WITH PICTURES BY W. T. BENDA
THE way to go to Murray Bay is down the St. Lawrence by boat from Quebec. There is, indeed, another way, which most people take, but it should be taken only by impatient travelers who prefer a speedy to a picturesque arrival.
The “bateau” is one of the three paddle-wheel boats that ply between Quebec and the Saguenay River. Each bateau has its own character, its own history, its own aliases. A bateau regards shipwreck as a baptism, and thereupon takes a new name and a new coat of paint. The dean of the fleet, at least according to the Murray Bay tradition, is a sort of Methuselah. The story goes that before our Civil War, in the days when the Mississippi ran unvexed to the gulf, when young Sam Clemens was crying out “Mark Twain,” a paddle-wheeler plied between New Orleans and Vicksburg—but this gossip is beneath the dignity of history. The bateau, whatever its dubious past may have been, leaves the wharf at Quebec at eight o’clock in the morning and arrives at Murray Bay at half-past one. This legend, which I take from the Richelieu and Ontario time-table, is less trustworthy than the other. Let us come to facts. At some time or other the bateau leaves Quebec; it passes the Ile d’Orleans, the Falls of Montmorency, and about sixty miles of beautiful shore; and after what, if the day be fine, is a most delightful sail, draws near to Bay St. Paul. This arrival is the prologue to Murray Bay. The bateau gyrates, heaves, trembles, and sidles toward the dock. Shouts from the bateau, answering shouts from the dock; the bateau hesitates, shivers, and like a tired cow comes diffidently up alongside. The passengers crowd to the landward rail; the population of Bay St. Paul crowds to the edge of the quay. A small coil of rope is hurled through the air from the bateau; it is caught by the population of Bay St. Paul; attached to the rope is the boat’s hawser, which is made fast to a pile. Friends exchange joyous greetings; the charretiers, whose carriages and carts in long sequence stretch the length of the causeway from the dock to the shore, wait politely for customers.
The bateau prefers to arrive at the moment when the tide either lifts it far above or leaves it far below the level of the quay; the gang-plank is always at a sharp angle, and in consequence the cargo, put on or off,—barrels, bales, bundles, trunks—slides down or is rushed up with bumps, bangs, and loud shouts of “Prenez garde! Faites attention!” or less articulate expressions. For a time all is feverish excitement, joyous activity, perspiration, and hullabaloo. Then, as the gang-plank, at a whistle from the quarterdeck, is about to be lifted, shrieks from the quay indicate the belated arrival of a barrel, a pig, or some stout passenger waving breathlessly hand-bag and umbrella. At last the bateau glides on toward Murray Bay. The same bustle which characterized the arrival at Bay St. Paul, but tempered by a higher civilization, marks the arrival at Murray Bay. The custom-house is a mere amiable ceremony, and the traveler is at once confronted with his first exercise of choice: “Will monsieur have a calèche or a planche?”
MAP OF THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY
As soon as the traveler has climbed into the calèche (the luggage is left for the charrette), the charretier gives a warning cry and swings down the long causeway, and, turning to the right, goes up the hill that buttresses the Pic. Here you learn your first vehicular lesson. At a particular point going up the hill—it will not vary six feet on any hill, for the rule is de rigueur, and every native boy is born with the knowledge—the charretier leaps to the ground and drives on foot from alongside.
Once free of the dock and over the hill, the traveler drives down the long village street. Every French-Canadian village properly consists of one long street. This is partly in order to economize shoveling and plank-walk during the winter, and partly because Latin sociability and democracy hold that every house has a right to front on the main street. Here the traveler sees the most charming touch of art in Murray Bay architecture, the curve of the gable-roof. In old times all the native houses, or most of them, had this curving roof; but of late years desire for space and lack of taste betray themselves in repeating the ugly roofs familiar to the south of the Canadian border. Nothing in architecture is more soothing than this curve in the gabled roof; it contains all the picturesqueness, all the poetry, that the patron saint of roofs—is it, perchance, St. Rufinus?—allows to them.
Drawn by W. T. Benda. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins