The route to the angling waters of the great Lake St. John is by railway northward from Quebec. It goes up the valley of St. Charles River, past Lorette, where beautiful cascades turn the mill-wheels. Here are gathered the scanty halfbreed remnant of the Hurons, once the most powerful and ferocious tribe in Canada, who drove out the Iroquois and compelled their migration down to New York State. These Indians are said to have been Wyandots, but when the French saw them, with their hair rising in bristling ridges above their painted foreheads, the astonished beholders exclaimed, "Quelles hures!" (what boars!) and hence the name of Huron came to them. The railroad goes for two hundred miles past lakes and streams, and through the dense forests of these remote Laurentian mountains, until it finally comes out on the lake shore at the ancient mission town of "Our Lady of Roberval," now become, through the popularity of the district, a modern watering-place. This great Lake St. John, so much admired by the Canadian and American anglers, was called by the Indians the Picouagomi, or "Flat Lake," and it is in a region shaped much like a saucer, lying in a hollow, with hills rising up into mountains in the background all around. The lake is thirty miles long and about twenty-five miles across, having no less than nineteen large rivers, besides smaller ones flowing into it from the surrounding mountains, the vast accumulation of waters being carried off by the Saguenay. The immense flow of some of these rivers may be realized when it is known that the Mistassini, coming down from the northward, is three hundred miles long, and the Peribonka four hundred miles long, while the Ouiatchouan from the south, just before reaching the lake, dashes down a grand cascade, two hundred and eighty feet high, making an elongated sheet of perfectly white foam.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, this wonderful lake and its immense tributaries were scarcely known to white men, yet upon its shores stood Notre Dame de Roberval and St. Louis Chambord, two of the oldest Jesuit Indian missions in America. For more than two centuries, until the angler and lumberman began going to this remote wilderness, it was a buried paradise in the distant woods, without inhabitants, excepting a few Montaignais and their priests, and a scattered post or two of the Hudson Bay Company, whose occasional expeditions over to Quebec for supplies were the only communication with the outer world. The solid graystone church and convent stand in bold relief among the neat little white French cottages at Roberval, there are an immense sawmill and a modern hotel, while in front is the grand sweep of the lake, like a vast inland sea, its opposite shore almost beyond vision, excepting where a far-away mountain spur may loom just above the horizon. Here lives the famous ouananiche of the salmon family, called "land-locked," because it is believed he is unable to get out to other waters. He is a gamey and magnificent fish, with dark-blue back and silvery sides, mottled with olive spots, thus literally clothed in purple and fine silver. He has enormous strength, making him the champion finny warrior of the Canadian waters. The chief fishery ground for him is in the swirling rapids of the Grand Discharge. The native Montaignais, or "mountaineer" Indian of this region, is a most expert angler, seducing the royal fish with an inartistic lump of fat pork on the end of a line from his frail canoe among the rapids, and hooking the game more effectively than the costliest rod and reel in the hands of a "tenderfoot." These dusky, consumptive-looking, copper-colored Indians spend the winters in the unexplored wilds of the Mistassini, and wander through all the wilderness as far as Hudson Bay. When the snows are gone, they bring in the pelts of the beaver, otter, fox and bear, to trade at the Company posts, and living in rude birch-bark huts on the bank of the lake, spend the summer in fishing, and pick up a few dollars as boatmen and guides.
THE ST. LAWRENCE ESTUARY.
