hanging there, seem ready, at a
touch, to plunge into the depths. It is
hard to describe the colour of the water ;
like neither the clear brown of the river
we fished to-day, nor the opaque black-
ness of the swamp rivulets ; — ^transpar-
ent ink comes nearest to it.

^^No stream feeds the lake, but there
must be powerful springs below, for the
decharge flows strongly through a chan-
nel of boulders, with water weed moving
in the current like something snaky and

154

A TALE OP THE GRAND JARDIN

alive. The tent was pitched on a patch
of black sand at the farther shore, the
only level spot we could find, and, climb-
ing a few feet higher, I looked out over
the bleakest prospect of crag and valley,
of moss and granite, till the eye met and
welcomed the line of the horizon, and
the blue above. Beside me three dead
whitened firs, the height of a man, were
held in a cleft of the rock, and some fan-
tastic turn of the mind made of the place
a wild and dreary Calvary.

'*The sea is old and the wind is old,
but they are also eternally young. Of
the elements it is only earth that speaks
of the never hasting never resting pass-
age from life to death, — ^where the years
of a man are an unregarded moment in
the march of all things toward that end
which may be the beginning. Here on
this peak of the world's most ancient
hills it seemed to me as though creation
had long passed the flood, and was ebb-
ing to its final low tide.

155

A TALE OF THE GEAND JAEDIN

** There fell upon me that afternoon
one of those oppressions of the spirit
that never weigh so heavily as when
they visit you in the full tide of health,
under the wide and kindly sky. How
shall one account for the apprehensions
that crowd upon you, and seem not to
have their birth within ? In what subtle
way does the universe convey the know-
ledge that it has ceased to be friendly?
Even in the full sunlight, the idea of
spending a night there alone was un-
welcome.

*'Soon after arriving I had despatch-
ed my men to La Galette for supplies, as
we did to-day, but the distance is shorter
by the old Chemin de Canot trail, and
they should easily return before sunset.
Although knowing this well, and that
nothing but serious mischance would de-
tain them, it was with a very definite
sense of uneasiness that I watched the
canoe cross the lake, saw them disem-
bark, and in a few seconds disappear.

156

A TALE OP THE GRAND JARDIN

**The afternoon wore away in little
occupations about the camp, and in fish-
ing along the shore ; later on I intended
to scramble around the edge of the lake
to the canoe, and try casting in the
middle. Out there, quite beyond the
reach of my flies, one tremendous rise
showed that Duchene's stories were
not wholly fables, and when evening fell
there might be a chance to prove them
true. But this fortune was not for me ;
another must discover the secrets of that
mysterious water.

*^ Already the barometer had shown
that a swift change of weather was at
hand; gradually, and scarcely percept-
ibly, the ever thickening veil of cirrus
mist dimmed the brightness of the sun,
until, pale and lifeless, it disappeared
in tumultuous clouds that rose to meet
it. As the storm came rapidly on, it
seemed to me, in the utter stillness, that
I could hear the rush of the vapours
writhing overhead. Then with a roar

11 157

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

that fairly cowed the soul, the wind,
leaping up the mountain side, fell upon
the little habitation, and would have
carried it away had my whole weight not
been thrown against the tent-pole. In
the darkness that drew like a curtain
across the sky I waited miserably,
dreading I knew not what, beyond the
gale and the javelins of the lightning.

'* Sitting with an arm around the pole
I heard, through the wind and the rain,
a cry. Even answering it, I doubted
that it was human ; when it came again
I tried to think that some solitary loon
was calling to his familiar spirits of the
storm. Never have I passed such an
hour under canvas. The wind had the
note you hear in a gale of sea. Light-
ning showed the surface of the lake torn
into spindrift that was swept across it
like rank on rank of sheeted ghosts. The
thunder seemed to have its dwelling-
place in both earth and sky.

158

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

*'In a lull to gather force for a fresh
assault, the cry again: again, and
nearer, when the wind burst upon the
mountain-top, as though released from
some mighty dam in the heavens. This
was not voice of beast or bird, and cour-
age fell from me like a garment. The
numbness of terror possessed me ; I sat
with nails digging into the wood, say-
ing over and over some silly rhyme.
Close at hand the cry ; — ^heart-breaking,
dreadful, unbearable . . .

^^ Wrenching myself free, as from the
grip of a nightmare, I leaped to the door
of the tent ; five paces away in the howl-
ing blackness stood something in the
form of a man, and in one stricken mo-
ment the lightning revealed what I
would give much that is dear to blot
from memory. As the creature sprang,
with its hellish voice filling my ears, I
flung into the water, diving far and
deep. Swimming with frantic strokes
for the farther shore, I did not, in the

159

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

greater fear, bethink me that this in-
deed was the Lake of Hell. The pursu-
ing cry, rising ever and anon above all
other sounds, kept nerve and muscle
strung in the agony of the desire to
escape. Crawling out exhausted and
breathless, but stopping no instant, I
plunged down the mountain-side; —
staggering, falling, clutching, somehow
I reached the bottom, and pitched into
a bed of moss, like an animal shot
through the neck,

**When I could breathe and feel and
hear again, my ears caught only the
sounds of the retreating storm and of a
rapid on the river. Stumbling painfully
towards it, I saw with inexpressible joy
the light of a fire, where my men had
camped when overtaken by darkness
and the tempest.

**The next day I went out of the
woods, the men returning to bring in
tent and canoe. They met with nothing,

160

A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN

but I don't believe that their heart was

in the search."
*^And what in God's name was it?"
*^Pray Him it was not poor Du-

chene in the flesh."

161

BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

The man whose purpose in carrying a
rifle through the woods begins and ends
with the death of an animal, will resent
the introduction of matters irrelevant,
and is advised to leave these pages to
him who counts the antlers but an item
in a very various bag. Before the latter
I expose such divers spoils of the chase
as memory has chosen to bear home-
ward to her modest hall, attempting no
apology for divagations beyond the
limits which my title would seem to
impose.

Fitting it is, at the outset, to pay one's
humble duty to the great goddess of for-
tune, for surely no one will deny indebt-
edness to her in all that concerns the
162

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

pursuit of large game, — in weather, in
time, in the manner of shot that offers
and in the shot itself. It is only the fool
that hath said in his heart there is no
such thing as luck. What say you to a
bullet from a rifle aimed at a moose a
mile away, accomplishing its errand?
Here is the story, from a source that
commonly flows clear of mis-statement
and exaggeration. Two young men, in
the course of a long canoe trip through
northern Ontario, broke camp early one
autumn morning. Paddling across a
lake of some size, they descried a log
shanty, and put ashore with the idea of
procuring some variation from their
monotonous diet of beans and bacon. An
Indian opened the door to their knock,
grunted "Bojou," and before answer-
ing their question as to fresh meat scan-
ned the other side of the lake with atten-
tion. His eyes fixed upon a dark object,
no more than a speck, which the canoe-
men had not noticed, and reaching back

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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

into the cabin he drew out a battered
Winchester, squatted behind a stump
whereon he rested his rifle, elevated the
muzzle far beyond the range of the
sights, and fired. Through the clear
morning air they saw a great splash, and
the speck disappeared from sight. It
took two pairs of sturdy arms nearly
twenty minutes to reach the place where
a moose lay dead at the water's edge
with a bullet through his heart, and a
little later they went their way with as
much tough steak as they cared to carry.
Neither you nor I saw the shot, but
then we never saw a drive from the tee
find the hole three hundred yards away,
and both things, if unlikely, are still
conceivable.

A third of this distance is probably
the usual limit of effective shooting ; in-
deed it is seldom decent or sportsman-
like to pull trigger at such a range, for
you can but hope to cripple a beast that

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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

there will be very slender chance of fol-
lowing up and finishing.

Yet, at six hundred yards, an un-
scrupulous rifleman (I will not say
sportsman) exterminated a band of six
caribou which he left to rot on the
mountain-side. Though he shot from a
rest, and was aided by telescopic sights,
it was a remarkable performance, and
one that may remain a record for accur-
ate marksmanship and cynical brutal-
ity.

Even the broadside of a moose, five
hundred yards away, is a mark that few
men are able to hold on with any assur-
ance. The difficulty of sighting at this
distance under varying conditions is ex-
treme, although the rifle may be of high
power and low trajectory, but I have
heard of a clean and satisfactory kill
with the second shot, where the first bul-
let gave absolute indications as to wind-
age and elevation.

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BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

On the western plains, and in moun-
tain stalking, long chances are no doubt
legitimately taken, but in the heavily-
wooded and difficult country of Quebec
and northern Ontario it is rarely per-
missible to attempt shots beyond three
hundred and fifty or four hundred
yards. Occasionally a long shot suc-
ceeds, but the spirit which restrains a
man from burning powder, unless there
is a reasonable prospect of success, is
more to be commended than one of mere
unthinking optimism.

A good glass is invaluable for deter-
mining whether an animal carries a
warrantable head, — it is not only **cows
in the distance" that **have long
horns"! Regrets and apologies are
often heard for a too hasty shot, where
antlers prove to be small or ill-formed.
Time and opportunity are generally
given for that careful inspection which
would prevent a life being taken with-
out justification, and preserve the tak-
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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

er's self-respect. There is usually this
excuse for precipitate shooting, that In-
dian and French Canadian gillies are
far too ready with their 'Hirez, tirez/' —
a suggestion difficult to resist. In theory
it is easy to say ^^ bring me in sight of
game, and then faU behind and keep
still," but this puts rather a cruel strain
on men whose speech centres are easily
excited, and who may not have perfect
confidence in your ability to judge, and
accept, the favourable instant.

A glass not only discovers animals
which would escape even the trained eye
of the woodsman, but often saves you a
long stalk ; moreover it gives you many
an interesting half-hour with moose
feeding in the water-lilies, bear gather-
ing berries or digging for ants, smaller
creatures carrying on the affairs of
their daily lives, or caribou playing
quaintly and solemnly together in some
marshy meadow.

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BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

It is pleasant to refer to an exhibition
of coolness, of sportsmanship, and of
self-restraint. After days of toil and
disappointment, a caribou with heavy
antlers was stalked to within a couple of
hundred yards, and stood, unalarmed,
while its points were deliberately count-
ed through the glass and found to total
twenty-eight. Once again were they
gone carefully over with the same re-
sult; as this lacked one of the number
borne by a head already adorning my
friend's hall, he allowed the fine crea-
ture to depart in peace.

