CHAPTER VII.NEWFOUNDLAND.

ON THE “GALLERY”.

BOYHOOD DREAMS OF THE DAY WHEN“THEIR TURN WILL COME”.

along the shore side, while through the opposite windows of your car, the waters of the Gulf, spread out, like a “loch”.

The third, and ideal way to make the acquaintance of Cape Breton, is to hire an old horse and drive yourself, making leisurely trips in all directions, lingering wherever Fancy dictates, and putting up each night in any village, town or farmhouse which promises a comfortable night’s lodging.

With your own horse you are at liberty to turn in at “gates” even though no houses are in sight, and continue in faith along the road until one appears. And, when the house—a “Crofter’s Cot” transplanted—is reached, it is quite in keeping with the Highland atmosphere if only the man of the family speaks English, the women being happy in “Gaelic only”—Gaelic which they learned from mothers and grandmothers.

This difference in language makes no difference, however, in their hospitality. And oh, the pictures sketched by these little cottages so snugly tucked away in the glen!

The language of beauty which they speak is easily understood. Beauty that belongs to simple architecture speaks from every line of door and window and roof; speaks in every line of the great, whitewashed chimney, which, never lacking fuel, proclaims in friendly smoke seen curling up out of the glen—long before the cottage comes to view—that tea brews on the hearth.

The people of this part of Cape Breton, striking inland, and across country to Saint Ann’s Bay and Ingonish, are, in the main, agriculturists. This is the farming section. So, in August and September, in the tawny fields of oats and barley, the figures of the reapers and gleaners, especially in the neighborhood of Ingonish, proclaim that Breton-Canada no less than Breton-France affords many “a Millet subject”.

But even the farmer of these parts turns fisherman in season. Alongshore “Old man with lobster-pots” is a frequent “character”, from Mabou all down the Gulf shore, doubling Cape North, and back along the south shore of the peninsula to Point Aconi; and, of course, on the Atlantic side, about Gabarouse and Saint Peter’s. One of the dominating physical features of Cape Breton is Cape Smoky, towering a thousand feet above the waters where the Atlantic and Saint Ann’s Bay meet. Smoky is a personality. Because its stern, old brow is always softened by an ever-moving fog-wreath, the English-speaking people call it “Smoky”; the French folk “Enfumez”. It is worth travelling far to view CapeSmoky after rain, especially in the afternoon when the westering sun turns the shifting fog into rainbows, flitting, flashing, jewel-like bits of colour, gone in a moment.

There is something unexplainably winning about Cape Smoky. Cape Breton folk look to it as Nova Scotians to Blomidon. In speaking of it they sometimes say “Dear Old ‘Smoky’,” as if they loved it.

“Sugar-Loaf,” near Dingwall, and “Cape North”, the Lands’ End of Canada, are each distinctive in character, and “landmarks” of navigation.

A feature of the road familiar in these parts is the mail-carrier. With an old wagon and his trusty horse, the road over Smoky presents no difficulties to the Jehu of “His Majesty’s Mail”. And when you watch for him to appear on the shingle at Ingonish from “Down North”, if he has no passengers, it is an adventure to jump into his cart and ride over Smoky, even if you have to walk the six miles back, as we once did.

The Bay at Ingonish is sheltered by Cape Smoky, and so this small harbour has become a happy anchorage for fishing-schooners, and South Ingonish a place where codfish dries on fish stages. There is a family lobster cannery here, seldom boasting more than two big iron pots aboil in a sheltered nook of the shingle, but creating a romantic atmosphere with its driftwood fire.

Lads lend a hand with the fish-drying at Ingonish. It is from here, watching the fishing schooners going out to meet the ocean swell around Smoky, that, in dreams, they reach out to the day when their turn will come to sail away in a fishing-schooner to “The Grand Banks”.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The MacDonalds, MacLeods, MacLeans, MacPhersons, and all the other Scotch families of Cape Breton are greatly in evidence on Sundays. It is then, driving over these roads, one encounters team after team on the way to the Gaelic meeting-house, or church. The church service is conducted in Gaelic and lasts practically all day.

FIT SUBJECT FOR AMILLET.

DUSK.SOUTH BAY, INGONISH.

Having stepped aboard....

HAVING stepped aboard the Newfoundland mail-and-passenger boat at North Sydney, a little before ten p.m., the hour of sailing, one awakes next morning at Port aux Basques, in Newfoundland, hardly aware that one is out of Canada, until the courteous Customs Official with “Newfoundland” written on his cap, comes to examine one’s baggage.

One hundred and twenty miles is the brief length of Cabot Strait which separates Newfoundland from Canada, but when one has crossed this Arm of the Atlantic, it is to find one’s self in a new world, a world complete in itself. For Newfoundland embodies all that rugged, independent spirit, which, in part, belongs to all islands—notably to the British Islands—and, in addition, it has all the distinction which is a natural attribute of its position as Great Britain’s Oldest Colony. National sense is very keenly developed in the Newfoundlander. “Love of the Empire and their Island” stirs strongly in the blood of every man from Port aux Basques to Saint John, and from Cape Race to the Straits of Belle Isle.

