THE Allegro stood in for St. Paul's Bay east. before a stiff breeze from the northA heavy swell rolled up the St. Lawrence, which is here eighteen miles wide. The immense arm of the sea was none the less impressive for being viewed, and even felt and tasted, while sitting in the cockpit of my canoe. Numerous reefs run out from each shore to the channel; they were marked by white-caps where the ebb tide rushed over them at four or five knots an hour against the wind. The great river leaped, foamed, and raged like a sea along its mountain walls. These numerous tide-races often make the St. Lawrence a rough passage for small craft; the water boils over the ledges and eddies in every direction, and the wind kicks up a chop sea of the worst description. The sails shiver with squalls, the currents turn her about, she loses steerage-way, and seems to stand on both beam ends at once. And if she comes out of it right side up, it is due to good luck as much as to good VOL. LXVII.-No. 399.-24 seamanship. I was hugging the north shore pretty closely to escape these tideraces, when all at once I found myself on the brink of the celebrated Gouffre, or whirlpool, at the foot of the Cap aux Corbeaux, a passage worse than any tide-race. Charlevoix, in his Voyage à la Nouvelle France, speaks of this whirlpool as a place much dreaded by sailors. And the Abbé Casgrain, in his Pèlerinage à l'Ile aux Coudres, sets forth the popular fear of this place to-day. Sailors gave a sinister name to the neighboring cape. Their frightened imagination doubtless peopled the Cap aux Corbeaux (Crow Cape) with these birds of prey, as if they lived there to await wrecks and devour the victims. Navigators who took this northern channel (inside the Ile aux Coudres) kept at a safe distance from these currents. Misfortune awaits the boat that ventures into this watery spiral. She is caught in its coils as in those of a gigantic serpent. Carried by an irresistible force, she turns and turns with increasing velocity as she nears the centre, and finally plunges down the fathomless vortex. Imagination thus makes it into Poe's maelstrom; and some ancient legends tell how "certain ships were swallowed under full sail, and disappeared forever under the immense dome" of the cavernous cliff at the foot of the Cap aux Corbeaux. As a matter of fact the Gouffre is a treacherous eddy that grows extremely dangerous for small boats in a fresh wind; and it has been the grave of men who were caught on its tumultuous surface in bad weather. But the maelstrom exists chiefly in the fancy of the credulous. Nevertheless I thought it best to bear away from its currents and tossing swells; so I stood in still closer to the foot of the cliffs, which sent back some cross swells, and echoed the roar of the sea. I soon doubled the cape, and found myself in the mouth of the bay, in quiet waters. village, where the chief activity seems to The north shore of the lower St. Lawrence is the mountain range of the Laurentides, deeply cloven here and there for the passage of a little river. The bay of Saint-Pierre et Saint-Paul is one of these clefts. The steep high walls of the valley begin on each side of the bay as great capes, and running back, crowd together After beaching the Allegro I walked up till they reduce the valley to a winding one of the long narrow farms into which gorge. Still higher mountains rise back the land of Canada is divided, and came of these, stern and savage, with precipices at last to the farm-house. The sound of and bald rocky heads. A little river runs low and deferential voices met me, and as down each side of the valley, and empties I turned the corner I found a picturesque each in its own corner of the bay. The group of peasants sitting on the steps and sand-beach between them is covered with piazza. The warm yet sombre gloaming a grove of dark pines and balsams, and was a kindly light for their sturdy homethe bold shores along the foot of the capes spun figures and sunburned faces. It seemare diversified with little houses among ed as if the peace and gentleness of the trees and fish-weirs along the rocks. You evening were within them as well as about look out between the capes at the great St. them. After their salutations I asked for Lawrence to the right and left of the Ile lodging, which the old gentleman, M. aux Coudres as at the sea, but the distant Tremblay, granted with a willingness that south shore lays a blue line of mountains put me quite at ease. When I told him along the horizon. From the village you that I was canoeing, the lads all offered embrace the whole scene, even to the dis- to help me bring the canoe up to the barn; tant houses far up the walls, where horses and we soon had her under cover, where and carts crawling along the roads look she held a court of her own for half an like flies. The village gathers its quaint hour. As we entered the house I saw on simple houses about a huge but low stone the door a card let into a cavity and covchurch with two small steeples. The riv- ered with glass. It bore a cross, and uner there is spanned by a red bridge, be- der this the words, "Christus, nobiscum neath which bare-legged boys cruise about state." the world while sailing their little boats; and as the mail-carrier drives over it at midnight he blows his horn to rouse the "It is our insurance, sir. We have postmaster. It is a drowsy, straggling | earthquakes and terrible storms here now "Why do you have this on your door?” I asked. doors to protect us against disasters; we shall never have any more earthquakes, and the winds can't touch a house with these words on it. It was a terrible time; we prayed all day and night, and had masses said, and some went almost as crazy as the cattle. The next Sunday after the shock all the young women appeared at mass like widows, without a ribbon or any ornament, because God sent the earthquake as a warning." The supper table was soon spread with an oiled cloth, a pewter spoon for each person, and a soup plate for me. We sat down, ten of us, about the little table, large enough for only four. They sat