One bitter cold morning in Septem-
ber, a canoe was being forced up a
Laurentian lake against wind and sea.
Sleet stung the face ; two stout paddlers
were put to it to make way against the
gale which chilled the thinly clad pas-
senger. He envied the canoemen the
exercise which kept them warm, and
their advantage in kneeling, and not
sitting, in the water which slopped over

168

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

the gunwale from time to time. In such
weather one would scarcely hope to see
anything carrying horns ; sensible beasts
would keep the shelter of the woods.
However, as the canoe slowly advanced,
freezing fingers held the glass on lake
edge and mountain side. Where the
lake narrowed towards the middle,
something on the opposite side caught
the eye, — something which looked like
the roots of a spruce overturned by the
wind close to the shore, — ^roots curiously
symmetrical in their arrangement. At
six hundred yards the observer's mind,
after swinging from doubt to certainty
and back again, settled to conviction. A
moose lay there, the body entirely con-
cealed, showing only a stately head, with
horns still in velvet. Yet he hesitated
to speak, knowing how disconcertingly
the keen-eyed chasseur resolves your
discovery into stump or stone. The slow,
noiseless progress continued, and at five
hundred yards indubitable ears were

169

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

apparent. No longer could words be
withheld: ^^Je vols un orignal avec une
panache magnifique/' The men looked,
and looked in vain. Natural politeness
forbade dissent, but it was none the less
evident that assent was withheld. The
canoe crept along the opposite side,—
one pair of eyes, aided by the Zeiss
binocular, intent upon the antlers, en-
deavouring to appraise their spread,
conformation and pahnation, two others
scanning the shore line intently. Four
hundred yards, three hundred and fifty,
three hundred: and now the bowman
says in the muffled voice of the woods,
^^Ah, entre les deux epinettes/' What
now to do"? Shooting from the canoe
was impossible, with such a sea running.
A retreat, followed by an approach up
wind in full view of the animal, was a
manoeuvre which could scarcely be con-
ducted without alarming him, and invit-
ing his quiet departure to convenient
cover, but one could not fire at* horns
170

I

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

and ears. There was nothing for it but
a shot across the lake when he should see
fit to arise, and as a few seconds would
carry him to shelter, Monsieur did not
even dare to turn and scramble up the
steep bank beside which the canoe was
lying. Accordingly he steps into the icy
water to the knee, and feeling the chill
penetrate his marrow, suggests the fir-
ing of a shot to bring the creature to his
feet. Not to be thought of! While still
pondering how long a human being
could stand thus and remain able to
shoot, the moose raises his huge bulk,
and slowly turning, offers a fine broad-
side chance. A lucky bullet finds him
behind the shoulder, his knees give, the
Frenchmen chorus ^^Vous Vavez/' after
a few heavy steps he falls, and never
moves again. Fifty-six inches in the
span, — ^no extraordinary breadth it is
true, even for Quebec, but with an un-
usually graceful conformation, a per-
fect balance and three tines on each
brow beam.

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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

Consider the good fortune involved in
every phase of the occurrence! Eight
o'clock in the morning of the first lawful
day. But for a conspiracy of happy
chances the record would have been of
an uncomfortable, unrewarded chase,
with the added chagrin of seeing a fine
head disappear, when to shoot or ap-
proach were alike impossible. The atti-
tude that such an incident should engen-
der is one of thankfulness and humility ;
the obvious lesson is to carry a glass,
and be vigilant in the use of it.

Failure to do this may lead to worse
than disappointment. In our broad
Canadian solitudes there is but little
danger of shooting at one's fellow-crea-
tures,— a danger which the use of a glass
almost entirely eliminates, but none the
less strange and awkward mistakes
occur. The telling about one may per-
haps save some unfortunate the expense
of purchasing the experience.

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BULLETS ^ND THEIR BILLETS

At the head-waters of a Laurentian
river lies a lake six miles long, which is
much frequented by the larger inhabit-
ants of the wilderness. On a stormy
September afternoon, Monsieur and his
guide struck into the heavy country at
the foot of the lake, the Zeiss being left
behind as even this slight encumbrance
would make a difference when forcing a
way through the very dense growth.
Emerging upon the shore at a point
some miles from camp, after a long de-
tour, they came upon the freshest traces
of a large and a small bear. The prints
were sharp in the wet sand, even chang-
ing colour : the animals must be close at
hand. It was easy to follow their leisure-
ly course along the beach, and as a stiff
gale was blowing, there seemed to be
fair prospect of surprising the pair be-
hind some wooded point. But a few
hundred yards had been covered when
Andre, walking on the outside, said
^'Voild voire ours," Five hundred yards

12 173

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

away, on a sand-spit running out into
the lake, he saw in the failing light the
characteristic heavy bodies, the short
legs and low-swinging heads. At four
hundred yards, as the animals had turn-
ed and were making slowly for the
woods, there seemed nothing for it but
to take the chance. The first shot went
low, but the second got home, and in
such time as weary men may do a quar-
ter-mile over sand, stones and fallen
timber, the couple came up with — a two
year old cow moose ! One glance through
the glass would have shown that, instead
of two bears on a sandbar, two moose
were standing in the water beyond it, —
cut off at mid-leg by the intervening
ridge, and presenting with quite diaboli-
cal deceptiveness the appearances de-
scribed. The government of Quebec
does not permit war to be waged against
women, so the effect of the unhappy bul-
let was to secure a supply of meat (much
needed by the way) at some two dollars
174

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

a pound, if the penalty were exacted.
The incident was of course reported, but
the circumstances were judged to be so
extenuating that the fine was remitted.
What irritating bungles may be made,
even by those used to fire-arms, and not
subject to buck-fever! Here is a story
as I have heard it told. The teller was
tramping after caribou through the
heavy snows of early January, and late
in the afternoon, on rounding the
spruce-covered point of a lake, two were
seen within easy shot, — scarcely more
than a hundred yards away. A cart-
ridge was thrown from magazine to bar-
rel, careful aim was taken at the larger
animal, and the comment of Moise on a
clean miss was '^dessus/' Another shot,
another miss, and the same remark. The
bewildered creature scarcely changed
position while five deliberate attempts
were made to take its life, and each time
did Moise, with sorrowful politeness,
announce the shot too high. At this
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BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

moment a bargain seeker might have
purchased a rifle, with the owner thrown
in, at a sacrificial discount from list
prices ! The magazine now being empty,
the rifle was brought down from the
shoulder, that a sixth cartridge might be
slipped into the barrel. The sight was
at three hundred yards! Many hours
before, a companion, who was to have
the first shot, had come upon a small
band of caribou lying in the midst of a
snowy expanse, and, as their bodies were
not in sight, had suggested that the pro-
tagonist of this tale should fire at three
hundred yards, to bring them to their
feet. Then was the sight elevated, and
so it had remained.

If the little narrative has any interest
for the reader, he may care to hear the
sequel or sequels. As to the caribou first
seen other counsels prevailed, and two
of them were accounted for by two
clever shots ; while the animal who had
so gallantly stood the fusillade fell to

176

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

the sixth bullet, after the sight was low-
ered, as did also his mate, who happened
to move into line at the instant of firing.

The handling of a rifle must become
as automatic as the manipulation of a
knife and fork, or some misadventure
will sooner or later befall. Were there
not sad necessity for it, one would
scarcely venture the observation that
under no conceivable circumstances
should the barrel be allowed to cover a
human being. The boy ought to be
taught that to forget this for a moment,
with any weapon, even when it has been
taken to pieces and is in process of
cleaning, is an unpardonable breach of
etiquette, to be followed inexorably by a
hiding.

Unless this is well learned, a hair-
trigger adds a new danger to the use of
firearms, and the following incident
leads one to question whether this device
confers an advantage commensurate
with the risk it involves.
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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

Two sportsmen of mature experience
descried a bear five or six hundred yards
away. They were obliged to make a de-
tour in order to approach it, and left
their men on a knoll to signal the move-
ments of the animal. Overshooting their
mark, the presence of the bear was first
notified to them by a crashing of
branches sixty or seventy yards to the
left and rear. Both wheeled suddenly,
finger on trigger, and both rifies went off
before they were brought to the shoul-
der. The bear departed hastily without
any ceremonies of leave-taking, while
his pursuers looked blankly at the woods
which received him, and then at each
other. In sitting down on a log, and
breaking into inextinguishable laughter,
they probably took their discomfiture in
the best possible spirit, but afterwards
it was remembered that, as they swung
round, one had been covered for an in-
stant by a rifie with a hair-trigger, and
with a finger on that trigger which

178

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

might just as easily have exploded the
charge a fraction of a second earlier.

The experience, if an sumojing one,
was certainly pleasanter than that of an
old French trapper who was attacked
by a she-bear. Females with cubs some-
times forget the timidity which charac-
terizes the species, and may become very
ugly and dangerous. My friend, having
no better weapon than a sheath-knife,
put in practice a trick which saved his
life, but left him with a badly mauled
arm and shoulder that showed deep
scars to the day of his death. Snatching
a branch of balsam with the left hand,
Morin threatened the bear with it, thus
diverting attention to his left side;
while this was being cruelly torn and
bitten, he kept striking stoutly with the
knife in his right hand till, at length, he
reached the heart. They fell together, —
the bear dead, the man unconscious, and
each soaked in the other's blood. On
reviving he staggered to camp, where,

179

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

tended by a companion, he lay many
days on his sapin couch before the
wounds healed, and strength returned.
This method of securing a carriage-rug
demands unusual nerve, — it is not
recommended to amateurs.

Speaking of the recovery of Morin,
who nearly bled to death, reminds one
that woodland remedies are singularly
efficacious. Joe Villeneuve gave himself
a bad axe-cut on the foot, made nothing
of it with his usual pluck, and continued
for two or three days to tramp under his
load. When Sunday came, he proceeded
to treat the nasty inflamed gash in the
following fashion. First he hobbled to
neighbouring trees collecting spruce-
gum, he then warmed water and thor-
oughly washed the foot, the next step
was to melt the gum in an iron spoon,
and pour the boiling stuff into the
wound! There was never a flinch nor
a grunt, but his face grew drawn and
white with the pain. This is effective

180

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

antiseptic surgery, but one is glad now
to substitute less heroic treatment, with
the aid of a simple outfit of drugs and
bandages.

Shots at moving animals over two
himdred yards away are seldom effec-
tive, yet I have seen three bullets out of
four hit a galloping caribou at two
hundred and fifty yards. None were
immediately fatal ; it was not till the last
was fired that the animal showed signs
of being struck.

A note of satisfaction was discernible
in the voice of a man who summed up
his autumn shooting thus, — **One very
large caribou, but so old that the horns
had gone back, — killed him off-hand
while moving through the trees, — sight
at three hundred yards, — broke his
neck, — carried the rifle a hundred and
fifty miles and only pulled trigger
once." Well enough, but perhaps he
would have been entitled to a higher
place in regard had he refused so doubt-
ful a chance.