A casual glance at a map of Newfoundland reveals its striking resemblance to the map of England. And ties of blood and association, that intimately bind this oldest Daughter to the Mother-country, trail down the centuries from the day that Cabot first sighted Bonavista, until now. If you wish to step right into the atmosphere of a fine English society that is still “the Island’s Own product”, take the train to Saint John’s, the oldest colonial capital in the British Empire.

But the Island of Newfoundland has yet another claim to distinction in its scenery. There is nothing quite like, or perhaps quite equal to, the scenery of Newfoundland, in all America. It so strongly resembles the scenery of Norway that the island is frequently spoken of as “The Norway of the New World”; and its deep inlets and bays are just as frequently referred to as “fiords”. But, in reality, Newfoundland scenery gains nothing by these comparisons. The time will come shortly when the scenery of Newfoundland will need no such extraneous supports. It will be sufficient for the voyager to say “I have just returned from Newfoundland” for his coterie of friends to know he has voyaged among scenes of superlative beauty.

Cruising around the Newfoundland coast, taking one or more of its deep bays in a summer, reveals innumberable little outports tucked away in hollows around every headland, and all held shelteringly in the hand of the larger bay. Of these larger bays, White Bay, Notre Dame Bay, Bonavista, Trinity and Conception lie to the North, while Saint Mary’s, Placentia, and Fortune upturn to navigation on the South.

Newfoundland is, of course, the heart of the Cod-fishing industry of the Western Atlantic. The Grand Banks, the playground of the fishing-fleets of France, of the United States, of Nova Scotia, are, when all is said, “The Grand Banks of Newfoundland.” Figuratively and literally speaking “The Banks” are the island “Bread-Box.” And the banking schooners—Newfoundland-owned, Newfoundland-skippered and sailed—are justly the pride of Newfoundland. Seamanship is so natural in a born Newfoundlander that it comes to him like a “sixth sense” or, as some of them say, “natural as sleeping and waking”.

Modern “Vikings of the North”, they are as much at home afloat, as ashore. It was thus the Newfoundlander stepped with such consummate ease from the thwart of the fish-dory, the deck of “The Banker”, to that larger deck in the British Navy, during the War, where they covered themselves with glory and added fresh honours to the record already achieved through the centuries, by their Island-home in its Four Centuries of Sea-going!

By far the greater part of the population of Newfoundland is domiciled on the coast. To reach the fishing is, therefore, a mere step, and the adventure of it practically sits on every door-step.

Travelling inland on the continent of North America, one is often enough struck by the sameness of the houses, towns and settlements etched by Agriculture. One often hears that they “all look alike”. But such could never be the complaint of these Newfoundland villages, products of the Sea and its Harvest. They are as variable as the sea’s own moods. So, in cruising among the Newfoundland bays, every little headland turned reveals a different grouping, as well as different setting, of the tiny church, the little homes, the chief store; and a different arrangement of the wooden stages in wharf-like lines along the irregular waterfront.

As the island is one large unit, so in turn each of these tiny settlements is a unit, going its own sea-gait in its own craft; and commanding its own mail-service, and commisariat-service, from Saint John or Placentia.

BELLEORAM.

PATH END.

So little are these sea-coast folk inland travellers, that there is often no road from one village to another, entrance and exit always being accomplished over the sea; by boat or steamer.

Settling down in any of these villages is to be constantly entertained by the variety of scenes afforded by the life. Early in the morning “the fish-boats” are under weigh with their tanned sails and homemade oars creaking against the pin. Later, the women go about their household duties, studying “the signs of the weather” from door or window. The old ’longshoremen open the fish-house doors and potter about with old ropes and picturesque “killicks” or homemade anchors, heavy, smooth stones held together in skeleton-frames of old bits of wood and a lashing of odd pieces of wire-rigging salvaged from some old wreck. But all the time, the men, like the women, have their weather-eye centred on the “signs of the mornin’.” For the day’s work, is—the fish.

The first peep of sunlight through the gray clouds or the fog, sees men, women and children, on the “fish stages”, as the platforms are called, fish in hand. In the afternoon, the scene is reversed, with each “hand” driving hard to get the fish in again before night.

A cloud, during the day, sees the ever-watchful women coming on the run from all quarters to get the fish in before it rains. Codfish must not get wet.

The Newfoundlanders are especially happy in the place-names they have given to their towns, villages and “outports”. Sea-folk are always, more or less, noted for romantic place-names. So, in summer, adventuring in Newfoundland, such names as Push-through, Thoroughfare, Come-by-Chance, Seldom-Come-By, Step-Aside, Happy Adventure, Heart’s Delight, Heart’s Content, Path End, write themselves indelibly in your memory map. Especially appropriate are the names given to the mountains. To realize the full beauty of some of these peak-names, one must fancy Newfoundland as a “ship”, the surface as the deck. Then one has the viewpoint of the men who sponsored these in baptism. Then, the single peaks, springing up tall against the sky, have a beautiful psychology of their own. Here is “The Gaff Topsail”, “The Main Topsail”, “The Mizzen Topsail”, “The Fore-Topsail”. Collectively they are referred to, picturesquely enough, as, “The Tops’ls”. Other individual peaks are “Blow-me-Down”, a sort of challenge to the elements and, “The Butter-Pot”, a maritime concession to the menu of maritime cabin-tables.

