ract of the Manitou, away on the lonely North Shore, is of no commercial interest. It attracts no sight-seers. The sailors fear the coast in its vicinity. But since the days when the world was young it has poured over those flinty rocks, the spray in summer forming a fresh rainbow every shining moment, and in winter freezing into myriads of beautiful ice-palaces, whose glistening pinnacles have borne witness through the centuries, as seasons have come and gone, that human eyes are not the only things for which the beauties of this world are made.

When we had done looking at the waterfall, and returned to the gulf, there was such a heavy sea running that the canoe could not live, and the Indians had to carry it back over the rocks for five miles. They did not seem to mind the burden much. When we reached the schooner, the waves were roaring in at the narrow harbor entrance, chasing each other in ceaseless cavalry charges, and we lay all that night, proud of the rock that stood between us and the angry sea. A fisherman, steering for the harbor, ran aground be

tween two small rocks outside, and was rescued when the storm went down, his boat meantime breaking in two.

Our own schooner, which was one size too big for the harbor mouth, could only run out when the tide was high, and after waiting two tides for a fair wind, all the fishermen in the place, about a dozen, turned out in their dories and towed us through to the open gulf, the towage bill of three dollars being considered high by our loyal Captain Joe.

The next large river east of the Manitou, coming out of this unknown country, is the St. John. There are at least five St. John rivers in Canada, but this is distinguished as the St. John of the North Shore. It is a great salmon stream, but in 1896 it was unleased. The first fall, more than twenty miles from the mouth, is the nearest point where the fish stop. Thirty years ago the commander of a Canadian Government vessel, who was doing the same thing we did last year, discovered a most remarkable thing at this fall. There was a rock in the channel, so shaped that when the fish jumped against it, many of them

fell into a cavity on the other side, from which, in low water, they could not escape. In this way myriads of noble salmon had, through countless years, lost their lives; and so well known to the neighboring bears was the fact that, when the commander was there, he found the remains of hundreds of the fish scattered about the rocks, where the bears had dragged them. He carried up a keg of powder, and blasted out a fish-way, since which this curious fish-trap has not been of any benefit to the bears.

Thirty miles below the St. John are the Mingan Islands, between the mainland and the western end of the island of Anticosti. The shores of these islands present a geological formation which is frequently found in this part of the world, and which was the cause of the many wrecks suffered by early explorers. At high tide perpendicular rocks seem to rise from the water's edge; but at low tide flat ledges, extending far out from the cliffs, are laid bare. In many places these shelving ledges extend for miles, and a person caught on them in a rising tide would be in great danger, as he could not ascend the face of the rock wall. Most of the three-hundred-mile coast line

of Anticosti Island is thus grimly guarded. On the shelving rocks the seals love to sleep at low tide, and once, when we were rambling along the shore, we surprised a herd of horsehead seals, each animal ten or twelve feet long, and heavy as an ox. The speed with which these great creatures slid splashing into the water was surprising. Soon two or three of them cautiously raised their heads above the water, snuffed the air, to be sure what we were, and then we saw them no more.

The islands are the nesting-places of thousands of birds, and in some places the young gulls and other fluffy infants with untrained wings would prowl about under our feet in the most awkward and ridiculous fashion, while hundreds of alarmed parent birds filled the air with their cries as they circled overhead.

Our careless wanderings thus far had carried us, by easy stages, nearly five hundred miles northeast of Quebec. We were opposite the mouth of the Mingan River, and as I wished to see my bright young companion wrestle with a big salmon, we concluded to say good-by to the schooner for a few days, and ascend the river.

That was where the canoes came in, and the guides, who had sunned themselves on the deck for days, made ready to depart. At the mouth of the Mingan, for more than two hundred years, a settlement of the same name has been recognized on all the maps. At present there are two families who reside there the year round; that of Mr. Scott, agent of the Hudson Bay Company, and that of Mr. Malony, telegraph operator and warden of the river. One would little guess to look at the peaceful scene, that this place was the centre of one of the

there was a disturbance between France and England, the buildings at Mingan were pretty sure to be burned, by one side or the other. It was an easy thing to stop in the beautiful little harbor among the islands, and apply the red torch of war. Promptly after the cession of Canada to Great Britain in 1763, the Mingan seign

lon, more than four hundred miles in length, and six miles in depth, was claimed as the feudal holding of the Mingan Seigniory. The grant under which this claim has always been maintained was made to François Bissot, in 1661, by the Company of New France, deriving its powers from the French Crown. This grant was indefinite in terms, and gave vague rights to establish hunting and fishing stations, and to take the necessary timber and lands, down the coast, to "the Great Bay toward the Esquimaux, where the Spaniards usually fish." The short story of a controversy extending through two centuries is that the successors of the Sieur Bissot, while never secure in title, camped persistently on the land, and always claimed everything. Every time

iory folks

laid before that govern

ment their claim of proprietorship. It was always disputed for uncertainty; but finally, in an unguarded moment, the Legislature of the Province of Canada, in 1854, admitted that there was such a thing as the Mingan seigniory, and in 1892 the Privy Council of England adjudicated the limits of it to be from Cape Cormorant to

the river Goynish, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, and six miles deep from the coast. This right is now held by the Labrador Company, of Montreal, and it gives them absolute control of the fishing in the lower six miles of the sixteen rivers which cross the Mingan seigniory on their way to the gulf. The only ones which the Labrador Company consider worth watching, however, in a country where only the best fishing-waters are looked at, are the Mingan and the Romaine. In the other streams, either the salmon are barred by the falls, or they do not stop inside the six-mile limit, and above that the Province of Quebec holds control.