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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

We have dropped from a mile, to
ranges of a couple of hundred yards,
where still there are a good many quite
forgivable misses; what shall one say,
however, of utter failures at the dis-
tance of a pistol shot"? When twenty-
two futile bullets are despatched at a
pair of caribou but thirty yards away, so
engrossed in a private battle as to be
oblivious of the firing, and this by a
marksman who would ordinarily put a
bullet in a hat at a hundred paces, some
explanation must be looked for. Again,
shooting from a canoe is far from easy,
but one cartridge, out of a magazine-
full, should get home in such a mark as
the side of a moose presents at sixty
yards ; yet one recollects hopelessly mis-
directed shots, where many seconds
were at disposal for bringing the rifle
quietly to bear. There is of course no
real aiming when this happens, — no
actual alignment of the sights with the
target, and one is driven to suppose that

182

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

the powerful nervous excitation due to
finding game after days of tense expec-
tation, sets up a rush of efferent activity
which cannot be stayed or controlled. As
a blow leads to a blow without interval
of conscious thought, so the sudden
stimulus sends rifle to shoulder, and
finger to trigger, without that moment
of deliberation upon which success de-
pends. In every game of skill there is
perhaps an instant and a situation ana-
logous to this experience, and the cure
lies in some appropriate inhibition (in
golf, "slow back")) — ^but the lesson is
difficult to learn.

It has always seemed an interesting
thing, that the woodsman who hears the
reports of a rifle in the distance, seldom
errs in his conclusion as to whether the
shots have been successful. When they
follow one another rapidly, the comment
will he ''II a mal tire/' but where a rea-
sonable time elapses between them he
will say "II Va tue, il a Men tire/' Ex-

183

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

perience tells him that a certain interval
indicates the absence of undue haste,
and of the pernicious incidents that
attend it. Thus these untutored people
can gauge, with very fair accuracy, the
psychological state of a person two miles
away !

By what right indeed one calls them
untutored I do not know, for they have
been all their lives at the best school in
the world. They have learned to see
with their eyes and hear with their ears,
a touch tells them the age of a footprint,
taste approves or rejects food and
water, and the sense of smell is strik-
ingly developed. All their knowledge
is co-ordinated, and available when
wanted: muscle and eye have been
taught to work in harmonious relation.

The habitant, — not the city but the
country dweller, is a man of his hands.
Give him the simplest tools, the roughest
material, and he will fashion you boat,
house, cart or violin. A broken shaft or

184

BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

smashed canoe will cause you but little
delay on your journey: something will
be devised of almost laughable simpli-
city to meet the emergency.

On a certain arduous voyage, where
it was necessary to go very light indeed,
the only tin pail developed a hole in the
bottom of so nicely calculated a size
that, at the moment when the water
came to the boil, it had all run out. No
tea in the woods: condition unendur-
able ! Many cures were tried, — while
the half-breed watched his masters' fu-
tilities with something like a twinkle in
his solemn eye. When everyone had
had a hand at the tinkering, and matters
were worse rather than better, he took
the vessel, neatly rounded the hole,
shaved down a rifle bullet, delicately
rivetted it in place, and voild, a teapot
that performed its functions quite per-
fectly.

The way in which the wood folk use
their eyes excites admiration, mingled

185

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

perhaps with chagrin at our own blind-
ness,— blindness of the mind rather than
of the organ itself. Returning to camp
after a day's fishing in the upper
reaches of a North Shore river, the path
carried us beside a pool that was on a
friend's beat. My companion was plod-
ding along in the rear with bowed head,
five salmon on his back. As we came out
on the stretch of sand that lay between
the river and the high wooded bank, I
made one of those purposeless remarks
that pass for conversation. "I wonder

if Mr. got anything here?" The

reply — '*He got two salmon here,"
brought me to a standstill. All day long
we had been together, on pools some
miles above. We had seen no one, no
sound could have carried the distance,
and yet without delaying, glancing
around, or even raising his head the
gaffman made this announcement in his
quiet even tones.

186

i

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

**In the name of wonder, Comeau,

how do you know ? Surely you are

joking."

"I am not joking, Sir, nor do I know,
but I think that Mr. took two sal-
mon here."

**Stop then, and set down your bag:
let me try to work this out."

The day was fair, nor had a drop
of rain fallen during the two weeks in
which we had daily visited and fished
the pool. The little beach of fine gray
sand was covered with confused foot-
prints— ^mere formless depressions. The
boulders by the river were dry, and
gave no clue. The grass along the
edge of the forest showed no trace of
fish having been laid down there. Five
minutes of intent examination left
me no wiser, and a little piqued at
being unable even to guess what thing
it was, there before us, that told my com-
panion the story, I gave the riddle up,
and asked humbly for the answer. The

187

BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

mild brown eyes, that seemed always to
be looking at something remote, some-
thing below the surface, turned to me.
The gentle voice was without hint of
pity or superiority.

*^You see those footprints?"

*'0f course; every inch of the sand
has been walked over again and again,
and in all directions."

^*Yes, but I mean that line of foot-
prints."

Patiently a series of impressions was
indicated, which it seemed just possible
to sort out of the intricate pattern. They
led to the water from a point perhaps
ten paces distant from it.

''And which way was the man walk-
ing who left those traces?"

"How should I know, the sand flows
in when the foot leaves it, so that no one
could say with assurance where the heel
rested or where the toe."

**But was he walking forward or
backward?"

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BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

The reader's quicker intuition has
doubtless enabled him to solve the mys-
tery. A line of footprints there was,
and close beside it another. These were
slightly deeper towards the woods, and
away from the river : also the steps had
been short : such steps as one would take
who had played a salmon at the river's
edge, was backing slowly to bring it to
gaff, and digging his heels in firmly as
he retreated. On the first glance at this
page of woodland script, so obscure to
the eye of the townsman, it had been de-
ciphered, and as inquiry showed, with
perfect accuracy.

Comeau, whose modesty is not the
least delightful of his characteristics, is
fond of telling how his worst shot was
his best, how with his rifle he missed a
loon, and killed not only the bird he
aimed at but another. Holding on what
appeared to be the larger of two loons,
the bullet went wide, passed through the
head of the other, which was really the

13 189

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

nearer, was deflected, and decapitated
the mate on the ricochet. The story,
and much else that is interesting, will
be found in his ^'Life and Sport on the
North Shore." The chief defect of this
fascinating book is persistent under-
statement of the author's personal ex-
ploits !

While Comeau's own five senses are
trained to a marvellous pitch of fineness,
I have heard him assert that Indians, or
at any rate some Indians, possess a sense
he lacks. Not otherwise could he ex-
plain the ease and swiftness with which
they are able to traverse the woods at
night, where an experienced white man
is almost helpless. An Indian with
this faculty will make a night march
through a trackless country, of as many
leagues as he is able to compass in the
daytime, and apparently with no
greater difficulty nor fatigue. This must
involve in the first place a sense of the
north, — a rare gift that few white men

190

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

possess, and also a perception of things
otherwise than by sight and touch.

Many opportunities occur of testing
faculties that have not been dulled, or
atrophied, by the life of civilization. I
note a recent one. The season of 1912
was in many ways remarkable. Early
in the summer, abnormal conditions de-
veloped, and even when the sky was
absolutely cloudless, the sun did not give
its usual heat. At noon the eye could
glance at it without discomfort. The
days were cold: the clear nights were
relatively warm. High in the upper air
some impalpable veil shielded the earth
from the sun's rays, and, conversely,
prevented the radiation of heat at night.
It was not water vapour, for there were
none of the attendant manifestations in
the way of solar or lunar haloes. If the
gentlemen at Washington and Toronto,
who bind and loose the four winds for
us, noticed these conditions they did not,
so far as I am aware, communicate their

191

BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

knowledge, or advance any theory to
account for something which was affect-
ing profoundly the inhabitants of the
globe. Not until the very close of the
year did little paragraphs begin to ap-
pear in the papers. These appearances
had been noted in several European
countries, the deficiency in the sun's
heat measured, the different celestial
phenomena collated, and the hypothesis
of volcanic dust advanced to account for
them. Day after day, in the heart of the
woods, Indians and Frenchmen were
perfectly aw^are that all was not right ;
the sun was malade, the moon bleme, the
sunset sky showed no colours, the great
besom of the northwest wind continu-
ally failed to sweep the heavens to pure
intense blueness. Wherefore the crops
did not ripen, the oats were gathered
green, and the people in northern Que-
bec practically lost their season's labour
in the fields. They knew not of the erup-
tion in the Alaskan islands which pro-

192

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

jected vast quantities of dust into the
atmosphere, but the effects of this were
very plain to senses ahnost as alert and
keen as those of the creatures they pur-
sue.

The attitude of modern science is not
to dismiss things as incredible, but to
hold judgment in reserve, awaiting
proof and the examination of evidence.
Were it not so, I would scarcely dare to
drag within the four corners of a dis-
cursive paper this Indian camp-fire
story.

The narrator is a man of the highest
integrity and truthfulness, moreover,
like Comeau, he is a careful and accur-
ate observer. However you may explain
the incident, the character of the man
compels one to put aside the theory of
intentional falsification. In the years
of his strenuous youth Bastien was
chosen to accompany a party engaged
upon government survey duty in the
Labrador peninsula. The summer's

193

BULLETS AND THEIE BILLETS

work had been extended as long into the
autumn as the Chief dared; now they
were hurrying back, by forced marches,
to gain the coast before the freezing up
of the lakes and rivers. Breaking camp
one morning at sunrise, a portage of five
miles was made to navigable water, and
there Bastien discovered that his
sheath-knife, indispensable companion
of such journeyings, had been left at the
last sleeping-place. Time was far too
precious to allow him to return, so after
searching to see if it had not been stowed
somewhere in the scanty packs, he was
compelled to embark without it. A long
day of travelling advanced the party
fifty miles, bringing them to the junc-
tion of the stream they had been
descending with a larger river. Here
they found a band of Indians encamped,
on the way to winter hunting-grounds.
After the custom of the race, a member
of the band was ^^ making medicine" to
discover whither they should direct

194

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

their course for game. A lodge had been
built, and the naked medicine man was
proceeding with his incantations, and
wrestling with the spirits he had in-
voked. Half in jest, half in earnest, —
for Bastien is himself an Indian, he ap-
pealed to the conjurer to recover the
knife, the latter agreed to attempt it.
From time to time groans, and agonized
voices, reached the ears of those outside.
**0 it is far — it is far — the way is rough
— I am tired — I am tired— the moun-
tains are high." Then for a long time
there was silence. At length the con-
jurer crept forth exhausted, foaming at
the mouth, covered with sweat.

*^Look to-morrow in the third spruce
tree, on the right side of the trail, —
there you will find your knife. ' ' It was
more curiosity than conviction that led
Bastien next morning to go a few yards
along the trail. In the third spruce tree
to the right his knife was sticking.