The surface of Newfoundland, its rocks and hills, is at its best in the fall of the year when the brush of Autumn paints all the foliage and fruit of the Bake-Apple, Partridge-Berries, wild red and black currants, Rowan berries, etc., gorgeous yellows, reds and browns. After the frost, the “marshes and barrens” afford miles of colour.

Among the treasures of the Newfoundland wildflowers are Gentians and Orchids.

It is at this time, when the berries are ripe, that the villagers turn out in family groups to pick bake-apples and Fox-berries to make jam. Bake-apples are a fruit peculiar to Newfoundland and Labrador. And Bake-apple jam is a dish of almost national magnitude. To express interest in the bake-apples and their picking is an open sesame to outport hearts. And no end of invitations and jaunts are assured you, if you become an ardent berry-picker. At this time human figures are everywhere to be seen. Children with a motley collection of pails are everywhere on the nearby hills. The best blueberries of all grow in the cracks and scarpings of the cliffs where one would not suppose a thimbleful of earth could cling. At Saint John, Cabot Head, gray and bluff, is a happy hunting-ground of the berry-picker. Many a morning have we spent there, hunting blueberries behind the lighthouse of this grim old Cape. Many a morning, too, have they been the goal of a scramble over the cliffs of Big Wild Cove and Little Wild Cove. And what is more romantic than tea with the lighthouse-keeper’s little family at Twillingate, where one sits at a spotless table and is served with a heaping dish of delectable homemade Partridge-berry jam smothered in thick Island cream?

In the Newfoundland Outports, two days’ work is crowded into one, of a Saturday. For the Newfoundlanders are very strict in the observation of the Sabbath Day, to do no work therein. Neither dories nor “Bankers” fish on Sundays. And Saturday night sees all the schooners which can possibly get there, in port; the drying fishnet hanging in festoons from the masthead being about the only concession to business.

Ashore, the women will not even draw water from the well on Sunday, unless under the stress of some dire necessity. On Saturday, therefore, a double supply of water must be drawn, and laid in for use over Sunday. The Outport well is usually situated at one end of the village and sometimes at a distance from it. And so, on Saturday afternoons, a stream of women, each carrying two buckets of water, flows along the undulating, rocky highway that isthe village main street. A large hoop, in the midst of which the water-carrier steps, helps to relieve the weight and keep the water from spilling as the woman steps briskly along. This method of carrying water seems to be the Newfoundlander’s own invention. The Water-Hoop is here one of the furnishings of every household.

Saturday is the day of the week for getting wood. And wood-getting in the outports involves a longer or shorter trip to the cliffs and hills where the low spruce-scrub affords many a scraggly bough for fuel. Along the footpaths, worn by centuries of wood-gatherers, and by the road into the village, one happens on many a figure carrying bundles of boughs on their backs and making pictures no less distinctive from agenreviewpoint than the water-carriers, with their picturesque hoops. Other figures of the road are the women and children carrying hay over their shoulders, tied-up in a piece of old net or the family pieced bed-quilt.

Owing to the rocky nature of the cliffs, hay is a scarce article. Some of the best is undoubtedly afforded by the little churchyard cemeteries, on the principle that “never blooms so red the rose, as where some buried Caesar lies”.

Goats with curious wooden yokes around their necks, and the family cow, are well-known characters of these cliff, by-shore, village-highways.

Against the incursions of these roaming pirates-of-green, are set up the curious rodded-fences of the irregular-shaped little potato and turnip gardens. In summer the gipsying cow can forage for herself, but in winter there is nothing for her to do but fall back upon the little wisps of hay her owner garnered in the quilt against just such days as these. But the cow is grateful. Never anywhere does cow produce richer cream to go with the raspberries, the Bake-apple and Fox-berry jam, than these same seacoast cows of Newfoundland.

Considering the wholesome out-of-door life called for by the industries of the Newfoundland outports, it is not surprising that hand-weaving in the homes is rare. Another reason may be the scarcity of pasturage for sheep in the sea-going villages and their vicinity. Inland Newfoundland affords fine opportunities for agriculture, and sheep of a fine type yield splendid fleeces in the Codroy Valley, around Doucets and Little River.

Although the loom is rare, the spinning-wheel is not infrequently happened upon, yielding hand-laid yarn to supply the needs of the home-knitter. And her needs are many, for no one seems to wear out socks like a fisherman.

The knitter is therefore a figure by the window when the cool days denote the approach of winter.

* * * *

The guide-books have a way of declaring Newfoundland to be “The Sportsman’s Paradise”, and, if you have ever taken your gun under arm and sallied forth after Caribou, or had a thirty-pound salmon rise to your fly in either the Big or the Little Codroy rivers, you can personally testify that the writers of those same guide-books do not exaggerate.