The courtesy of the Labrador Company had been extended to us to kill a few salmon at the first fall in the Mingan.

Here may be seen one of the most remarkable annual exhibitions of the rough course of true love to be found in all the world. The first fall on the Mingan is about three miles from the mouth. It is forty-six feet high, in three pitches about equal in height and with seething pools between. The spawning beds of the salmon are on broad, gravelly bars far up the river. They must surmount this fall once a year in order to reach them. We camped on a sandbar below the fall, and watched the struggle. The broad pool below the fall was so full of these royal fish, that their tails and dorsal fins could constantly be seen sticking out of the water. Every minute one or more fish would make a rush from the depths below, spring far into the air, every fibre quivering, and time after time fall back, only the most powerful and determined occasionally succeeding in passing the first pitch. Above that, every nook and crevice in the rocks where the salmon could obtain a resting-place, was crowded. Great monsters they were, weighing from twenty-five to forty pounds. How they ever made the second and third pitches I do not know, for there was not the good starting chance that they had in the deep hole below the first pitch.

Well, the boy took a ten-ounce troutrod, with a hundred yards of line on it,

and cast out among the fins and tails in the soap-suds below the fall. The canoe was ready, and in a few minutes the rod was nearly jerked from the youngster's hands. The men shoved him into the canoe and paddled for dear life after the running fish, which had impulsively started for the open sea. You may suppose that the salmon broke loose; that he smashed the tackle; that he overturned the canoe. But he did not. Those guides knew their business, and so did the boy. The fish towed the canoe two miles down stream, and one hour and seventeen minutes after the trouble began, Braithwaite grabbed the salmon with the gaff-hook and threw him up on a sand-bar.

The next day we went up the river. Twelve miles from the falls, and after making six or seven smaller ascents, we reached a place where the stream came through a deep gorge. Here, again, we pitched our tent. On the morrow we climbed the mountain, and looked down into the cañon, far below, filled with great rocks, riven from the precipice by the frost. In the crevices beneath our feet lay the unmelted ice of last winter, or of no one knows how many winters, untouched by the August sun. There was a general air of ruin about those cracks, and we could not help wondering if the next rock to fall

Climbing the highest peak in sight, the country beyond stretched away for miles beneath our gaze. Above the chasm the river spread out into lake-like expansions, filled with green islands. Far to the north rose the next low range of the mountains, and through a distant notch the thread of the shining river was lost to view. The low clay bottoms were covered with a thick growth of small evergreens, while the highest rocks, in their interstices, sheltered the ground hemlock and many other forms of verdure. As far as we could see, the world was gray and green; and, though the animals were noticeably less abundant than in Maine or New Brunswick, yet we knew that the glimmering river was full of vigorous life, and that the quiet fresh-water seas beyond the hills in every direction were the homes of myriads of beautiful creatures that knew not the fear of hook

In a little depression we found the skeleton-like lodge poles where, earlier in the season, some family of Montagnais had lived while on a spring bear-hunt. Away to the north, in the country "beyond the Height of Land," as the Hudson Bay people call it, we saw, in imagination, the bands of caribou, gray-necked and patriarchal, which are the standard winter food of these Indians.

I do not know how other men would feel on the top of that mountain, looking over into the depths of the Labrador wilderness; but to me that day all its voices sang a siren's song, and the myriad faces of the hills and lakes smiled a glad welcome. People are accustomed to think of that vast and far-off wild as a deathlike, forbidding place. It is not so. winter, cold and severe, no doubt; in summer it is God's own land of beauty. But we could not tarry, and in a few days we left the fish in peace, and returned down the river to Mingan.

In

The Hudson Bay people tell me that a Montagnais family will often bring down, ás a season's catch, a thousand dollars worth of furs. Sometimes, if the wandering caribou shift their winter feedinggrounds, the Indians are in danger of starvation; but if things go as they should the natives do very well. Each spring they come in their canoes down the river

VOL. XXII.-35

always a summer colony of them, many have permanent cabins. Fully a score of those who summer there own trim little sail-boats of American make, for which they pay one hundred dollars apiece. They trade their furs for what they need or fancy, and no one sells better supplies than the Hudson Bay Company. During the summer the Indians visit each other, do up their religious ceremonies for the year they are all good Catholics-and build new canoes for the return trip. It is very difficult to procure good birch-bark on the North Shore, and of late years the Hudson Bay Company have been furnished a fine grade of canvas for the outer covering of canoes. It was very interesting to see the splendid, workman-like manner in which the canoe builders did their work. Their canoes made our Malicete birch-bark affairs seem ill-shapen and clumsy by comparison.

When we returned to Mingan we found the graceful yacht of the Jesuit missionary in the harbor. This devoted man and fine sailor had come from a more distant point down the coast, and there was great activity among the Indians. Down by the shore a new canoe, white as snow, was raised on a little platform. The missionary came out from one of the tents, in the vestments of his sacred office, stood before the assembled Indians, held his hands aloft, and chanted the service of blessing the canoe, in a fine, sonorous voice that could be heard at least half a mile. The holy water was sprinkled, and then the solemnity of the occasion was a little marred by the Indians producing their guns, bedecked with ribbons, and firing a scattering round of shots as a finale.

It was at Mingan, too, that we saw a little more of the vicissitudes which beset the dauntless pioneers of the Church. It was about time for a pastoral visit from Father Bouchard, the spiritual shepherd of the fishermen. While we were in the harbor a man appeared on the nearest island and shouted loudly for help. Being rescued, he was found to be Father Bouchard, wet and miserable. While he had slept, the man accompanying him had run his boat aground near one of the islands, the night before. The good Father, who had nothing to eat, waited for high tide to float him off; but the hope was vain.