195

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

Comeau speaks French and English
with a copious vocabulary, and no trace
of accent, — a much rarer acquirement
than is generally supposed. He knows
several dialects of Indian, has shot
everything on four legs from the
Rockies to Ungava, is an expert tele-
grapher, and the only doctor and mid-
wife in a great stretch of country on the
North Shore. It may be interesting to
record that his idea of the finest and
most dangerous sport that our continent
affords, is the harpooning of horse-
mackerel from an open boat, and few
have so wide and varied an experience
upon which to base an opinion. He and
two others, a great doctor and a great
lawyer, — ^wonder-workers all three by
the standard of common men, have the
same dreamy brown eyes, that effort-
lessly, with an effect of laziness, seem to
penetrate what arrests the ordinary
vision, and concern themselves with the
sub-obvious.

196

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

Acknowledging indebtedness again to
this remarkable man, I offer the reader
this psychological riddle. Persons lost
in the woods walk in a circle from right
to left, and to this there appears to be no
exception. In winter the snow has many
times revealed such a tragedy, — the first
hesitation of the mind uncertain of
direction, wanderings at random to
every point of the compass, the impulse
to the left which finally asserts itself, a
returning curve, bringing the unfortu-
nate back to his own path, eager accept-
ance of this as a track that will lead to
safety, the broadening trail, as the cir-
cuit is made again and again, till fatigue
and cold bring the end. The common
explanation is that the stronger right
leg is responsible, but it is not satisfy-
ing, as the right leg is not actually
stronger than the left. What happens
on the water, in a fog, contradicts the
accepted theory, and suggests another.
Indians rowing their wooden canoes up
197

BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS

the North Shore, cut across the deep
bays when the weather is cahn. They
may be, and often are, enveloped in fog
at a distance from land ; and in a wind-
less fog it is practically impossible to
hold a true course without a compass.
Now observe the situation : they are fac-
ing down the river, and the right arm,
which is undeniably stronger than the
left, might be expected to pull the boat
round towards the land. This is not
what happens; the boat describes the
right to left circle of the man who is lost
ashore, and sometimes the circle is large
enough to carry it to the land miles be-
low the original starting point. Per-
haps then it is not the muscles, but the
brain that is responsible Does the
master-lobe impel to the left, when
means of holding direction are lacking?
What mental principle is involved, and
what is the law of its operation ?

198

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

It has become impossible to picture
Quebec to one's seK without the ^^Fron-
tenac," and indeed there may be a few
slow-going, old-fashioned people who
harbour the idea in a corner of their
minds that Quebec has too much ^'Fron-
tenac" in its cosmos, — that it was some-
thing of a pity to make of the old, gray
battlemented town a mere background
for an inn. Even such folk as I write of
are glad enough to pass at a step from
the night, and the bitter snow-laden air
into warmth, and light, and spacious
comfort. That jewel, consistency, is not
so precious that a man is bound to part
with all he has to possess it. The Done-
gal lad who carried our bags to a room

199

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

liked *^tlie counthry," but I think that
sometimes the cold hard silhouette of
Mont Ste. Anne on the sky-line melts to
the softer outline of Muekish or Errigal
in his vision. He lingers not only for
his tip, but for a friendly word with the
strangers who know and love his land.

Day broke in a tempest of snow that
would have anchored to the hotel any
one who was possessed of a spark of
prudence, if a spark there may be of so
dull a virtue, but lacking this, and hav-
ing some faith in the old saw ^^ short
notice soon past," we went forth into the
tumult, and once embarked on the In-
tercolonial train across the river it was
too late to retreat. After all the weather
may clear, the ferry may cross to the
North Shore, and if the worst befalls the
spirit can endeavour to find solace in the
inductive truth that ^^ there will be an-
other day to-morrow."

Two seats before us in the crowded
car were packed a dozen convent-freed
200

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

girls on their way home for the Jour de
PAn. The leader of the party was an
honest-faced, dimpled, laughing little
baggage who was never still and never
silent. When the good-looking newsboy
plied his arts upon the group, as he did
most persistently, this fearless young
person, in the role of natural champion
of the party, took and gave the chaff.
Ten-cent pieces emerged from grubby
little purses; prize packages acquired
were opened and their amazing contents
distributed; eyes sparkled, tongues
wagged, hands gesticulated, eager young
faces flushed with excitement and yet,
will you credit it, no shriek, no loud
word or other girlish demonstration in-
terfered with the comfort of the other
occupants of the car. Some one with a
turn for epigram describes a lady as **a
woman who talks in a low tone and
thinks in a high one," and these lively
children had learned the first part at
least of the definition. One could not

201

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

help contrasting the result of convent
training with the manners taught, or the
bad manners uncorrected, in our public
and private schools, where the fashion
of entering or sustaining a conversation
is to out-scream other participants.
Surely if our girls knew how they could
win to the heart by sheer charm of voice,
— a charm that will endure when others
fail, they would try to make their own
the beauty of our English speech when
fitty spoken, with pure intonation, in
measure to the occasion. It has been my
lot to see half-a-dozen golfers who only
desired to eat their meat in peace, deaved
by the clamour of a group of young
ladies at the other end of a club dining-
room, driven forth to their own sanctu-
ary, at which haven arriving one by one
each sighed an independent and fervent
*^thank God."

The ^^ People's Railway," as one
might expect, accommodates itself to the
public. An irritated traveller who had

202

A christmAkS jaunt

just missed the daily train to Dublin,
may have been comforted by the por-
ter's sympathetic remark that ''the
punctuality of that thrain, sor, is
mighty onconvanient to the people of
Limerick." It seems to be the effort of
the Intercolonial to annoy its patrons as
little as possible in this way. Arriving
about an hour late after a run of seventy
miles, we were encouraged to find that
the wind had abated and the snow was
falling less heavily. Fortune seemed to
favour the imprudent, for the little
train that is hand-maiden to the ferry
had steam up, nor was there any an-
nouncement that the daily trip from and
to the North Shore would be abandoned.
The thirty passengers who were await-
ing the Champlain's pleasure, besieged
the operator with questions which were
kindly, courteously, and unsatisfactor-
ily answered in two languages. An hour
slipped away. Where was the ferry?
Could no word be had? Yes, one might

203

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

telephone to Murray Bay via Quebec,
but the government would not under-
take this expense ; it must be a matter of
private enterprise. At an outlay there-
fore of ninety cents, the polite and effi-
cient agent at Murray Bay wharf was
connnunicated with. He was told of the
plight of the thirty marooned at Riviere
Quelle, that the wind was falling, the
snow had almost ceased, and we had an
horizon of several miles on our side of
the river. He promised to urge the cap-
tain to set forth, and hopes were high as
the train carried us to the wharf whence
we were able to see half way across the
St. Lawrence. The river was free of
ice, the east wind had died away, the
storm was over. No reason there ap-
peared to be why the Champlain should
linger, and yet she came not. For one
hour, for two hours, we walked up and
down among the snow drifts, scanning
at every turn the wintry river where
cold shiny seals were making the best of

204

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

an unattractive life. No smoke-cloud
showed, the North Shore spoke not by
telegraph or telephone, bilingual criti-
cism of the government and its economic
ways flowed freely. About half-past
three a passenger was permitted, at his
sole charge, to gather tidings from the
other side. The long-deferred blow fell
heavily ; it was still snowing, and more-
over, was now too late ; the boat would
not start. Of a truth the captain of this
high-powered and well-found craft,
which in her time crossed the Atlantic,
wore that day no cuirass of triple
brass.

The obliging train received and bore
us back without further pa3anent to the
main line, where thirty people more
than exhausted the accommodations of
the two small lodging-houses. Having
on former journeys gathered some ex-
perience of these at their best, we threw
ourselves into the arms of a certain

U 205

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

Madame Menier, who rose hospitably
and handsomely to the occasion.

Next day the Intercolonial arrived
with its usual punctual lateness, but the
ferry waited for it, and the crossing was
duly achieved in the teeth of a clearing
gale from the north-west. A hundred
miles of coast line from the Saguenay
to the Capes was visible, while range on
range of stark, snowy mountains car-
ried the eye back to the wild highlands
of the interior.

Even from the South Shore we heard
the booming of blasts where the new
railway, the railway that is to bring
wealth to the countryside, is in construc-
tion. May it indeed be so, as the price
is heavy enough. Dynamite has rent the
familiar outline of Pointe a Pic; the
beach where generations of children
have played has become a railway yard ;
all the dear familiar spots along the
shore are profaned and desolated ; three
times within a mile does the line cross

206

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

the quiet village street; the Murray
River,— once in a land of salmon-streams
called in preeminence *^La Riviere
Saumonais," — is dammed for pulp and
power, and a farcical fish way, as useful
for its purposes as an attic stair, pre-
tends compliance with the law. And all
this for what? The country produces
and is able to produce little or nothing
for export but wood and its products.
Can these sustain a railway which is
said to be costing nearly forty thousand
dollars a mile, which must compete in
summer with water-carriage, and in
winter will be operated with difficulty
and at great cost ? Wild talk there is of
building through the mountains, cross-
ing the Saguenay and marching down
the Labrador to a winter port, hundreds
of miles through a barren land where no
man is. One must ask leave to doubt
that any promoter competent to form an
opinion honestly holds the view that
such a road could possibly succeed.

207

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

These settlements have prospered by
supplying land, houses, services, and
food to summer migrants who have gone
there seeking tranquillity, and will flee
before the shriek of the locomotive.
Thoughtful villagers are beginning to
see that alluring promises ot^^de Vouv-
rage pour tout le monde" have meant
little and will mean less to them, while
the imported regiment of foreign rail-
way navvies has brought with it crimes
of violence that were unheard of in this
law-abiding place. They realize what
they are like to lose, and are coming to
doubt that prosperity is a commodity
which may be carried at will to any
point in freight cars.