It is little to be wondered at, therefore, that the “Sportsman” from the New England States, from Canada and from Old England, is a figure often chanced upon in the glens, and “beating the streams” of the Codroy Mountains, in the West. Nothing is quite so romantic as sitting by a deep pool, the one selected by your guide as “the very best” and watching for the supreme moment when “the big one” springs to life at the end of your line.

But the tramp to get to the pool has its romance, too. For the scenery of inland Newfoundland, its fields of daisies, its sheep in the lanes, the fog lifting and swirling like wraith-figures of light dancers about the brows of the mountains, all combine to create an atmosphere of enchantment, the more enchanting perhaps, that the numbers of its discoverers are not yet so many as to wear away the edge of exclusiveness.

* * * *

Pursuit of the Romantic in Newfoundland sooner or later lands one in Saint John’s on the south side of the harbour, among the old, wooden square-riggers that compose that unique fleet peculiar to Terra Nova—the Sealers.

If you have ever seen a whaler of the old-type, belonging to the days of whale-boats and hand-harpoons, then you know something of the appearance of these old Sealers. Broad of beam, thick-planked, staunch-timbered, both steam-and-sail propelled, they go out of Saint John’s in March, blasting a channel for themselves through the ice with gunpowder. They carry a crew of several hundred, all of them seasoned sealers. The man of expert knowledge in picking up “Seals” hies him aloft to the barrel crow’s-nest.

And then begins that roaming quest of the seal that may stand these old Ramblers of the ice and the ocean, away to the northeast, or up toward “Belle Isle”, or even far into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, anywhere that they can “pick up” the herd of drifting amphibians, which are to yield the invaluable sealskin.

THE WATER-CARRIER.

KNITTING.

In the Newfoundland....

IN the Newfoundland outports, especially those of the northern bays—Conception, Trinity, Bonavista and Notre Dame conversation with any old-timer is sure to turn sooner or later to experiences on “The Labrador”.

Soon these stories accumulate into a magnetizing force, drawing you to explore that wonderful Northern shore of which these old-timers relate such wonderful tales.

Our first trip to the Labrador was decided by an old fellow with a scythe, mowing a pocket-handkerchief of hay at Exploits. He wore at the time a pair of sabots. Upon our remarking on them as unusual footwear in these parts, he looked down with a smile—that pleasant smile that always flits across aged faces at the recollection of an adventure—and said, “Oh, aye, them’s my Denmarks. I bought them from a man on a square-rigger, on ‘The Labrador’.”

Two days after that we were haunting the telegraph office at Twillingate for news of “The Invermore” or “The Kyle” out of Saint John’s to the Labrador. The Invermore blew out her tubes somewhere down the coast, and had to put back to Saint John’s, and we had to wait several days for her substitute, who finally arrived at Twillingate in the middle of the night, so that we went up the ladder over her side with the bags of mail at two o’clock in the morning, carrying with us a feeling that perhaps we ought not to be going, as two old fellows encountered on the pier the night before, had said, in the face of a rather threatening sky, that it was “too late to go down on the Labrador.”

However, we made that voyage safely and have since made another, proving that wiseacres are not always true prophets or their sayings to be heeded.

From Newfoundland to Labrador is but a step across the Straits of Belle Isle. In winter these waters are the hunting grounds of some of the sealers out of Saint John’s. In summer they are the hunting ground of some of the “growlers” out of Labrador.

Navigators here in the first instance are happy at the cry of “seals!” from the crow’s nest, but the skipper of the mailboat on this route runs away as fast as may be from the beautiful buttreacherous iceberg so like in figure to giant Portuguese Men-o’-War “fishing with paralyzing underseas tentacles seeking whom they may devour.” Then comes out on deck the figure least expected, the Moving Picture man, reeling off, like one possessed, the bergs that navigation fears. And so we land at Battle Harbour, first of the thirty or more ports of call made by these fine mail-and-passenger boats out of Saint John’s.

The charm of the Labrador is hard to define. That it is there all will agree. Some say that it lies in the fact that the slightest miscalculation on the part of those adventuring in these parts may lead to an accident—accident that on so exposed a coast is instantly metamorphosed into irremediable disaster, as in the case of H.M.S. Raleigh. In other words, danger is its charm, the danger that lies so near, around the corner of every bay and tickle; danger of hidden rocks, of sudden gale, of fog, of bergs, washed by some fanciful twist of ocean current out of the beaten track. Romance follows danger as a twin sister. So, on the Labrador, many “figures” strut across the little stage.

There is the little Eskimo that paddles off to the steamer in his kyak, to dance on deck, while the ship rides at anchor off some port. That he ever reaches the ship or the shore again in the little scallop-shell he calls “boat” is a miracle. But he dances away or sings “gospel hymns” learned from missionaries, as free from worry as any child. The words are in Eskimo, but the old tune, sung out here on deck by the flare of the ship’s lantern, carries with it a gripping power, the while the faces of strong men—fishermen coming or going, traders, missionaries, even Syrian fur-dealers—are intermittently lighted by the flare of the lantern.

