APPENDIX A LI 



forest and uninhabited, may become a bustling mining camp, bring- 

 ing in railroads and hordes of labourers from the south of Europe and 

 transforming a lovely wilderness into a fire-scarred and sordid human 

 anthill. The mixture of races and languages will then become much 

 more complicated than at present, and the charm of seclusion and 

 aloofness from the turmoil of modern civilization will presently depart 

 from southern Gaspé. 



People of the North of Gaspé 



On the north side of Gaspé, hemmed in between a foggy sea and 

 the scarcely penetrable mountains, live, perhaps, the most primitive 

 civilized people of North America. They are of quite mixed origin, 

 as shown by occasional families having bright red hair and blue eyes 

 and by names such as Macdonald, Robinson and Maloney, not to 

 speak of Langlois, but they speak almost entirely French and have 

 most completely the habitant's attitude toward life and the world. 

 Their French is archaic, with words and pronunciations very puzzling 

 to one who has studied only Parisian French. Their one road runs 

 close to the sea shore, usually on a marine terrace but sometimes on 

 the actual beach within reach of the waves; and their little settlements 

 scarcely stray from the road, thickening up at the mouth of every 

 creek and river and thinning out or ceasing altogether where the 

 mountains crowd too closely to the sea. The road begins bravely on 

 the West, where even automobiles raise clouds of dust upon it, but 

 becomes less and less navigable for wheeled vehicles until near Riviere 

 a la Martre and beyond it is a mere track on the beach, unusable at 

 high tide when the waves beat against the foot of the lofty cliffs. 



On this endless road, with villages strung upon it like beads, 

 only one-horse conveyances are seen. A team is never used. In each 

 village or hamlet there is a great church, like a hen brooding over 

 chickens, and on Sunday morning every family, even from the most 

 remote ends of the parish, is to be seen in the indispensable covered 

 carriage on the way to Mass or on the way from it. The most certain 

 method of encountering a man who is entirely elusive on week days 

 is to watch for him at the church door after Mass on Sunday. 



In spite of the severe climate and primitive conditions the people 

 live comfortably. One of my guides, for instance, had a little farm, 

 all but a few acres of which was very infertile, but which provided 

 hay and pasture for his horse and cows and a few sheep, one or two 

 of which were, as in most habitant flocks, black. The little dilapidated 

 barn sheltered them all in winter. A pig, of whose excessive fatness 



