One old woman sits in her garden on the hill-climbing road from the traverse, as the French call the ferry, and weaves her rings that are to grace the dinner-tables of the east and west. She invites us, in her frank manner, to sit down, seeing perhaps in the summer visitor a possible customer. But no, she does not sell retail. “They are all engaged, madame,” she remarks modestly. Then she adds, “but maybe, I think, perhaps you like to look?”
So we take the chair madame offers, and a neighbor comes out and leans over the garden gate and we chat, and on the calm river le traversier ferries the flat-boat to and fro and his passengers in their strange heterogeneous ensemble present a passing show that carries one out on imaginary roads that lead back to the age when romance was in flower here and Louis Crevier was le Grand Seigneur over all this fair demesne.
That one may have some idea of the passengers who traverse the St. Francois at Pierreville the following comprehensive avis or public notice at the landing-place will tell more in its quaint way than a dozen paragraphs:
1 personne 5 cts.
1 Voiture semple 15 cts.
1 voiture double 20 cts.
1 Personne a cheval 15 cts.
1 Cheval ou 1 bête a cornes 15 cts.
Plusieurs chevaux chacun 5 cts.
Plusieurs bêtes a cornes chacun 5 cts.
1 Mouton 1 cochon 1 veau chacun 15 cts.
Plusieurs de ces bêtes chacune 5 cts.
Tout voyage de Bac 15 cts.
1 Automobile 25 cts.
In addition to the basket-industry, the men at the factory by our door, make rustic porch-furniture out of their ribbons of white ash. They paint the frames of the chairs that bright art-red which gives our porches such an air of welcome on a warm summer day.
Seldom a train goes out to Montreal—and there is just one a day—but carries crate upon crate of baskets and shipment upon shipment of this handmade furniture. When you come to think of it $250,000 worth of sweet grass baskets spells a great many baskets. It spells application and swift industrious fingers. It spells good homes and comfort for the three hundred Abenakis living in “the beautiful little village of Pierreville”, and it spells a dainty sweet-grass basket for many homes in Canada and the United States.
CHAPTER XXI.
“TO MARKET, TO MARKET.”
STEPPING STONES.