Two old acquaintances, the “fishnet drying from the masthead” and the “pot-a-tilt” among stones of the ice-age, greet one on stepping ashore at a Labrador tickle. Spruce beer is also here to be had, if one has the good fortune to fall in with Liveyer’s family up from Newfoundland for the summer-fishing and living in a hut with sodded roof, wherein the blooms of fireplant and live-for-ever make a splash of color against the gray background of sea and rocks.

These little liveyer homes bear a striking resemblance to the pioneer homes of foreigners on the Prairie, with sodded roofs abloom.

Two new characters peculiar to the zone emerge along this northern edge of the ‘Longshore road—Eskimos, men, women and children, and Eskimo dogs; both of which Newfoundlanders invariably speak of as “Huskies”.

HEARTY AT EIGHTY.

AN ESKIMO GRANDMOTHER.

The Eskimo as hunter is the angle from which hunters, trappers, and fur merchants, view these children of the Northland. The missionary sees in them children to be taught; the ordinary voyager merely a new and interesting facet of life—men and women, masters of the secret of living under conditions under which the probabilities are the voyager himself would come a cropper. They fire the imagination for the same reasons as do the children of the Desert—an interesting peculiar people wholly masters of interesting peculiar circumstances.

Some of the features of Eskimo coastal life are portrayed in the pelts brought in to swell the large collections at the several Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts, and in the evidences of “native art” as shown in ivory and wood carvings brought down to sell to the ship.

These latter articles are of interest from two points of view. They were taken from life and so, have pictorial and story value—little ivory komatiks or sledges drawn by dogs in harness and little wooden dolls with typical Eskimo features of old man or woman dressed in sealskin, cut in the same model always in vogue with these people; the men with trousers and short middy, the women in trousers and middy, short in front but often with a sort of longer rounded effect at the back. These vendors to the ship display in addition seal-skin port-monies for women and tobacco-pouches for men, but these are less interesting because the idea is imitative, caught from things of similar intent in the hand of voyagers from the south and civilization.

Eskimo dogs are not seen to advantage in summer. Only a few appear at each outport, more at some than at others. But under the boardwalk, climbing to the post office, a half dozen roly-poly puppies will snarl and snap under your feet like little wolves. And these “miniatures” of the pack—away at this season on some island out of harm’s way and busy foraging for a scant support to life among fishheads cast up by the incoming fishboat—are merely little point-fingers of the road of the great untamed that stretches from here to Hudson’s Bay.

Except in the neighbourhood of the Hudson’s Bay Posts and the Moravian Missionary settlements, evidences of the native are comparatively few. The many outports of this rugged coast are posts held firmly in the strong capable hand of Newfoundland. It is said that thirty thousand Newfoundlanders yearly fish“The Labrador”. And romance lies in the wake of this yearly pilgrimage to the Northern Shrine of Cod.

As the landing mailboat rounds the barren headlands, vistas of schooners and fishboats stretch before, lying at anchor in the harbour or “tickle”. And if it be Sunday, as it is sure to be if the schooners are in port, a group of men and women are at the water’s edge to pick up news that the boat brings, or eagerly await at the Post Office the letter from home.

The coming of the steamer from Saint John’s and the ports of the Northern Bays of Newfoundland, once every ten days or so, is an event in these little settlements of summer-homes, clinging like so many crabs to the rugged shores of this outpost of Newfoundland, lying across Canada’s great Northeast and shutting it off from an Atlantic harbour north of Cape Breton.

Missionary work among the Eskimos has been maintained here for several centuries by the Moravians. Trading posts have been maintained for as long by the world-famous Hudson’s Bay Company. Sometimes the mission station and the H.B.C. Post occur at the same outport, as if in this northern land the desire for company had drawn them irresistibly together. But of course the mission must have decided that a fur-purchasing centre would concentrate the natives and they could be more easily reached, since the one sled-journey would answer all needs.

At Hopedale Mission there is a pathetic little “greenhouse” with a few flowers; and out in a corner of a garden, which is almost comical as gardens go, are seen a few struggling lettuce-plants though last year’s snow lies thick on the rising ground scarcely twenty yards away. If the tide of Canadian trade ever sets “full” out of Hudson Bay, who knows but a century from now many gardens will flourish here, descendants of this little pioneer straggler, hardily holding its own, to give the missionary-table vegetables.

To the Moravian Missionaries of early days belongs the credit of reducing the Eskimo tongue to a language. The large, well-bound grammar which the Missionary shows you becomes indeed a character in itself, as it is shown that this is not merely a key to a language but the humble means upon mastery of which hangs the missionary’s ability to interpret the “Old, Old Story” to these Nimrods of the North at home in Igloo, Komatik and Kyak.

Herein is the key to the hymn-singing, dancing figure thatstrikes such a colourful note on deck when the ship first makes this land of the Labrador.

At Hopedale, beside the Mission and the H. B. C. Store, with its simple stock of groceries and its pelt-rooms, sometimes packed and sometimes almost empty, according to the season, there are a few Eskimo wooden houses and a big community kitchen with a score of these short, round men and women gathered in the steam about the pot a-stew.

