CANADIAN FISHING SKETCHES.
BY HIRAM B. STEPHENS.
II. SPEARING FISH AT THE LACHINE RAPIDS.
THE Lachine Rapids are well known to many American tourists, as they are included in a circuit of tourist travel adopted by large numbers, viz.: from Niagara Falls through Lake Ontario, the Thousand Islands, the Rapids of the St. Lawrence, down to the ancient city of Quebec, and on to the mysterious Saguenay. The average tourist’s knowledge of the Lachine Rapids is confined to the personal experience of running them in the steamboat. But few realize that this is historic ground, trod by “the pioneers of France in the New World;” that Champlain endeavored to ascend these rapids in a small boat two centuries and a half ago, and that La Salle built a fort or house here which is still standing, though fast falling into decay. Here have been Champlain, Maisonneuve, Frontenac, Joliette, and La Salle himself, all of whom have left their indelible records, not alone in Canadian history, but in that of America.
The Lachine Rapids rush madly past, whitening with foam in their ceaseless career. The old name of the rapids was the “Sault St. Louis.” The Catholic mission here has been famous; it was situated on the south shore, and has changed its home several times, till now it is located in the Indian village of Caughnawaga. In this village lived La Salle some twenty years previous to the “massacre at Lachine,” perpetrated by the Iroquois on the night of the 4th August, 1689, when, in not more than an hour, over two hundred persons were butchered. In Caughnawaga lived Charlevoix, the author of the celebrated “Histoire de la Nouvelle France,” and his desk is still to be seen there in the Presbytère. Not many months ago, the writer was called upon by two dusky Indians, and asked by them to translate a certain parchment. It was dated early in the seventeenth century, written in old Norman French, and signed “LOUIS ROY.” It was the deed of the seigneurie to the mission, which these Indians had carefully preserved, without any safe deposit company, through all their wars and massacres, their fires and revolts. But I am not to write historical notes and must cease, much as the subject interests.
Above the villages of Lachine (so named by La Salle, who thought of going to China from this point) and Caughnawaga, the St. Lawrence is wide and forms what is known as Lake St. Louis. This lake narrows very much at the two villages. A few miles below, the river, taking a turn, rushes over a bed of rocks and boulders, forming the Lachine Rapids, and then widens out into Laprairie Bay below, and passes on more peacefully to the good city of Montreal.
The south shore from the Lachine Rapids down past and below Laprairie Bay, is an excellent fishing-ground, and deserves a few notes which it has never yet, to the writer’s knowledge, received in any important publication.
The fish which can be secured here are sturgeon, bass, dory, carp, and mullet of different kinds, and the eel. There are also bream, shad, and a fish known as the loche, and at times whitefish and small perch. The Indians of Caughnawaga devote much of their time to fishing. These Indians, by the way, have intermarried with the surrounding French Canadians to such an extent that the blood is far from pure, if there be even one pure-blooded Indian remaining, except an old squaw 107 years old, who still smokes her pipe and is somewhat active. But theirs is a commercial pursuit and not for any love of sport. They use nets principally, and in the spring spear the carp and eels in large numbers. Apart from their fishing pursuits, their chief means of livelihood lies in running timber rafts down the rapids. The majority of them speak French, and some of them English. Their squaws are engaged in the making of Indian “curiosities” for sale to tourists.
A visit to the village is interesting in more ways than one. The locality is not an inviting one, as it is rocky and somewhat barren, and if the original intention in placing the Indians here was to instruct them in agricultural pursuits, no more unsuitable locality could have been found. They could drill, and that is all, for there is nothing but solid rock. The houses are all of stone, as might be supposed, with quaint little windows. In some of them the old irons still remain, placed there in colonial days. There is one long street, the houses being built on each side at varying distances. The church is a plain building, very simply appointed, free from the gorgeous elaborateness of more modern Roman Catholic churches, and contains some curious old pictures, more curious than valuable. Last summer, while the floor of the church was being altered, a quantity of bones were discovered; but the Indian workmen were not disturbed, continuing their work, and probably relaying the floor without paying any further attention.