The wharf at Pointe a Pic was a cheer-
less place that we were glad to escape
from, to the warmth and welcome of
Johnny Gagnon's; and how surpass-
ingly good were the soup and part-
ridges, the pastry and feather-light
croquignoles, the home-made jam, re-

208

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

luctant cream and tea ? It was pleasant
to stroll up the village street, meet-
ing and greeting old friends, paying
visits here and there, and always re-
ceiving the courtesy, the hospitality,
the kind enquiries and seasonable com-
pliments in well-turned phrase which
never fail among these amiable people.
Evening brought a long gossip with
our good hostess about the difficulties
of life under modern conditions. With
eggs and beef, wood and poultry at
city prices, and the wages of chits of
girls who had to be looked after
from morning to night at such a pre-
posterous figure, how could one's pen-
sionnaires be accommodated to the sat-
isfaction of both stomach and pocket?
Before the subject of house-keeping was
exhausted we were both committed to
the attitude of praisers of days gone by,
and filled with distrust of the future, its
disturbing tendencies and varied per-
plexities. However, Madame 's piety

209

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

and humour enabled her to appreciate
the kindness of Providence in not bur-
dening our feeble shoulders with the
ordering of the affairs of the universe to
the end of time, and soon we slipped on
to pleasanter subjects, — her large fam-
ily and their fortunes, the grandchild-
ren in Montreal, who could not speak
their native language ^'pas un seul mot
je vous assure, Monsieur/'

Pommereau did not keep us waiting
next morning. Before eight o'clock he
and Le Coq, — gaunt, dirty gray, rough-
coated but willing, drove up in a whirl-
wind of drifting snow from which they
were fain to shelter under the lee of the
house while we made ready. With
heavy robes and hot bricks wrapped in
sacking the tiny cariole was very com-
fortable, though the north wind blew
fiercely, snatching away one's breath
with its violence, and driving the fine
hard snow like a sand-blast against the
face. The gale that sprang up afresh in

210

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

the night had done, and was doing, its
work. The easterly and westerly roads,
wherever exposed, were drifted fence
high with hard packed snow, through
which only an experienced horse could
force a way. A town-trained animal
would have gone wild with fear, and ex-
hausted itself with futile plunging and
struggling in a few hundred yards, but
to steady-going old Coq, whose patient
soul is imbued with his master's philo-
sophy that ^^nous sommes dans la vie
pour rencontrer des obstacles/' this was
all in the day's work.

For those unfortunate enough not to
know this same philosopher, now floun-
dering to his middle in the drifts behind
the sleigh, it may be said that not for
nothing do his features resemble those
of the traditional Socrates. Sixty-odd
years of age, the father of twenty-two
children, three of whom are a burden
through ill-health, the husband of a bed-
ridden wife, a landless man who has

211

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

never known anything but bitter toil
since childhood, and, conceive of it my
discontented millionaire, no weeping,
but a laughing philosopher. A wage of
fifty cents a day for the work of a man
and horse from long before daybreak to
sunset is not affluence to the parent of
such a family, and yet this was all his
reward through many a long winter. I
hope that he will forgive me for betray-
ing a confidence when I set down here
his statement to me that at one time he
*' regulated his affairs" upon a hundred
and fifty dollars a year. This was all
the cash that he *^ touched," and what
came further in kind was no great mat-
ter. Yet he has no quarrel with the
scheme of things ; if it is foul to-day it
will be fair to-morrow, if misfortunes
befall ''c'est la vie/' The good God
knows best and sends what is fit. After
it all will there not be the long, un-
troubled sleep ^^sur la Montagne"?
Pommereau is no surname or name of

212

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

baptism. In the dark past some forgot-
ten '* Monsieur" gave Ms horse this sou-
briquet which was transferred by a mys-
terious process to the owner and has
survived to the obscuring of his legal
designation.

The climb out of the valley of the
Murray was slow, nor was it easy to
keep our vehicle at an angle of safety.
When it careened, the driver, standing
always, flung himself to port or star-
board as occasion demanded, the pas-
sengers aiding him in his equilibra-
tions to the extent which their bundled-
up condition and narrow quarters
allowed. It was a stormy passage,
where a sleigh with high runners would
have been capsized a dozen times, but
the craft of the country is built so that
after sinking but a little distance it rests
on the bottom and can weather almost
anything in the way of drifts.

Two hours driving brought us to the
heights that overlook the Petit Lac,

213

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

whence one gets the first view of the
mountains of the hinterland, — unin-
habited I had almost written, forgetful
at the moment that the moose and the
caribou are wandering and browsing
there, and all the lesser creatures of the
silent snowy woods are there at home,
living lives simpler than ours but just as
important to them, loving and hating
much as we do.

We draw up before the little cabin of
an old and dear friend to find, alas, that
another Visitor is expected. Through
the very mists of dissolution the dim
eyes try in vain to see ; slowly, slowly,
the tones of familiar voices reach the
dull ear; the face set for a journey and
other greetings lights up — '^Ils sont ve-
mis me voir, lis sont venus — me — voir!''
. . .God rest the gentle soul of Augustin
Belley! Honest as the sunlight, faith-
ful as the stars to the sky, ever consid-
erate for others and to himself unspar-
ing, filled with kindliness and charity as

214

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

the tides of the great river he looked out
on for eighty years fill its bed. What
he leaves behind him will raise no marble
palace, no memorial tomb, but none the
less will his legacy to mankind live when
these have crmnbled to dust, for verily
it is the things not seen that are eternal.
Crossing the broad expanse of the
Grand Lac, Coq's rusty tail streamed
out to leeward, for the wind was again
blowing sharply from the north, and on
the other side of the lake the drifts be-
tween the fences were higher than ever.
The way was unbroken, as the country-
folk neither travel nor attempt to make
the road passable opposite their farms
while snow is falling or drifting. Very
soon it was clear that if we were to get
forward another horse must be charter-
ed, so overtures were made to a strap-
ping young fellow who had seemingly
planned out a day of leisure for himself,
but whose good-nature at length pre-
vailed. With his ierlot in the lead and

215

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

the weight divided, we made good wea-
ther of it, sometimes, however, leaving
the highway for a mile or more and tak-
ing to the fields. Experience has shown
at what places the snow will lodge and
the roads become impassable, and there
it is the winter custom to establish a line
of travel through the long farms charac-
teristic of the country, marking these
ways of necessity every fifty feet with
little spruce trees set alternately to
right and left. Without these halises
the track, beaten only to the bare width
of a cariole, could not be followed, but
with their assistance the horses navigate
the hills and dales surely and safely as
the mariner does a buoyed channel. It
is peculiarly pleasant to journey thus
over ploughed fields and pastures,
across bridgeless and invisible streams,
through swales where alder and swamp
willow give a little shelter from the in-
sistent wind.

216

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

But a few miles aecomplished, and
being then nowhere in particular, our
new charioteer suddenly turned round
and shot at us ''J'ai Videe de virer ici/^
On it being suggested to him that from
our point of view this was neither a logi-
cal nor a convenient stopping-place,
with equal promptness and great cheer-
fulness he declared his willingness to
proceed. Arrived at the house of a sub-
stantial farmer where a fresh horse
could be had, we parted company with
mutual compliments and wishes for
good fortune on the road. A fine type
of countryman this, — polite, obliging,
competent, and perfectly independent.

Our next driver had in his stable no
less than three stout horses, which, the
week before, had hauled I forget just
how many hundred pounds of miscel-
laneous farm produce to Quebec in two
days. Entering his well-built dwelling
to warm up, we found the fortnightly
baking at that anxious stage when the

217

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

clay oven is ready for the bread and the
bread is not quite ready for the oven.
Even with this on her mind, and the
senses of smell, taste, and touch alert to
determine the proper instant of trans-
ference, the goodwif e was most politely
interested in our wayfarings. She
pointed with pride to an enormous goose
hanging from the rafters in process of
being thawed out, and destined to take
the chief place on the board at the great
festival of the New Year. Without con-
sulting his wife as to the proposed jour-
ney, the husband began to make his
preparations; this was a man's affair
upon which a woman's opinion was
neither invited nor expected. No adieus
passed between the spouses though the
distance to be covered was not a short
one, and bad weather might easily delay
return until the following day. This
was quite in accord with the conventions
of these people, who, though affection-

218

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

ate, make but little public display in
greeting and parting.

The new mare bore the brunt of the
drifts, in which at times she almost dis-
appeared, while Coq, gratefully accept-
ing the advantage of second place, may
have revolved in his philosophic mind
this new application of the adage,
** First in a bush, last in a bog/' Past
Pousse-pioche, Crac-Crac, Main Sale
and Cache-toi-bien, along the Miscou-
time, through Chicago, La Chiguiere
and Tremblants, with the poor little cla-
chans of La Mort and La Misere just
distinguishable from the rocks to which
they cling ; — ^nothing between us and the
boldest mountains of Charlevoix on the
other side of the Gouffre valley but
three leagues of icy air. Then, at the
last, down a thousand feet of hills to the
most hospitable of homes and the kind-
liest of welcomes.

Would your town resources enable
you to prepare a repast of caribou steak,

219

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

ragout of hare, eggs and bacon, jam and
tea, or the equivalent of such a meal, on
half an hour's notice at three o'clock in
the afternoon, and, candidly, what
would your attitude be to hungry unex-
pected guests who tumbled in on you
thus? If she thought it a nuisance to
stable and care for two horses, heat up
stoves, prepare the best room and feed
four people, Madame 's fine courtesy was
equal to concealing it. I would prefer
to believe, however, that her yet finer
courtesy made but a pleasure of these
labours and distractions.

Fed and warmed, there was talk at
large on many subjects, — with the
father concerning the wolves' depreda-
tions among the caribou, and the inva-
sions that human commercial wolves
threaten against the '* public park and
pleasure ground," of which he is chief
guardian ; with Madame, of the children
and their schooling; with Antonio, the
eldest son, of crops and prices; with
320

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

Thomas Louis, of onslaughts upon the
ubiquitous beaver; and with Victor,
aged fourteen, of his first caribou just
accounted for very neatly at ''cent et un
verges, monsieur/^

Pommereau, and Coq the indefatig-
able, turned homeward to make a stage
of their thirty-mile drive before night-
fall, and a little later, overcoming with
difficulty most pressing invitations to
linger, we departed for Baie St. Paul
under a shower of good wishes for the
New Year. Antonio with his spirited
horse convoyed us, and the last nine
miles were all too short, for the air was
still, though sharp with frost, and the
naked winter moon hung over the valley
flooding it with white light to the sil-
vered summits of the hills.

The inn-keeper at Baie St. Paul had
fought in South Africa, but his little
daughter was never further afield than
Les Eboulements, and had no yearning
to broaden her knowledge of the world.

15 221

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

With the convent and duties at home,
her day was very full and very happy.
What could one do but commend the
wisdom so early and easily acquired?
Sure it is that if the chances of life take
her to other lands, her heart will not
cease to cry out for this the home of her
childhood, — the happiest place on the
broad earth.

Eight o'clock the next morning saw
us climbing away from sea level behind
a clever tandem. It was pretty to see
the team-work as for two hours we
mounted the long hills. The shaft horse
never made the mistake of putting in
weight until his mate had tightened the
traces, and never failed at that precise
instant to move forward; on the des-
cents the leader cantered free, keeping
neatly out of his companion's way. As
with many halts we worked up from one
raised-beach plateau to another, there
were ever widening views of the valley
we had left, the northern mountains

222

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

through which the St. Urbain road finds
a difficult passage, the heights of Les
Eboulements, the St. Lawrence and Isle
aux Coudres far beneath us, half hidden
in ragged vapours gilded by the heatless
beams of the low sun.