Here and there an old grandmother attends to coarse socks a-drying and knocks the kinks out of skin boots and komatik harness on a sloping roof concentrating the weak sun from the South, the while she minds the children and keeps a wary eye on the few old dogs that pace wolfishly and unceasingly up and down.

Labrador, like Newfoundland, has an interesting list of place-names. A harbour with two openings, usually made by an island lying close to the mainland or to another island, is called a “tickle”. Not the least romantic feature of voyaging along the Labrador coast are these odd and appropriate place-names. Think of sailing by “The White Cockade Islands”, “Run-by-Guess”, or “Tumble-down-Dick”! Or of seeing the surf bursting over “Mad Moll’s Reef”! Or of steering past “Lord’s Arm”, “Lady’s Arm”, and “Caribou Castle!”

Nine miles from....

NINE miles from Newfoundland lies Sainte Pierre et Miquelon, Island Colony of France, her last remaining colonial possession in the “New World”, north of the West Indies.

It lies, geographically, in the group of island stepping-stones, a stone’s throw, a night out of North Sydney.

It is attended by “an old character” among sea-going craft, by name “Pro Patria”, which has been on the route between Halifax and Saint Pierre for perhaps more than a quarter of a century. She is little and worn and old, so that when she came in to the wharf on the morning of our sailing we were afraid to board her. But after awhile, seeing that the world around took her as a matter of course, we stepped across the little gang-plank, into a medley of general cargo, including several sheep on foot. Next morning we were at Saint Pierre, the harbour which has made it worth while to France to keep these “little rocky island-waifs of the western Atlantic.”

Rounding Cap l’Aigle, a little Saint Malo lies outspread before us. And from the mastheads of shipping at anchor, the tri-color of France waves spiritedly in the ocean breeze.

The “Pro Patria” drew up at the Quai de la Ronciere. The Quai was black with the crowd come to witness her coming and to welcome old friends among the new arrivals.

* * * *

All the maisons and shops about the Square that faces the Quai, have steep roofs like the parent roofs back in France and like their sisters in Quebec. On the way to the door of Madame Coste’s pension, which had been recommended, we passed the door of “The-Trans-Atlantic-Cable”, which lifts its western end out of the water here, and saw the little, yellow telegraph blank in a frame outside the door—the little sheet that is Saint Pierre’s one daily newspaper—a small “daily” this, but one the truth of whose news is wholly to be relied on. Every morning saw us reading the news withtout-le-mondegathered in front of this journal, itself literally wet and dripping from the Ocean! Marine Intelligence, indeed.

One of the earliest “signs” seen in a grocer’s window, read “Beurre frais de Cheticamp a vendre”. We looked out on it fromour casement window at Madame C’s. And though “France” was written in every line of street, in every shop window, in the great feather bed on which we slept, on the smaller one with which we were supposed to cover ourselves, who could feel themselves cut off in a foreign world, with Cape Breton speaking each morning, just across the way? And when we started out anew each day, a little water-soaked schooner as often as not came gliding in to the Quai with “Down North” and “Up Along” written in every line from masthead to water-line. Ottawa, Saint Pierre and Saint John’s may be far apart, but Lamaline in Newfoundland, Cape North to Cheticamp, C.B., and Saint Pierre are as “The Three Musketeers” for brotherhood, drawn together by the ties of Trade, and the adventure that lies in “smuggling”.

We had not been long at Saint Pierre before we began to realize that the arrival of the little coastal Noah’s Arks with their floating menageries, the pigs grunting, cocks crowing, sheep too stunned to bleat, made a difference in our own menus. Madame C. chuckled whenever we were able to report a fresh arrival at the Quai.

Other old acquaintances beside these coasters were not long in coming to light. Cod is here, answering to the elegant title of “Monsieur Morue”. Boats for his capture are rated in this island fleet as bateaux.

France operates on the “Grand Banks”; Saint Malo at home, and Saint Pierre on the West, being her “bases”. But the fish-trade of Saint Pierre is not what it was when ten thousand fishermen came here every Spring to re-fit the “Bankers” put into winter-quarters here the previous Autumn. Most of the fish now goes to France “green”, the dinner tables of the world calling for more fresh fish than of old. Still, now and again the steam trawlers come here, and there’s always a cargo or two in “the making” on Ile aux Chiens, as well as on the south shore of the harbour.

It is over there across the harbour that one sees the fishwives and the women stevedores—women who take the fish in hand the day it comes from the boats and put it through every process up to the stowing in the transport’s hold. The master-stevedore chants the number of fish passing through her hands in a loud, clear voice heard across the harbour. She has evolved a dirge, a rich Litany to fish, “Un”, “deux”, “trois”, “quatre”, “cinq”, etc., as they go headlong to their last ocean voyage.

NEARING THE END.

AN ISLAND-WOMAN OFSAINT PIERRE ET MIQUELON.

On Ile aux Chiens, women meet the incoming dories and aid in splitting and cleaning la morue. Strong personality and sweet womanhood mark these island women.