almost helping me to a plateful they all began to eat from the pan; each one filled his spoon, drew it across the edge of the pan, and then carried it to his mouth. It was an odd sight to see those nine arms so actively and irregularly converging at the pan, and then withdrawing from the skirmish to re-appear at once. It was rather a shadowy supper, with the light of only one small lamp. But the eating was not ill-mannered or untidy. When the soup was finished, one of the girls wiped all our spoons on a towel she had across her knees, and a pan of bread and milk was soon dispatched as the soup had been. After supper the men withdrew to chairs along the wall, while the women resumed their work about the little lamp on the table. Some of them sewed and knitted, one peeled potatoes for breakfast, and the young wife stropped a razor with some persistence and much awkwardness. When it was sharp she brought forth other implements, and then beckoned to her husband, saying, in rather a commanding tone, "Come, now." He slouched to the table and sat down in her chair. She went at him, unbuttoned his shirts, gave him a most thorough scrubbing with a coarse homespun towel, and then lathered and shaved his chin. And he took it all very quietly too. The young women afterward retired to a corner of the room and performed as nearly as possible the same kind of toilet. Meanwhile we chatted about the United States and the revival of business there. One of the sons had passed two years working in a brick-yard at Haverstraw, and, like many of his countrymen, he had returned with some heretical admiration of our more progressive civilization. Emigration to the United States is energetically opposed by church and state, so in praising the wonders of New York I became an emissary of the devil, which increased the interest of my position. The young man kindled at once, and felt impatient at the skepticism of his parents, but he showed this only by a faint expression of hopelessness; and the opposition of the old people, though quite positive, was equally silent and considerate. I soon relieved them by drawing their attention to my fly-rod, gun, and other accoutrements; and it relieved my own conscience to abandon thus the character of an unwelcome emissary. At an early hour in the evening the old gentleman turned to me and said, with a very practical air, “Well, now, we're going to pray to God. What 'll you do?" "All right, sir, go ahead, and I'll listen to you." They all knelt here and there about the room, each erect on his knees, facing the black cross on the wall; the mother said the prayers in a rapid, monotonous voice, and the others replied with equal rapidity. After this audible service they still remained kneeling for a long time while each one finished his chaplet independently; then each one arose and went off to bed. There were fourteen in the family; about half of them went into the next room, where there were but two bedsteads. But they drew out trundle-beds from under these, raised the lid of a large chest, opened the hollow seat of a bench, and then packed themselves away in these receptacles. They spread a buffalo-robe and some blankets on the floor for me that first night. "I ask your pardon, sir," said M. Tremblay, "for putting you to sleep here alone; and if you are afraid, we'll spread your bed in the next room with the rest of the family. To-morrow the créatures [women] will put up a bedstead for you in there; it won't be so lonesome.” When I awoke I was by no means alone. One girl was saying to another, "It's late-half past four"; one was picking over some dried pease, and dropping them into a tin pail; another lifted the trap-door of the cellar, and hauling up a broom made of cedar boughs, swept the floor; a brood of chickens peeped in a coop in one corner; and a coal-black cat near my ear purred vociferously, as if she thought my only language was a snore. The children came flocking down the stairs, and when the family of fourteen had gathered about me I thought the gray morning was well enough identified by human activity for me to get up. After breakfast on Sunday we all went to church. The roads were alive with the parishioners coming to mass in their best turn-outs. There was the long-bodied one-horse hay cart, with chairs for the passengers; there was the lighter cart with wooden springs; also the ancient one-horse chaise, or calèche, with its fidgety box hung on straps; and now and then a buckboard. Rope traces and lines were not rare, and sometimes an ox is used instead of a horse. It is still regarded as impolite for one vehicle to pass another without permission, and formerly it was taken as even an insult. It was not uncommon then to see a number of these carts and calèches coming down the road to church on the full run, while the riders bobbed about like beans in a spider; the air resounded with anything but prayers, and the pedestrians fled from the road and climbed the fences. The village streets were now lined by these odd vehicles, and the people collected at the church. They were a crowd of genuine peasants. They wear dark coarse homespun; even the young women have scarcely a ribbon on their hats. There is not a single bit of color or brightness about them. The whole parish dresses as one man and one woman; you feel the extraordinary unity of Canadian life in this external monotony of the people. They seem a very sober people, even sombre, until you see their contented and amiable faces. The French-Canadian peasants are generally rather small, but sturdy, muscular, wellknit. They are dull-looking, but their rather heavy faces are not animal and coarse. Even the young women are very seldom pretty, but they are all wholesome, modest, and unaffected. As they advance in life they become stout, and reach old age with a comfortable and placid expression. The beauty of the race seems to be confined to the children, who are bright, robust, and cherubic. Thus the people are externally unprepossessing, but the more I study them, the more I like them for the quiet courtesy and perfect simplicity of their |