Practically all the way to La Barriere
it was an ascent through an increasing
depth of snow which tried the horses,
and made the passing of other vehicles
rather a ticklish business. Some one
must give way and leave the narrow
track; light yields to loaded, a single
horse to two, two to three, — the etiquette
of the road is well settled, and debate
only arises where conditions are equal.
With six feet or more of unpacked
snow, as often there is at this elevation
later in the winter, the horse is unhar-
nessed, the driver steps off and is sub-
merged to his neck, he tramps down
some square yards and perhaps adds his
robes and blankets to give a foothold,
the horse is coaxed into the hole thus

223

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

prepared for him, the empty cariole is
pulled out of the way, the other party
passes and then the animal must be ex-
tricated from his snowy cavern and har-
nessed. So tedious and fatiguing are
these crossings, that drivers who travel
this road frequently make their jour-
neys at night to avoid them, and will
wait at some convenient spot for half
an hour or longer when they hear of
vehicles on the way. Though we were
never compelled to resort to the manoeu-
vre pictured, it was sometimes a delicate
affair to get by without upsetting when
the road had to be conceded.

The boy who drove us was born at the
little hamlet of Mille Vaches far down
the North Shore, but had been brought
up in the States, where he had learned
to speak indifferent but fluent French
and English. This ability was standing
him in good stead with the travelling
public, as his master had only made the
usual early steps in the alien tongue of

224

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

learning a few of its more striking ex-
pletives. On the first opportunity the
lad found his way back to Canada, and
had no yearning for riches at the ex-
pense of further exile. Gazing for a
long time at a fairly earned tip he
enquired what the money was for ; when
the nature of the transaction was made
clear to him he showed the emotions of
one who encounters a delightful experi-
ence for the first time.

La Barriere, the half-way house, set
in the midst of some leagues of un-
broken forest, is the highest point on the
road, and can scarcely be less than two
thousand feet above the sea. It resem-
bles Port Said, not, let me hasten to say,
in eclectic iniquity, but as a port of call
where all who pass this way, on business
or pleasure bent, must meet and fore-
gather,— a halting place that you cannot
evade on one of the world's routes of
travel. Having said so much one must
admit that the resemblance of this little

225

A CHEISTMAS JAUNT

cluster of log houses and stables,
perched solitary among snows that do
not fail it for nine months in the year,
to the wickedest town on earth with its
sands and torrid heat, ceases utterly.

A fresh tandem took us rapidly on-
ward through the woods where the snow,
though deep, was undrifted; the little
spruces and balsams by the roadside
were solid pyramids of white where nei-
ther branch nor twig appeared, — their
tops sometimes bent over with a burden
of snow which the wind had fashioned
into the likeness of strange birds and
beasts. We whirled down the long
slopes of the Cote Maclean through an
avenue of these glittering, fantastic
sculptures, toiled up the other side of
the deep ravine, and at a turn in the
road found ourselves in the cleared up-
lands above St. Tite des Caps, whence,
at night, one can see the lights of Que-
bec, still more than thirty miles distant.

226

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

Here, once more, the drifts rose to the
tops of the fence-posts, but a day of fine
weather had made it the duty of the
farmers to turn out with their shovels
and home-made snow ploughs, while
earlier travellers had done us good ser-
vice in beating down the road. The snow
creaked and whined in a cold far below
zero, rime gathered thick on the shaggy
winter coats of the horses ; the eye pene-
trated to the uttermost limits of the
horizon through vapourless crystalline
air that spared nothing, concealed noth-
ing, drew no veil of distance and mys-
tery over the remotest hills.

Our charretier promised to do the last
eighteen miles in less than three hours,
and was much better than his word. The
rush down steep, winding hills to the St.
Lawrence was a mad and exhilarating
progress, giving scant time for specula-
tion on the upshot should a cantering
horse lose his footing or take a curve too
sharply. No motor car in its best flight

227

A CHRISTMAS JAUNT

could so fill the imagination with the
idea of swift and rhythmic motion, — of
sheer space-annihilating speed. Dull
mechanical devices are uninspiring be-
side the strenuous, free action of the liv-
ing creature. If this be deplorable con-
servatism, then pray range us with
those who are hopelessly and happily
unprogressive.

228

LE LONG DU SENTIER

No highway, may it please you ; naught
but an ill-blazed trail, devious and un-
certain. Leading whither "? Verily I
know not. Even if you have patience to
follow, the chances are that it will carry
us to different destinations.

Those who deny to an old book its
ancient place of authority, allow that it
contains many shrewd and useful hints
for the guidance of mankind, — among
them, the first command laid by the
Creator upon things created, and upon
man. * ' Be fruitful and multiply. " ^ ^ Be
fruitful and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it." There are who
qualify the injunction in theory and in
practice : the French-born citizen of the

229

LE LONG DU SENTIEE

Province of Quebec is not among them.
Skirting discreetly the tangle of con-
troversy that lies in our way, let us leave
others, — so minded, to reconcile or con-
trast the views of the Almighty and Mr.
Malthus. I only propose for myself a
couple of non-polemical observations
with respect to an existing situation and
its necessary sequel. In the command,
a sequence appears, the ideas march
logically, their order is not haphazard.
Nothing can be vainer than for a race to
contemplate the subdual of the earth,
or even the holding of a place won in it,
if the precedent condition be not com-
plied with. Accumulating wealth will
not avail if men decay.

The mind can scarcely frame a better
wish for Canada, than that its people of
divers kindred should learn mutual
comprehension, — how to appreciate
qualities they lack, and find excuse for
the defects of those qualities, — cultivat-
ing steadfastly that facility for willing

230

LE LONG DU SENTIER

compromise which Stevenson regarded
as the first requisite for happiness in
the married state. It is a long road ; as
yet all may not travel it, but the less pro-
lific race might at any rate recognize its
handicap, and the futility of attempting
to stay the advance of the tide by any
spell of mere words.

Point for a second remark may be
borrowed from the same source.
^' Happy is the man that hath his quiver
full of them : they shall not be ashamed,
but they shall speak with the enemies in
the gate." The Psalmist's observation
does not seem to have been made the
subject of scientific estimate, though hu-
manity would gain by a study of (say)
Priam's household in terms of well-
being. Happiness is an evasive thing to
place your finger upon, and set down
with reference to a decimal point, but an
untrained observer may be allowed to
express the opinion that the ratio of

231

LE LONG DU SENTIER

increase, if not geometrical, is better
than arithmetical.

Pierre falls a long way behind

Priam in the matter of family, but, in
a degenerate age, I am fain to refer to
him as leading case. All being said,
thirty-one is a very pretty total ; more-
over, as my figures were gathered some
years ago, I may easily fail to credit him
with an odd child or two, but the ques-
tion does not turn on trifles. Some little
inaccuracy too may be forgiven in the
case of a mere acquaintance, where an
affectionate father is not sure, on the
instant, as to numbers, sexes and names.
It was not Pierre, but another whose
household was only a little more than
two-thirds of Pierre's, who was tender-
ing one of his junior offspring for hiie.
He had a very good general idea of the
boy's age, appearance and qualifica-
tions, but the name escaped him. Quite
properly he regarded this as a detail
that should not embarrass the negotia-

232

LE LONG DU SENTIER

tion, it being capable of definite ascer-
tainment,— probably the mother would

know offhand. G is a man of

great resource, and on the spur of the
moment he suggested, or invented, a
nickname that would serve in the dis-
cussion as a symbol for the unknown
boy.

Joseph , and his wife Marie,

may have had such a perplexity in mind
when they called their six boys
** Joseph," and their six girls "Marie."
These were not left to the generic names
alone, but were distinguished by further
prenomens of a severe classicality ; and
this suggests an interesting speculation,
which I cannot illuminate, as to the
source of the ''Telesphores," "Poly-
euctes, " " Anastases, " " Polydores, ' '
"Narcisses," '^Epiphanises," to which
we find so many bare-footed, ragged-
breeched urchins answering. Names
piously selected doubtless, and piously

233

LE LONG DU SENTIEE

bestowed; in better taste perhaps than
many of our sentimentalities.

If increasing and multiplying brings
a definite resultant of happiness, it
might be thought that the tendency
would be reversed when a family was
broken up through accident or misfor-
tune. Yet this is not clear. Coming out
of the woods to a tiny settlement where
the people were very poor, it was plainly
to be seen that a sorrow had fallen on
the community. The usual cheery greet-
ings were subdued, groups stood about
in sober talk,^usty mourning was car-
ried by those who had it, the work of
field and farmyard was abandoned. Ma-
dame, questioned, told us of a neigh-
bour's sudden passing. He had taken
out of the world with him all that the
family had to depend on — his power to
labour. When debts were paid there
would be nothing, less than nothing.
*' There are children?"
* ' Ah yes, sir, nine of them. ' '

234

LE LONG DU SENTIER

''And their age?"

''The eldest thirteen, a girl."

"What will become of them, Ma-
dame?"

"As to that there is no anxiety: all
are provided for."

"But how ; I do not understand ; there
is neither land nor money?"

"It is true, quite true; we take one —
no, we are not relatives, — and a brother,
two; a cousin, one; and so on — all, all
well placed, the little ones will not en-
counter la miser e/'

A matter of course, a mere common-
place of life !

Is it that the finest charity is thus
spontaneous, unreasoning, unconscious
of its own quality?

Only by accident does one discover
what passes in money or in kind, what
willing service is rendered by man to
man. Wastrels and professional beg-
gars may ask for alms: others endure
privations rather than lose their self-
respect. It was for sympathy and ad-

235

LE LONG DU SENTIER

vice, I feel sure, and not with the idea

of receiving help, that P called

on a friend at the close of a lean sum-
mer. The situation was unfortunately
a common one, for these people place
the Christian before the Pagan virtues,
Faith and Hope often shoulder out chill
Prudence. Discounting the future too
light-heartedly, he had bought a horse in
June on the usual terms, — a small down-
pajTuent, balance in September, the ani-
mal to remain the property of the seller,
and possession to revert to him if the
last penny were not forthcoming. A
hundred and thirty-six dollars had been
paid, twenty dollars remained. Money
and horse were gone unless the Stranger
who had engaged him, and had suddenly
departed, should be mindful of a
promise, or a half promise or some
vague intimation of good will. The old
charretier knew not where to turn; his
harvest was past; no more could be
gathered in. P sat there looking

236

LE LONG DU SENTIEE

all of his sixty-five years, — back bent,
hands deformed with the ceaseless la-
bour that had been his portion from
childhood ; weather-beaten with facing
suns, and frosts, and all the winds of
Heaven ; lined and wrinkled with anxie-
ties which, at the beginning of old age,
left this money an unattainable sum. . .

*^It is not much, P , between

old friends."