Ile aux Chiens has a trade in Caplin-curing. A host of women work among these small fish, so much in demand in Paris restaurants.

* * * *

There are no trolley-lines in Saint Pierre and but few voitures. The ox-cart is here, attendant on the Salt Vessels, carrying off the salt from them to the warehouses. It is a decidedly French cart, with high sides. And the oxen wear a curious neck-yoke adorned with a fluffy sheep-skin. A French driver urges the oxen to move, with many a “Marche donc”.

Not the least interesting sights on Saint Pierre streets are the gay uniforms of the gendarmes. But even these give place to the little dog-carts everywhere, looking as if they had been transplanted out of Belgium.

Two important and rather unique landmarks stand out at Saint Pierre above all others; one, the figure of the Blessed Virgin, life size, set in a deep niche of the cliff-side; the other, a huge Crucifix, mounted high on a slim wooden Cross, standing on the hills above the town, and silhouetted clear and strong against the sky.

Many stories centre around the origin of this cross. Some say it was erected by the citizens to show their gratitude for a miraculous preservation at the time of some great winter storm; others, that it was erected in order that sailors leaving port might be reminded to turn their thoughts and prayers to Him, Who alone has power to still the waves and give prosperity. Still another story runs, that it is for sailors entering port, to remind them to return thanks to Him Who has brought them safely out of dangers and given them, perhaps in addition, “a good catch”. To those who have lost—it points the only Comforter.

The street passing under the shadow of this Cross goes by the distinctive name of Rue Calvaire. It is not surprising, therefore, to have some fishwife, whose photograph you have just taken, tell you, when asked for her address, that she lives “up ag’in the Cross”; that is, if she is of Newfoundland origin, and speaks English; if she is French, “‘Rue Calvaire’, Madame, s’il vous plait”—the street of the Cross.

The women of Saint Pierre wash their clothes in the streams, of which there are several running down the hills at the back of the town. They dam up the water with stones so as to form little pools, and kneel in wooden boxes on the edge of these to wash. They slap the linen with a flat piece of wood to make it very clean and white, and when all is done, they carry it in a wet bundle on their backs up the hill, to spread it to dry on the great rocks at the foot of the Crucifix.

A long way below this curious landmark of the hills, lies the cemetery, one of the most beautiful spots in Saint Pierre. It has been made so by a great deal of work, for so solid is the barren rock here that each grave has had to be blasted out with charge after charge of dynamite. But in the end each grave is surrounded by a wooden coping surmounted at one end by a wooden cross painted black or white. The coping is filled in with earth sifted from the debris of the blasts or brought from a distance. In these enclosures flowers are massed till the entire cemetery has the appearance of one great garden.

Love of flowers is a marked characteristic of the Saint Pierrais people. Though there is practically no soil in the place, every window is a mass of potted blooms. All these lilies, geraniums, oleanders, cacti, begonias, etc., were brought from France. It is even said that the soil in one little garden was brought here from France. Every Saturday morning a little boy goes the rounds of the pensions and perhaps the cafes, on his arm a small basket with a few nosegays of sweet old-fashioned flowers. And these are bought up at once.

The central building of interest in Saint Pierre is the fine white church, built to replace the old Cathedral destroyed by fire several years ago, together with the Palais du Justice.

The new church possesses rare and valuable appointments. The stained glass windows, most of them with Biblical motifs having to do with the sea, are supported by rich altar appointments; but the note of originality is struck by the score or more of tiny sailboats and schooners which hang gracefully on wires suspended from the ceiling.

These miniature craft appear especially appropriate in this church that owes its being to the sea. Each little boat is of course the votive offering of some grateful mariner for miraculous preservation in some great hurricane, collision or shipwreck,while pursuing la morue in one of its many haunts, immediately off-shore or on the Grand Banks.

The Curé of this church has possibly the best garden in town. And morning and evening he may be seen—a gardener in a soutane—doing his best to coax along the flowers and vegetables.Mais, oui.

The celebration ofLa Messeand “Benediction” in this French-Colonial church is attended with an unusual degree of pomp and ceremony. A military air of precision is supplied by the commanding figure of Le Maitre de Chapelle wearing the uniform and hat of a soldier of the Swiss Guard, carrying a battle-axe over his shoulder, a sword by his side, and in his gloved right-hand a tall, heavy black mace surmounted by a massive silver ball.

In the processions, this imposing figure is followed by acolytes in crimson and white gowns, each carrying a pole supporting a red, violet, or blue lantern.

The music is wonderful, the “time” being kept by the “Suisse”, who also precedes the two demoiselles down the aisles when they take up the collection.

The church is situated at the opposite end of the town from the cemetery and, whenever there is a funeral, the procession passes afoot, heralded by a small boy with a beautiful voice, singing so ringingly the solemn chants set for these occasions, that he can be heard far across the harbour and distant points of the town, from which by reason of turns in the streets the procession itself is invisible.

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Because of the geographical situation of the Saint Pierre et Miquelon group, and the fact that they are a French Colony, conditions are found here, possible nowhere else.

