[woop] LAURENCIANA 33 
of desire, except as a game preserve in the interior? From the sea it 
is one long, low, bleak weariness of hard flat rock and starveling veget- 
ation. The woods look like senile wrinkles on the face of the land. 
They are stunted, gnarled and distorted by their convulsive struggles 
to keep a foothold against the relentless wind. They have to interlock 
their limbs to do so successfully, and this to such an extent that you 
may walk over their densely matted tops. 
To the south lies a stretch of the Gaspé cliffs, longer than Anticosti, 
sterner than Labrador, and higher than the canyon of the Saguenay. 
The peninsula of Gaspé, with its solid backbone of the Shickshocks 
rising four thousand feet above ground, is like the odd half of a range 
on the Atlantic Labrador, broken off lengthwise and sheer, and then 
set into the softer South, with its sheer side turned towards the St. 
Lawrence. For a hundred and thirty-seven miles there is not a sign 
of an inlet on that iron coast. There are a few tiny rills spurting through 
narrow clefts, and with perhaps a fishing hut or two beside their mouths. 
But there is no landing-place for anything larger than an open boat, 
though the deep sea flows against the very precipice, so that you might 
lay whole fleets alongside. No wonder seamen give it a wide berth! 
The rocks are sharpened to fangs where wind and water meet ; and 
once they flesh their teeth in you ——! 
Halfway up from Anticosti is Pointe de Monts, on the north shore, 
where the Estuary narrows very suddenly, the mountains on the Gaspé 
side diminish and recede, and the curious double-topped hill called 
the Paps of Matane serves to show that the bank of soundings and 
line of settlements are beginning. The rest of the south shore has now 
softened into gentler outlines, forested on top, cultivated below, and 
humanized by a succession of white little villages gathered round their 
guardian churches: flocking houses and a shepherding church. At 
Green Island we are opposite the Saguenay, where the Estuary ends 
and the River begins. 
III. From main to main, from the mouth of the Saguenay to 
Cacouna Island, is only eighteen miles across: and the hitherto wide, 
clear and single deep-sea channel suddenly becomes comparatively 
narrow, obstructed, double and shallow. There are the Saguenay 
headlands and reefs on the north, Red Island with its big and dangerous 
two-pronged bank in mid-stream, and Green Island with its own 
terrific triangular death-trap on the south. The Saguenay dashes 
against and over and round the reef that partly bars its mouth. Red 
Island Bank stands straight in the way of the flood of the St. Lawrence, 
which comes up, unobstructed the whole way and two hundred fathoms 
deep; till it reaches these sudden narrows. And Green Island Reef 
is thrust out into the centre of swirling currents that change so much 
Sec. LL 1010.23; 