For a moment it was as though he did
not hear, or could not understand ; then
he broke down as does a little child, —
utterly, helplessly. Sobs shook him,
tears forced their way through the
crooked fingers, speech was not to be
attempted; he rushed from the room,
from the house. No word of thanks
passed then or later, nor was it needed.

Yes, chill Prudence, and austere Tem-
perance, are inadequately cultivated by
these countrymen of ours.

They have better reason than most of
us for seeking to forget the hardships

16 237

LE LONG DU SENTIER

and the dullness of existence, but the
national vodka gives oblivion at a ter-
rible cost. The Church strives to stay
the traffic, licit and illicit, but like all
churches, in all lands, it is losing its
power ; — not yet perhaps in a purely re-
ligious aspect, but in the paternal con-
trol which, in general, it has most bene-
ficently exercised over the people. The
question as to what will take its place is
a vast and troubling one. It will not be
another church, in any sense in which
that word is used to-day.

Here and elsewhere I am venturing
opinions in unqualified form — opinions
that I know to be violently dissented
from. It may be that they have some
value as coming from one without re-
ligious or political affiliations, — or this
may at once deprive them of all value.
They are honestly held, and no apology
is offered, but it is fair to say that they
are limited by observation, and that
observation has been directed to the

238

LE LONG DU SENTIER

country and its folk, rather than to the
more sophisticated town-dweller.

There occurred a trifling incident not
long ago, which showed a cure in the re-
lation of a true father to his flock. A
lad committed an offence of so grave a
nature that it could not be overlooked.
Were the secular arm invoked, he must
have been punished by imprisonment.
Those concerned feared for the future
of a boy that the law had set its mark
upon, and thought it well to lay the
whole affair before the priest. What
passed between the shepherd and the
small black sheep is not known to them,
but the next day they were called upon
to receive a broken-hearted little crea-
ture, in his Sunday best, whose apolo-
gies were scarcely intelligible through
the manifestations of his grief. A true,
and let us hope a godly, sorrow gave ex-
cellent promise of amendment.

Do you envy simple faith, condemn it
as superstitious, or merely smile at it

239

LE LONG DU SENTIER

from a superior height '^ B 's horse

went lame. Bleeding worked no im-
provement,— the remedy seems as uni-
versal and as useless for horses, as it
was for human beings a hundred years
ago. When the leg swelled and stiffen-
ed, B 's mistress gave him money

wherewith to buy liniment, and charged
him straitly as to the use of it. Two
days afterwards, on a Monday, the horse
trotted up to the door with four sound
legs under him.

'*I knew the liniment would cure
him."

*^But, Madame,

**What! did you not buy the lini-
ment?"

**But no, Madame,

**How is it then that the horse is well ;
what did you do to him?"

** Madame, I will tell you. Doubtless
the liniment is good, — ^very good, for
ordinary troubles, but the case was a
grave one, and not to be trifled with;

240

LB LONG DU SENTIER

therefore I took the money you were
kind enough to give me and gave it to
have a mass said. Behold ! ' '

A well-nigh forgotten writer, whom I
must quote from memory, among other
thoughtful sayings has this : — **He who,
in the defence of his religion, forgets
charity, abandons the citadel for the
sake of the outworks." The citadel
abandoned, is anything left worth de-
fending ? And if the citadel be held, are
the outworks a matter of any great con-
cern ? Approach Quebec with a tolerant
and unbigoted mind ; you need not jour-
ney far to discover the living principle
that animates any religion worth the
having, — that fruit of the tree whereby
ye shall know it.

Join me as we light our after-break-
fast pipes on a pleasant Sunday morn-
ing in the woods. We are back in the
brave old days when a new lake lies
beyond every range, and the spirit will
not rf^st until it is found. A long tramp

241

LE LONG DU SENTIER

of exploration is planned; presently,
when all are ready, we shall tighten our
belts and be off. A few yards away, our
half dozen Frenchmen are washing up
by the fire, with much clattering of
tongues and tinware. The chores at-
tended to, they will sing a woodland
mass, and enjoy a day of idleness. The
parson of our party suggests a short
service, but it is late and we have far to
go ; so by way of compromise or conces-
sion a hymn is proposed. At the first
words we remove our hats, but the line
is not completed before one of the
Frenchmen nudges another, he another,
the word passes. Instantly they are un-
covered,— the work abandoned, standing
silent and bowed till the last of the old
cadences dies, and the voice of the
rapid again fills the air. The words they
do not understand, the tune is not famil-
iar, but they disceta an intention to
approach the great Power above us all,

242

LE LONG DU SENTIEE

and mutely, reverently, join with us in
that approach.

Over against this I ^et a page from a
travel note-book.

Palm Sunday in St. Peter's — ''0, say, there
he is! I've lost him three times/' and with a
scarce subdued view-halloo, she lopes through the
crowd before the high altar, while the great
music of the Passion, sweeping down from the
choir, tears at the heart.

A ragged country lad gray with dust, as is the
branch of olive he carries, looks after herewith
wide eyes.

A sweet-faced nun, under a cap that spreads
like a seagull's spotless opened wings, flushes
with distress. Can she find excuse in her gentle
mind, for the girl who thinks alone of the spec-
tacle, and her friend ?

The old priest, in threadbare soutane, whispers
to his neighbour : ' ' She forgets that this is to us
a holy place, and the very House of God. ' '

A German delivers himself slowly, impassively,
to his English companion :

''Curious beoble! Now zat young lady who
gafe ze exhibition is probably a modest und
devout girl in her own country, but she beliefs
in ze tribal God of ze Americans, und zat she is
now oud of his jurisdiction."

Those who have been educated to be-
lieve that a too-unquestioning obedience

243

LE LONG DU SENTIER

is rendered to the Roman Catholic
church in Quebec, that the priests spirit-
ually dragoon their people in thought
and action, are inclined to forget cer-
tain manifestations of a very healthy
and downright independence. Rather
marked political instances could be
cited : mine has to do with a lesser group
of interests.

From time to time an officer is elected
who has important lay duties in connec-
tion with the church of the parish. It
is very convenient for the cure, that this
individual should be of one mind with
him upon all questions that relate to
church management, and it is not
strange that he should use influence to
secure the man of his choice. A sharp
division of opinion developed in an im-
portant country parish about (as I re-
call it) the acquisition of a new, and the
disposition of an old graveyard. The
cure made no secret of his wish in the
matter, in fact he worked openly and

244

LE LONG DU SENTIER

strenuously to carry his views, and,
incidently, for the election of his nomi-
nee, but was not able to bring him in.
On the evening of the New Year's Day
when the election took place, there was
a sort of mild triumph over the people's
victory, and the cure's discomfiture.
The visitors who dropped in to give the
season's greetings were in high good
humour with themselves, but another
sentiment showed itself very plainly, to
wit, one of sturdy resentment at any
meddling with what they conceived to
be their proper affairs.

The Anglo-Saxon, whatever his ad-
vantages of birth and education, need
not fear that his courtesy will be of too
fine a quality for the peasants of the
field to appreciate. Nay, he may find
himself outdone in swiftness of compre-
hension, and readiness of tact. One who
had not learned this lesson sufficiently,
felt a little uneasy as to taking ladies
into the wilds, in the company of rough

245

LE LONG DTJ SENTIEE

carters and woodsmen who could not
possibly be familiar with the amenities
of feminine existence, but the doubts
were dissipated, at once and forever.
Politeness that erred neither in defect
nor excess, eager and intelligent antici-
pation of what might be pleasing to the
ladies, — these disclosed themselves as
native and abounding qualities. The
good fellows vied with one another to
smooth the way for unaccustomed feet,
to improvise shelter in a shower, to give
the comfort of a fire or a smudge, to
provide balsam beds of unheard of
depth and softness, and warm water for
morning ablutions. In the chill hours
before the dawn a blaze was kindled be-
fore the ladies' tent, dry wood was al-
ways at their hand, berries were
gathered for their behoof and the rough
table of split logs blossomed with
flowers. Supererogatory acts like these
must be the outcome of truly gentle

246

LE LONG DU SENTIER

natures; the teachings not of conven-
tion, but of the heart.

There is no gain without loss; our
scale of more complex ratios gives dis-
cords that are not so easily resolved, and
it is hard for us to understand how
rapid and how sure are the responses of
those who still vibrate to the simple har-
monies of life. Even the word to record
an intuition is chosen out of all other
words, and slipped delicately into its
place. After the departure of a guest
whom all delighted to honour; who
placed himself, effortlessly, in just rela-
tion with everyone in the camp by smile
or nod, friendly word or little act of con-
sideration (gentle and simple ever find
common ground) our cook was inditing
of the matter. In a muse he cleared the
table, and swept away the crumbs ; ab-
sent manner and furrowed brow showed
that he was troubled by processes of
thought. Presently he stopped, dish-
cloth to breast, his other hand leaning on

247

LE LONG DU SENTIER

the board, leg crossed, head on one side ;
— the idea was ready for the birth.

'^Ce Monsieur la est tres gentil, tres
aimable." This was mere generality;
he halted for the expression which
would convey a further shade of mean-
ing, a more definite characterization, the
result of nicer analysis. ^^11 me parait
que ce Monsieur Id est — bien pose/'

''Bien pose"! If this was not the mot
juste, the phrase fitting his idea as your
pint flask fits the precious pint it holds,
then indeed is language but a vain
thing !

It is continual pleasure to do with
men who are, as the Scotch say, quick at
the uptak, to whom a word is as good as
a lecture. On a shooting trip, one mem-
ber of the party had failed to kill his
animal, when, journeying homeward, a
last chance presented itself. The cari-
bou was on a bare hillside, across a
ravine, where he could not get away
without offering several chances, but the

248

LE LONG DU SENTIER

shot was no easy one. The gentleman
fired once and again, while the creature
kept moving off, and at length someone
else took a hand, till a bullet from one
rifle or the other finished the business.
Off went the men to the gralloching, and
as they were ploughing through the
heavy snow, the interf erer called after
them, ^*I think you will find that Mon-
sieur got him with the third shot.''

