D. C. Martindale, Député-Contrôleur.
Quebec, 23 Fév. 1871—3f.'
The powers of advertising were in this instance wonderfully exemplified, for at least eight hundred cats were duly brought to the Bureau; but the unfortunate cat-merchants did not receive a dollar. Some, being of a speculative turn, had bought up a number of their neighbours' cats at prices varying between ten cents and twenty-five cents each; and what with the ire of the cat-merchants at the hoax, the astonishment and indignation of the Control officers, and the caterwauling of the pussies brought in boxes, baskets, bags, &c., the scene was one which will long be remembered in Quebec. On Sunday, 26th February (according to a local custom of treating government advertisements), the doors of the churches in the country districts round Quebec had the 'cat advertisement' duly posted up, so that on Monday the 27th a bountiful supply of mousers was brought from suburban districts to complete the Control catastrophe.
Of course very strict inquiries were made, with a view of ascertaining the author of the hoax; but that individual has not yet presented himself to public notice, and judiciously made use of the post-office to carry the letter to the Evénement respecting the insertion of the advertisement. We also understand the editor of the Evénement was politely requested to render his account for the advertisements to the Control Department. There is, we believe, an old proverb, 'A cat may look at a king;' but many of the inhabitants of the Quebec suburbs did not like to look at cats for some time afterwards.
[FRENCH FISHER-FOLK.]
They live by themselves and to themselves, these French fisher-folk; an amphibious race, as completely cut off from the shore-staying population as any caste of Hindustan. The quaint village that they inhabit consists of half a score of steep and narrow lanes, and as many airless courts or alleys, clinging to the cliff as limpets anchor to a rock, and topped by the weather-beaten spire of a church, dedicated of course to St Peter. Hard by there may be a town rich and populous; but its wide streets and display of plate-glass are not envied by the piscatorial clan outside. They have shops of their own, where sails and shawls, ropes and ornaments, high surf-boots and gaudy gown-pieces, jostle one another in picturesque profusion. From the upper windows of the private dwellings project gaffs and booms, whence dangle, for drying purposes, wet suits of dark-blue pilot cloth and dripping pea-coats. Everywhere prevails an ancient and fish-like smell, struggling with the wholesome scent of hot pitch simmering for the manufacture of tarpaulins and waterproofs. Half the houses are draped in nets, some newly tanned to toughen them, others whose long chain of corks is still silvered with herring-scales. The very children are carving boats out of lumps of dark wreck-wood, or holding a mock auction for tiny crabs and spiked sea-urchins. The whole atmosphere of the place has a briny and Neptunian savour about it, and is redolent of the ocean.
A word now as to the fishers themselves; as proud, self-reliant, and independent a race as those hardy Norsemen from whom ethnologists believe them to descend by no fictitious pedigree. Of the purity of their blood there can be little doubt, since the fish-maiden who mates with any but a fisherman is considered to have lost caste; precisely as the gipsy girl who marries a Busné is deemed to be a deserter from the tribe. Marrying among themselves then, it is not surprising that there should be an odd sort of family likeness among them, with one marked type of face and form, or rather two, for the men, curiously enough, are utterly unlike the women. Your French fisher is scarcely ever above the middle height, a compact thick-set little merman, with crisply curling hair, gold rings in his ears, and a brown honest face, the unfailing good-humour of which is enhanced by the gleam of the strong white teeth between the parted lips.
The good looks of the women of this aquatic stock have passed into a proverb; but theirs is no buxom style of peasant comeliness. Half the drawing-rooms of London or Paris might be ransacked before an artist could find as worthy models of aristocratic beauty as that of scores of these young fish-girls, reared in the midst of creels and shrimp-nets and lobster-traps. Their tall slight figures, clear bright complexions, and delicate clean-cut features, not seldom of the Greek mould, contrast with the sun-burnt sturdiness of husband, brother, and betrothed; while the small hands and small feet combine to give to their owners an air of somewhat languid elegance, apparently quite out of keeping with a rough life and the duties of a workaday world.
Work, however—hard and trying work, makes up the staple existence of French fisher-folks, as of French landsmen. In the shrimp-catching season, it must indeed be wild weather which scares the girls who ply this branch of industry, with bare bronzed feet and dexterously wielded net, among the breakers. Others, a few years older, may be seen staggering under weighty baskets of oysters, or assisting at the trimming and sorting the many truck-loads of fish freighted for far-away Paris. The married women have their household cares, never shirked, for no children are better tended than these water-babies, that are destined from the cradle to live by net and line; while the widows—under government authority—board the English steam-packets, and enjoy the sole right of trundling off the portmanteaus of English travellers to their hotel.
The men, the real bread-winners of the community, enter well provided into the field of their hereditary labour. The big Boulogne luggers, strongly manned, and superior in tonnage and number to those which any other French port sends forth, are known throughout the Channel, and beyond it. They need to be large and roomy, since they scorn to be cooped within the contracted limits of the narrow seas, but sail away year after year to bleak Norway and savage Iceland; and their skippers, during the herring-fishery, are as familiar with the Scottish coast as with that of their native Picardy. It is requisite too that they should be strong and fit to 'keep,' in nautical parlance, the sea; for Boulogne, lying just where the Channel broadens out to meet the Atlantic, is exposed to the full force of the resistless south-west gale, that once drove Philip II.'s boasted Armada northward to wreck and ruin.