French wines and liqueurs flow here as naturally as in France itself. Prohibition in Canada and the United States has made this font of wines so close to the coast “a gift of the gods”. Smugglers deem it a good “base” from which to operate “spirits” in general. In this new trade, agents of the best Old Country distilleries have opened salesrooms here and consignments and cargoes are constantly coming and going or being placed in warehouses to await their chance of re-shipment.

In the cafes of Saint Pierre there is every variety of French wine. In all the general shops, on shelves, neighbouring dress material, sardines-in-oil, orpetits poisin tins, Vin ordinaire, Cassia,Eau de Vie, Ginebvre, Anisette and Noyeaux appear as a matter of course.

During the war, trade came almost to a stand-still in Saint Pierre. The shops, usually so overflowing with good things, had their stock entirely depleted, and the women storekeepers were reduced to tears, as they lamented “La guerre, la guerre, Madame”, as the cause of their inability to supply this or that.

But now all this is changed. The Sun of Trade once more has sent its enlivening rays along this foreign, island-waterfront. Gallic spirits have recovered themselves in the forests of masts springing up in the harbour.

It is in Quebec....

IT is in Quebec, the Old World city so curiously transplanted from sixteenth century France, and set down here on its commanding bluff, above the Saint Lawrence, that one takes the road of romantic history.

Driving through the steep, narrow streets, our two-wheeled Caleche, itself the voiture of other centuries, seems a talisman, unlocking the gray, steep-roofed, admirably-preserved houses, churches, monasteries, convents, colleges, public buildings, tiny shops, all of them of unmistakably French aspect, which flank our goings up or down the steep ascents, which are the Quebec streets.

Romance clings to the old in architecture. Nowhere does she more frankly look out upon the Canadian world roundabout, than from the casement windows of Old Quebec.

But, if she only leaned from the windows, she must be a creature to worship afar off. But Romance believes in “close-ups”. In Quebec she draws near, takes you by the hand, and leads you over the threshold of La Basilique—the French Cathedral.

Within, she continues to act as guide, while, paradoxically enough, she is the essence of the treasures, paintings, altars, crypt, etc., to which she points.

She steps with you into the almost holy quiet of L’Hotel Dieu, the hospital founded by Madame La Duchesse, the niece of the great Cardinal Richelieu; herself one of the most helpful and romantic figures that ever stepped into Nouvelle France. It is to her, that French-Canada owes L’Hotel Dieu, one of the finest hospitals in present-day Canada, or, for that matter, in America.

The soft-stepping Sisters, passing from one bedside to another in their picturesque robes, gently administering to the suffering of twentieth century Quebec, are the descendants in an unbroken line of the “Hopitalieres” who came here with La Duchesse in 1639.

Between the Basilica and the Hospital an old gateway opens into the quadrangle of the Quebec Seminary, founded by Monsignor Laval, the great figure of the Church in pioneer Quebec. Here, in the yard below the long, gray building with its rows of open, French windows and its thick walls, the youth of present-day French-Canada, in uniforms of blue-tailored, skirted coats,with emerald-green sashes—rush hither and thither in their games, directed by willowy figures of teacher-priests in round hats and clinging soutanes. Romance seems to linger long here, and to treasure greatly the atmosphere of Laval University adjoining. Here is youth and its enthusiasms, a miracle-play of welling human interest giving life to these old walls and halls and never suffering them to grow old in spirit despite their years.

Then the caleche sets us down at the door of the Ursulines, and there one asks to see the skull of General Montcalm. A sister brings it.

Montcalm! Wolfe! One cannot think of one without thinking of the other. And thinking of them both, from the perspective afforded by a century and a half, what do you see but the hand of Destiny gradually eliminating the players in the game for the possession of a country far greater than either side had any idea of, until only these two were left in the limelight, one wearing the Fleur des Lys, the other the Rose of England; each a true knight; each defending to the death, “the cause” he had espoused; each, poetic and romantic figures in whom a United Canada now rejoices.

But the sister is drawn out to talk of the city, of its many points of interest, and of its general atmosphere of romance; agrees with you that it is a wonderful treasure-house of souvenir and story. And then you are moved to compliment her on her fluency in English. And she laughs and says “she ought to speak it easily seeing she was born in Providence, Rhode Island.”

Then, with an unmistakable flash of Yankee humour, she inquires if we do not think it strange that a “Yankee” should be guardian of the skull of Montcalm in Quebec? And we counter back: “Not so strange, as—romantic, Sister!”

In strolling along that renowned promenade, the Dufferin Terrace, which affords a glimpse of the Saint Lawrence far below in such a panorama of natural beauty as beginning at one’s feet stretches away mile after mile till lost in the soft mist of distance, one looks down upon the Lower Town, whose narrow, old streets, and market-squares call to one to explore them.

And so some morning we find ourselves in Lower Champlain Street—one of the queerest old streets in the world. It leaves the markets and docks behind and doubles around the base of Cape Diamond between the river and the cliff, until all the city is lost to view and its sounds as completely obliterated as if you were miles away from any mart.

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