(The rifles were of very different cali-
bres.) On returning they confirmed this
theory, — there was but the one bullet
hole, and it was clear who had fired the
shot, for they had found the bullet. So
were all happy and content. Just a day
later, when driving in with the car-
casses, there was a sudden and most
irrelevant burst of laughter from the
gillie. Having conquered this to the
point of being able to speak, he told how
the cue had been taken, and the little
farce planned and played. *^One bullet
hole, assuredly, yes, only one, but not

249

LE LONG DU SENTIER

from the first rifle. How disappointing
that Monsieur should have nothing but
misses to remember ; better so, — ^but it is
sacredly amusing ! ' '

Wishing to try for moose at the end
cf rather a large lake, we embarked one
September afternoon to face a paddle
through wind and sea. It was not Judged
prudent to attempt a crossing to the
sheltered side, so we were on a lee shore
all the way, — keeping as near to land
as might be, in case of being swamped.
Medee, in the stern, was so accomplished
a canoeman that the risk did not seem
excessive, and the man in the bow knew
his job nearly as well. It was the pret-
tiest kind of performance, — making
way when the water allowed it, and to
the last instant of safety, — bearing up
to ride a wave or two, — watching the
chance to fall off and gain a dozen yards,
— driving, steadying, humouring the
canoe as occasion required. These two,
who had never before met, worked in

250

LE LONG DU SENTIER

such harmony that it seemed as though
a single brain were in charge of the
craft, though not a word was exchanged
throughout an anxious two hours. I
was amused at the dry compliments that
passed between two very wet men when
we made the end of the lake. Bow said
to Medee — ^^It crossed my mind, once
or twice, as we came along that this was
perhaps not your first experience in a
canoe. '^ To which, Medee — '^It is an
odd thing, but rounding the big point,
the thought came to me that possibly
you had handled a paddle before.''

It has been said that an education may
be acquired in the spearing of eels:
assuredly school and college may fail to
impart it. Eel-spearing and the calcu-
lus are occasions and not causes, for man
is endogenous, and the process of un-
folding bears no necessary relation to
the mass of his information. The habi-
tant of the elder generation can seldom
read, write or cipher. Much of what we

251

LE LONG DU SENTIER

call conmion knowledge is beyond his
ken. (An intelligent man, of sound
judgment, once said to me in a hesitat-
ing, interrogative tone, — ''Nous sommes
sous le Roi d'Angleterre, n'est-ce pas,
Monsieur.'') England and France alike
are unknown lands, very far away, —
names that awaken the vaguest of senti-
ments, or none. There is but one coun-
try near, and incomparably dear, to his
heart. For it, and for the religion, the
language, and the laws assured to the
uttermost generation of his blood, no
sacrifice would be deemed excessive.
Does this not point the road to those who
would readjust political relations with-
in the Empire? When they make it
clear that their proposals are for the
advantage of Canada, the ardent pat-
riotism of the French Canadian, will be
instantly aroused. But here my modest
path crosses a highway beaten by many
feet, which it is not our business to f ol-

252

LE LONG DU SENTIER

low. Taking up the trail on the further
side, let us saunter on.

Though the simple peasant may have
to rely upon you as to the denomination
of the bill that passes between you,
though he may not be able to read the
face of a watch, or tell in what year of
grace he lives, though his system of
chronology may be founded on the age
and fortunes of his successive horses,
yet is he of quick wit and good under-
standing. On the long roads, in the
hours of waiting for game, when pipes
are lit and the camp-fire blazes, you may
have as profitable discourse with him
about religion and politics, life and
death, and the heart of man, as you are
like to encounter across the walnut and
the wine. One omission you will note,
for to these clean-minded people aught
of sculduddery is odious. Their club,
the church, teaches better things.

The speech and idiom their fathers
brought from northern France have

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been very strikingly preserved. Though
Anglicisms creep in, as must be the
case, the language has changed but little,
and contains a whole vocabulary of
which the Parisian has lost touch. Those
who cannot read, transmit words as they
hear them, and are not led astray by
their appearance on the printed page:
illiteracy is a preservative, and semi-
literacy a destructive force.

Honesty being so much a matter of
convention, it is difficult to find a com-
mon measure of it among the nations.
To many French Canadians the govern-
ment is a fair mark to shoot at; — a de-
plorable point of view which other pro-
vinces spare no pains to reform, in every
way, save by example. Their attitude is
likewise reprehended towards natural
resources, particularly fish, game and
timber. These are depleted very waste-
fully, and of course there must be a
reckoning, but one might suggest in ex-
tenuation that the cause may be found in

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the very bountif ulness of the woods and
the waters. Where it has been the custom
for generations to take when the need
arose, it is not easy to instil sudden re-
spect for a line in an Act of Parliament,
or an imaginary line (disregarded by
birds and beasts) dividing two tracts of
forest. Even a fence, where no fence
was, is resented as an attempt to with-
draw from the common store things that
have been free as air from time of mem-
ory. The habitant who gathers a crop
of half grown partridges from his
mountain side, is encouraged in break-
ing the law a second time by those who
buy them for the table. After offering
a well nigh irresistible inducement to
illegality, such abettors are heard to
complain that some favourite spruce or
birch has disappeared from their en-
closed grounds, and are not consoled by
knowing that it has gone into the foun-
dation of a house, or the shafts of a cart.
Notwithstanding such evil example, the

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process of education is going forward,
and it is coming to be understood that
even game laws are framed for the good
of the people, and impose an obligation.

Your habitant will bargain shrewdly
for his own or his horse 's services. Most
cheerfully will he ask you double what
they are worth ; but, the bargain struck,
he will abide by it. Our plan of making
an easy agreement, and doing the other
party in the performance of it, seems
to him dishonourable; which shows, of
course, how hopelessly the moral sense
may be warped.

An old carter, to whom ten dollars
was a very great sum, once handed me
a bill which he had found when renew-
ing the balsam couch for a gentleman
whom he had taken fishing. He knew
that we had visited the lake a week be-
fore, and though nothing had been said
about the loss, thought that the money
might belong to some member of our
party. I doubt that the idea of keeping

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it ever occurred to him. In more years
of going into the woods than one cares to
acknowledge, where ammunition, flies,
tools, and many little things of value are
left lying about, I have never known the
most trivial article to disappear. Even
the open bottle of whiskey in the corner
of the tent is sacred.

Following the course of his duty, a
government guardian found himself
obliged to kill a score of beaver that
could not be dissuaded from building
dams where they interfered with the
passage of trout. Beyond question he
was entitled to the skins as his own pro-
perty, and to the eighty dollars which
they brought when sold. This was a
man with many demands upon him, and
knowing what good use he had for the
money, I expressed satisfaction that the
little windfall had come his way. Hesi-
tation in his reply led to further ques-
tions, but the matter had to be pressed,
almost to the point of rudeness, before

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he was willing to make a clean breast
of it.

^*I would not have you believe that I
kept this. It was not possible that I
should permit myself thus to make pro-
fit from an office, beyond the salary.
This, at least, no one shall say of me.''

**But it was yours, man, to do what
you pleased with!"

^^Thatistrue."

**Tell me then, of what folly have you
been guilty T'

**No folly, one would venture to hope ;
Monsieur le cure has it, for the poor of
his parish."

The gift was not diminished by the
cost of the powder and shot expended!

It is pleasant to deal with those who
do not grudge their services. Never
have I heard grumble or complaint at
our day beginning too early, or ending
too late (some virtue perhaps resides in
the pronoun) . Here was one little trial
of faith. We had been going, laden to

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capacity, for twelve steady hours ; at six
o'clock we staggered out on the shore of
a long lake. Nepton — then incurably ill,
poor chap, though we did not know it,
dropped his immense pack with a sigh
of relief, and cast his practised eye
about for tent poles, firewood, balsam.

**Hold on, Nepton, the lake is calm,
to-morrow we may not be able to cross
it; two hours' paddle and we will reach
a better camp-ground."

** Is it not then your intention — I
thought — Hoorah, mes gargons, Mon-
sieur dit que nous allons camper la 'has,
Emharquez! Emharquez!''

Very welcome was the news that no
power would stir us from the spot, and
even this ill-timed jest was not denied
its laugh.

Services are given which money can-
not buy, and are offered without thought
of reward. A drive of forty miles — long
hills, hard roads, rotten bridges, — ^was
in prospect, with a charretier who was

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nearing four score. A friend, younger
by a dozen years, dropped in the day be-
fore the one fixed for departure, and
launched upon a discourse as to the dif-
ficulties and dangers of the voyage.
With cunning oratory he created an at-
mosphere before developing his theme.

**Our old friend B ^is getting on

in years, that we must admit, though
with the very greatest regret, but it is
not to be hinted that he should abandon
the trip, if he is willing to go, — he must
not lose sa place. Consider, though, if
some mischance were to happen as he
returns alone, — ^the roads, such as they
are, — a broken bridge, or what you
please, — he there, without the strength
to set it right — ^the thought distresses
me, I cannot rest for thinking of it.
Now, as it happens, my own affairs are
not at the moment pressing. Permit me
then to accompany you and take the bag-
gage,— that will serve for an excuse.
You do not misunderstand me, — ^noth-

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ing to pay — most assuredly nothing, —
the defenses du voyage if you will."

Two days' driving, merely that he
might be on hand should anything befall
an old companion of the road !

Talking of highways, one is reminded
how awkward it is where logic is too
strictly applied ; the Anglo-Saxon habit
of mind with its make-shifts, expedi-
ents, and magnificent illogicality has
certain practical advantages. Arriving
at a place where a bridge was wont to
span a stream, the familiar structure
had wholly disappeared. It had been
condemned as out of repair, and the
corvee had gathered to build a new one ;
with strict regard to the order of events
in time, they had demolished and re-
moved rails, flooring, beams and piers,
and then had taken tO the woods for three
days to procure materials for another
bridge! Those who know the French
Canadian horse, and its driver, will
readily understand that this did not halt

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progress for more than a few moments.
It was only necessary to find a place
where the bank was not absolutely per-
pendicular, and a horse could keep its
feet in the rapid water. These animals
are at a loss as seldom as their masters.
It is interesting to see one cross a
bridge, where every second log is rotten.
The driver bids him ** regard well,"
flicks him with the whip to stimulate
attention, and generally leaves the reins
loose ! The beast picks his way, judges
the soundness of the foothold with eye
and hoof, and holds his balance so that
it can be recovered if a foot breaks
through.

I bid adieu to my fellow-countryman
at the happiest season of his year, the
Jour de VAn, — ^when old friendships are
renewed, and old grudges forgotten.
Entering his house you are always sure
of the best he can offer, but at this time
of good will, he prepares himself for a
very bounteous hospitality. If you are

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instructed in the ways of the country,
you will know that the girls expect a
kiss; etiquette d3mands, however, that
Madame and the baby should enjoy the
first of your salutes. To overlook a
friend at the New Year is to fail in cour-
tesy ; for three days pleasant visits are
interchanged, and every acquaintance,
for many a league, has received and
given his good wishes. Christmas is the
feast of the church ; this is the feast of
the home, and nothing that can be over-
come is allowed to keep the members of
a family apart. Once, in brutal ignor-
ance, I held my men in the woods over
the first of January, yet I was not made
aware in any way of their disappoint-
ment, or of my own grave mistake. To
find excuse for this, and conceal its con-
sequences has always seemed to me a
crowning courtesy.

You will travel far to find a people
who bear greater goodwill to their fel-
low men, or are readier to show it in

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speech and act. It is no form of empty
words when they wish you une bonne et
heureuse annee.

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