The lodges Champlain saw belonged to an Algonquin horde, 'Denizens of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their only harvest—skins of the moose, cariboo, and bear; fur of the beaver, marten, otter, fox, wild cat, and lynx.'
Other days, other harvests. From the shack of the Only Real Indian I saw one stout tourist issue forth (a Chicago pork-packer he must have been, if persons ever correspond to their professions), laden with three toy bows and arrows, as many miniature canoes, and what appeared to be a couple of patchwork bedspreads. That the descendant of braves should live by making patchwork bedspreads seemed too much, even though I had given up as illusions the Red Indians of my boyhood. Far rather would I at that moment have seen the stout tourist come forth, either scalpless himself, or dangling at his ample belt the raven locks of the Only Real Indian.
In the night we went on to Chicoutimi, but saw nothing of that, being asleep. We had sung songs, American songs—'John Brown's Body,' 'Marching through Georgia,' etc., till a late hour of the night; and in any case the bracing river air would have insured sleep. Only in the morning as we came down the Saguenay again did I wake to its beauty and strangeness. Men have learnt to tunnel through rocks at last, but the Saguenay learnt this art for itself thousands of years ago. A wide water tunnel through the sheer rock, a roofless tunnel, open to the sky, that is the Saguenay—most magnificent at the point where Cap Trinité looms up, a wall of darkness fifteen hundred feet high.
It is a curious fact that famous landscapes always produce a remarkable frivolity in the human tourist visiting them. Perhaps it is man's instinct to assert himself against nature. When the boat draws opposite Cap Trinité, stewards produce buckets of stones and passengers are invited to try and hit the Cap with the stones from impossible distances. I do not know that it greatly added to the pleasure of the trip, but we all tried to hit the cliff with the stones and most of us failed, and had to content ourselves with drawing echoes from it. After that we went on, and some of the white whales which are characteristic of the Saguenay began to appear, and experienced travellers explained that they were not really white whales but a sort of white porpoise. Once again, as we passed it, Tadousac was invisible, but this time because a white fog had wrapped it round. So silently we turned out of the Saguenay into the St. Lawrence. I think the silence of the Saguenay was what had most impressed me. Not very long before I had steamed down the Hoogly where by day the kites wheel and shriek overhead, and the air buzzes with insects' sounds, and all night the jackals scream—a noisy river, full of treacherous sandbanks, its shores green with the bright poisonous green of the East. The Saguenay, unique as it is in many ways, seemed by the contrast of its deepness and silence, and by the fresh darkness of the rocks and trees that shut it in, to be peculiarly a river of the West. I do not know if it would have made the somewhat bald young American tired.
It is only fair to say that his attitude about Quebec is not at all characteristic of his fellow-countrymen. For most Americans, Quebec province (and still more perhaps the woods of Ontario) is becoming almost as popular a playground as Switzerland is for Englishmen. Camping out has become a great craze among Americans, and if the camping out can be done amid unspoilt natural surroundings, close to rivers where one can fish and woods where one can hunt, an ideal holiday is assured them. I forget who it was who said that much of the old American versatility and nobility had disappeared since the American boys left off whittling sticks, but in any case the desire to whittle sticks is renewed again among them, from Mr. Roosevelt downwards. And in Canada this whittling of sticks—this return to nature—can easily be accomplished. For the north is still there, unexploited. In Quebec province, fishing and hunting clubs of Quebec and Montreal have secured the rights over vast tracts of country. So vast are those tracts that one or two clubs, I was told, have not even set eyes on all the trout streams they preserve. This may be an exaggeration, though probably not a great one. There remains—especially in Ontario—much water and wood that any one may sport in unlicensed, or get access to by permission of the local hotel proprietor. Some of the Americans on the boat had been fishing in Quebec streams and told me of excellent sport they had had, so that I began to wonder why no Englishmen ever came this way. The voyage to Canada is a little further than that to Norway, but there are more fish in Canada. And there is certainly only one Saguenay in the world.
CHAPTER VI
STE. ANNE DE BEAUPRÉ AND A TRAVELLER'S VOW
Ste. Anne de Beaupré is usually referred to as the Lourdes of Canada. When a metaphor of this sort is used it usually means that the spot referred to is in some way inferior to the original. In the case of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, the inferiority is not, I believe, in the matter of the number of miracles wrought there, but in the matter of general picturesqueness. Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not nearly so picturesque as Lourdes. If you wish to palliate this fact, you say, as one writer has said, that 'The beauty of modern architecture mingles at Beaupré with the remains of a hoary past.' If you do not wish to palliate it, you say, as I do, that Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not in the least picturesque. I did not particularly care for the modern architecture, and the hoary past is not particularly in evidence. Do not suppose me to say that Beaupré has not a hoary past. Red Indians, long before the days of railroads, travelled thither to pray at the feet of Ste. Anne. Breton seamen, who belong only to tradition, promised a shrine to Ste. Anne, if she would save them from shipwreck. They erected the first chapel. The second and larger chapel was built as far back as 1657, and miracles were quite frequent from then onwards. Nevertheless, the basilica is quite new, and so is the whole appearance of the place.
I visited it in company with a French-Canadian commercial traveller. He was a great big good-looking youth with curly hair and blue eyes, and he travelled in corsets or something of that sort for a Montreal firm. I could not help thinking that many ladies would buy corsets from him or anything else whether they wanted them or not, because of his charming boyish manner and his good looks. He asked me to go to Ste. Anne de Beaupré with him. He said that he supposed that I was not a Catholic, but that did not matter. He wished to go to the good Ste. Anne, and it would be a good thing to go. He had been several times before, but he had not been for several years. He could easily take the afternoon off, and first of all we would go by the electric train to the good Ste. Anne, and then on the way back we would step off at the Falls station, and see the Montmorency Falls, and also the Zoo that is there. It would be great fun to see the Zoo. He had not seen the Zoo for several years, and the animals would be very interesting.