CHAPTER XI.
LES ILES DE MADELEINE “THE NECKLACE”.
THE WOOL FOR THESE HOMEMADE LOOMS IS GROWN ON THE
SHEEP GRAZING ON THE SLOPES OF LES DEMOISELLES.
SEUMAS O’BRIEN. AUTHOR AND SCULPTOR.
AVING met some notable woman, Queen or Court lady, and been charmed by her graciousness, and having recounted some of the qualities which are component of that grace, one’s thoughts turn naturally to memory of her adorning jewels. It is like that with Quebec.
Quebec’s outstanding jewels are Les Iles de Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The earliest French navigators seeing the islands for the first time were so impressed with their beauty, they called them, in the poetic language so natural to those gentlemen-explorers of the sixteenth century, “The Necklace”. Time has substantiated the courtly compliment. For that is just what they are—Canada’s “Necklace of Pearls” on the bosom of the Gulf.