Below the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence stretches four hundred miles to the ocean, its broad estuary constantly growing wider. On the southern shore, below Cacouna, there is another resort at a little river's mouth, known as Trois Pistoles. It is related that in the olden time a traveller was ferried across this little river, the fisherman doing the service charging him three pistoles (ten franc pieces), equalling about six dollars. The traveller was astonished at the charge, and asked him the name of the river. "It has no name," was the reply, "it will be baptized at a later day." "Then," said the traveller, anxious to get the worth of his money, "I baptize it Three Pistoles," a name that has continued ever since. This diminutive village seems rather in luck, for unlike most of the others, it has two churches, each with a tall spire. The Lower St. Lawrence shores maintain communication across the wide estuary by canoe ferries, established at various places. A stout canoe, twenty feet or more long, and having a crew of seven men, usually makes the passage. The boat is built with broad, flat keel, shod with iron, moving easily over the ice which for half the year closes the river, not breaking up until late in the spring, and sometimes obstructing the outlet through the Strait of Belle Isle until July. Farther down the southern shore, below Trois Pistoles, is Rimouski, a much larger place, described as the metropolis of the Lower St. Lawrence, and the outlet of the region of the Metapedia. This town has a Bishop and a Cathedral. Beyond are Father Point and Metis, and the land then extends past Cape Chatte into the wilderness of Gaspé. When Jacques Cartier first entered the river in 1534, he landed at Gaspé, taking possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France, and erecting a tall cross adorned with the fleur-de-lys. Very appropriately, Gaspé means the "Land's End." They found here the Micmac Indians, who were then reputed to be quite intelligent, knowing the points of the compass and position of the stars, and having rude maps of their country and a knowledge of the cross. Their tradition, as told to Cartier's sailors, was that in distant ages a pestilence harassed them, when a venerable man landed on their shore and stayed the progress of the disease by erecting a cross. This mysterious benefactor is supposed to have been a Norseman, or early Spanish adventurer. An old Castilian tale is that gold-hunting Spaniards, after the discovery by Columbus, sailed along these coasts, and finding no precious metals, said in disgust to the Indians, "Aca náda," meaning, "there is nothing here." This phrase became fixed in the Indian mind, and supposing Cartier's party to be the same people, they endeavored to open conversation by repeating the same words, "Aca náda! aca náda!" Thus, according to one theory, originated the name of Canada, the Frenchmen supposing they were telling the name of the country. Another authority is that the literal meaning of the Mohawk (Iroquois) word Canada is, "Where they live," or "a village," and as it was the word Cartier, on his voyages up the river, most frequently heard from the Indians, as applied to the homes of the people, it naturally named the country.
The surface of the southern country behind Cape Chatte, and of Gaspé (Cape Gaspé being a promontory seven hundred feet high), rises into the frowning mountains of Notre Dame, the most lofty in Lower Canada, the chief peak elevated four thousand feet. In 1648 a French explorer wrote of these stately ranges that "all those who come to New France know well enough the mountains of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived at that point of the great river which is opposite to these high mountains, baptize, ordinarily for sport, the new passengers, if they do not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism, which is made to flow plentifully on their heads." The bold southern shore of the St. Lawrence finally ends beyond Cape Gaspé, where its mouth is ninety-six miles wide in the headland of Cape Rosier, described by dreading mariners as the "Scylla of the St. Lawrence."
The northern shore of the great river, beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, is almost uninhabited. There is an occasional fishing-post, but it is almost an unknown region, though once there were Jesuit missions and trading-places, the Indians having since gone away. The iron-bound coast goes off, past Point de Monts, the Egg Islands and Anticosti, to the Strait of Belle Isle. This strait is named after a barren, treeless and desolate island at its entrance, about nine miles long, which has been most ironically named the Belle Isle, but the early mariners, nevertheless, called it the Isle of Demons. They did this because they heard, when passing, "a great clamor of men's voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you hear from a crowd at a fair or market-place." This is explained by the almost constant grinding of ice-floes in the neighborhood. The Mingan River, a beautiful stream where speckled trout are caught, comes down out of the northern mountains, opposite Anticosti Island, and is occasionally visited by enthusiastic anglers. This is the boundary of Labrador, which stretches almost indefinitely beyond, comprising the whole northeastern Canadian peninsula, an almost unexplored region of nearly three hundred square miles. It is described as a rocky plateau of Archæan rocks, highest on the northeast side and to the south, more or less wooded, and sloping down to lowlands towards Hudson Bay. It is a vast solitude, the rocks split and blasted by frosts, and the shores washed by the Atlantic waves, where reindeer, bears, wolves and a few Esquimaux wander. Its great scenic attraction is the Grand Falls. To the northward of the headwaters of Mingan River is a much larger stream, the Grand River, draining a multitude of lakes on the higher Labrador table-land, northeastward through Hamilton Inlet into the Atlantic. In 1861 a venturesome Scot of the Hudson Bay Company, prospecting through the region, first saw this magnificent cataract. For thirty years the falls were unvisited, but in 1891 an expedition was made to them, and they have been since again visited. The cataract is described as a magnificent spectacle, the river with full flow leaping from a rocky platform into a huge chasm, with a roar that can be heard twenty miles and an immense column of rainbow-illumined spray. The plunge is made after descending rapids for eight hundred feet, and is over a precipice two hundred feet wide, the fall being three hundred and sixteen feet. The water tumbles into a canyon five hundred feet deep and extending between high walls of rock for about twenty-five miles. The distant Labrador coasts on bay and ocean abound in seals and fish, and the adjacent seas are vast producers of codfish and herring. There are few visitors, however, excepting the hardy "Fishermen," of whom Whittier sings:
"Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!