Of course there are many walks and drives—on the whole the most delightful of Malbaie's diversions. The favourite walk is to "Beulah." A generation that does not read its Bible as it should may need to be told that Beulah is the name of the land no more desolate in which the Lord delighteth; some Bible reader so named a spot on the mountain where one looks out far, far, afield in every direction for immense distances. It may be reached by a forest path straight up the mountain side from Pointe au Pic. We go through spruce and birch woods till we reach an opening where we look out northward on rounded mountain tops blue, silent, immeasurable, spreading away, one might almost fancy to the North Pole itself, so endless seems their mass. On beautiful turf through woods, then by a cow path across a bog, the path leads until a bare hill top lies full in view. This is Beulah. Standing there one seems to have the whole world at one's feet. When Petrarch had climbed Mount Ventoux, near Avignon, the first man for half a century to do so, the scene overwhelmed him; thoughts of the deeper meaning of life rose before his mind; he drew from his pocket St. Augustine and read: "Men go about to wonder at the height of the mountains and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers and the circuit of the ocean and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." I never stand on "Beulah" without thinking of this passage. Far away to the distant south shore, and up and down the river we can survey a stretch of eighty or ninety miles. We stand in the midst of a sea of mountains and look landward across deep valleys in all directions with the ranges rising tier on tier beyond.
Among diversions for men golf, in spite of a certain reaction, has still the chief place. The club house is on the west shore of the bay. One plays out northward. The players zigzag here and there among curious earth mounds formed by the eddying swirl of water when the river's current held high carnival over these level stretches. Then the course leads up to the higher slope and mounts steadily, until, at the farthest hole, a considerable height has been reached. As one turns back towards the river he faces a wonder scene of changing grey and blue and green and white. The smoke of passing steamers floats lazily in the air; they take the deep channel by the south shore and are a dozen miles away. It is usually a silent world that one looks out upon; but when there is a north-east wind great green waves come rolling in upon the sandy shore of the bay and fill the air with their undertone.
Even the rainy days have their own pleasures. One is glad of its excuse to sit before a crackling fire of birch wood and read. When the rain has ceased and the sun comes out, looking across to Cap à l'Aigle and up the river valley one sees new beauties. The mist disperses slowly. First it leaves bare the rounded mountain tops; they stand out dark, massive, with bases shrouded still in fleecy white. When the sun grows strong, river and valley are soon clear again, though the outlines are still a little softened. Up over the sand and boulders of the bay comes the rising tide changing sombre brown to shining blue. It rushes noisily across the bar at the bay's mouth a few hundred yards away.
The visitors to this beautiful scene gather year by year from places widely separated and form in this remote village a society singularly cosmopolitan. English, French, Americans, Canadians, all mingle here with leisure to meet and play together. For a time far away seems the hard world of competition. Rarely do newspapers arrive until at least the day after publication; the telegraph is used only under urgent necessity; as far as possible business is excluded. The cottages are spacious enough but quite simple, with rooms usually divided off only by boards of pine or spruce. Very little decoration makes them pretty. Gardening has a good many devotees; the long day of sunshine and in some seasons the abundant rain of this northern region help to make vegetation luxurious. If one drives he may take a planche—the convenient serviceable "buck-board,"—still unsurpassed for a country of hills and rough roads. But to me at least the calèche is the more enjoyable. It comes here from old France, a two-wheeled vehicle, with the seat hung on stout leather straps reaching from front to back on each side of the wooden frame. It is not a vehicle for those sensitive to slight jars. The driver sits in a tiny seat in front and one is amazed at the agility with which even old men spring from this perch to walk up and down the steep hills. Their ponies are beautiful little animals, specially fitted by a long development for work in this hilly country. So well do they mount its heights that travellers repeat an unconfirmed tradition of their having been known to climb trees!
It is not strange that in our happy summer days we acquire a deep affection for this northern region, its brilliant colouring, its crisp air. Not its least charm is in the cheerful and kindly people. One would not have them speak any other tongue than their French, preserving here archaic usages, with new words for new things, influenced of course by English, but still the beautiful language of an older France than the France of to-day. The people have their own tragedies. One sees pale women, over-worked. The physician's skill is too little sought; the country ranges are very remote; it is difficult and expensive to get medical aid; and there are deformed cripples who might have been made whole by skill applied in time. Consumption too is here a dread scourge, though against it a strenuous campaign has now begun. Many children are born but too many die. Still, most of the people live in comfort and they enjoy life—enjoy it probably much more than would an Anglo-Saxon community of the same type.
We who are among them in the summer are citizens of another and an unknown world. New York and Chicago, Boston and Washington, Toronto and Montreal are to us realities with one or other of which, in some way, each of us is linked. To this simple people they are all merely that outer world whence come their fleeting visitors of summer, as out of the unknown come the migrant birds to pause and rest awhile. We bring with us substantial material benefits; but it is not clear that our moral influence is good. Leaving his farm the habitant brings to the village his horse and calèche to become a hired charretier. He often gets good fares but there is much idle waiting. Bad habits are formed and regular industry is discouraged. The curé finds Malbaie a difficult sphere. We alone get unmixed benefit from this fair scene, its days of glad serenity, and of almost solemn stillness, when even a bird's note is heard but rarely.
Because all that concerns it interests us I have tried to put together from scattered fragments the story long forgotten of the past of Malbaie. In it there is abundance of the tragedy never remote from man's life: if the telling of the tale has been a pleasure it has proved not less a sad pleasure. But the story adds only a deeper meaning to our beautiful playground. After all it is man and his activities which give to nature's scenes their deepest interest; Quebec's chief charm is due to Wolfe and Montcalm, St. Helena's to Napoleon. The shaggy mountain crests which we view from our valley, the glistening blue river, the strong north-east wind which clouds the sky, turns the river to grey, and sprinkles its surface with white caps,—all are full for us of joyous beauty. But how much less of interest would there be did the white spire of the village church not peep out above the green trees up the bay to tell of man's weakness and his hopes! The story of the brave old soldier who peopled this valley, the pathetic tragedy of his successor's fate, add something here to the bloom of nature. It may be that the chief service of the chequered and half-forgotten past when it speaks is to show how vain and transient is all we think and plan,—"what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue." But be it so. One would not miss from life this last joy of knowing what it really means.