'You'd better go further than the Muskoka district, then,' he said. 'It's beginning to be rather a fashionable camping-ground—quite pleasant in its way. If you care to see charming American maidens in expensive frocks falling out of canoes just on purpose to be able to change into frocks still more expensive, the Muskoka country is the place for you. If not, you had better come with me and fish for maskinongés on the French River.'
I did not know where the French River was or what maskinongés were, or how you caught them; but I said 'Yes,' being very tired of cities, and we took the night train from Toronto, and at 4.30 A.M. dropped off it on to a bridge that spanned a deep, big river. The dawn was exceedingly cold and grey.
Literally we dropped off the train, for it did not stop but only slowed down, and after us the negro porter dropped our bags and tackle. A minute later the train had vanished, and we were left alone on the bridge, staring at the rocky, wooded cliffs that rose on either bank. Rock, wood, and water indeed met the eye wherever one looked. It seemed a country where Nature had once built mountains, savage and sparsely wooded mountains in the midst of a great inland sea, then in a cataclysmal mood had dashed them to pieces in every direction. And as the boulders and splinters of boulders flew, some fell in circles and made little lakes out of the great sea; some fell in heaped cliffs and banks, between which the sea was squeezed into winding, forking streams; some fell and sank and left the sea a shallow swamp above them; some fell and stood up out of the water and became islands of dry rock. Every splinter that flew bore in some crack of it a seed of spruce or fir or birch, which grew; so that all this barren rock and waste of water became crowned with trees. I dare say any geologist could explain exactly what did happen. I am merely explaining what appears to have happened, when you look at it the first time with eyes still full of sleep.
It was the French River at which we were gazing, and it looked at this point somewhat wider than the Thames at Hammersmith. It was flat and full with a good current; and my friend made some remark about never having been given to understand, when he was at school in England, that there was such a river at all—much less that it was finer than the Thames.
'I doubt if one would find it marked on an English school map even now,' he continued.
'I don't know, I'm sure,' I replied.
'Doesn't it show how disgracefully ignorant we are of Canada?' he demanded in the hollow tones of an Imperial enthusiast.
'Yes,' I agreed. I daresay I should have agreed anyhow. It was disgraceful that we neither of us had known anything about the French River. But the reason I agreed so quickly was that, if I had not done so, he was capable of proving to me that such gross ignorance, if persisted in, will some day prove fatal to the Empire. Whereas I merely wanted breakfast. Any one who has been dropped off a train at 4.30 on a misty morning in the sort of country I have described will sympathise with me.
Luckily the dawn soon became a little less grey, and presently we beheld a wooden shack standing on a crag some quarter of a mile up stream, with a dozen canoes moored below it. Presently also—and this was more to the point—some one in the shack became aware of us standing on the bridge, and put out in an old boat fitted with a motor to fetch us. An hour later we were enjoying breakfast inside the shack, which is really a hotel of sorts, and its proprietor, Mr. Fenton, was explaining to us all about the fishing to be had on the French River. For five dollars—or nine for two persons, he would supply us with a canoe, an Indian guide, a tent, provisions, and a hundred miles or so of first-class fishing.
Now for the benefit of all benighted Englishmen who do not know the French River or Mr. Fenton of Pickerel, but would like to make their acquaintance and that of the maskinongé, let me enlarge upon my existence for the next few days.