IN THE 
MASTIGOUCHE, COUNTRY. 
BY GC. He *GERES 
Late on an August night we reached 
the little town of St. Gabriel de Bran- 
don, theend of the Joliette branch of the 
Canadian Pacific railroad, about eight 
miles northof Montreal. It was an ex- 
clusively French town, in an exclusively 
French country, and in the six carloads 
of people on our train out, we did not 
hear one word of English except from 
the conductor. We spent the night at 
a French hotel, and started early witha 
French driver of a French buckboard 
for the lakes at the head of the Masti- 
gouche river, sixteen miles northwards. 
The lakes were in the Laurentian moun- 
tains, which we saw in the northern 
sky. 
We rode twelve miles through fertile 
farms, and prodigiously fertile families, 
where ten, twelve and more children 
were the rule. The government gives 
160 acres of land to every head of a 
family raising twelve children, and it 
seemed a wild race to see which should 
score first, for the children seemed to 
be as near of an age as nature lets one 
mother make them. When man and 
nature contend for mastery, fecundity is 
everywhere the rule, and this was anew 
country, where man is just wresting 
from nature a soil free of trees and 
swamps. 
Hay, oats, potatoes and horses were 
the only crops; a meagre agriculture, 
with absolutely no shops or manufac- 
tures, save a rare sawmill and a black- 
smith shop at the village. All in the 
same industry. All with crops to sell, 
and no one to buy. Hay six dollars a 
ton, and noone wanting it. Wages one 
dollar a day, and every one doing his 
own work. Wants mostly filled by bar- 
ter, because there is no cash to exchange 
commodities. In short, the condition 
Of every country on the face of the 
earth which depends on others for its 
manufactured goods, for which it ex- 
changes natural products. 
As we proceeded the hills grew high- 
er, the river bottoms were pinched be- 
tween jutting hills, the water tumbled 
over. rocks, the farms vanished alto- 
gether, and soon the shade of pines and 
spruces fell over the rocky way—we 
were in the great north woods, with 
man behind and nature ahead to the 
pole. The black river was close beside, 
issuing from anunknowncountry. The 
pools, deep and black, bore frequent 
rising trout, which whetted an appetite 
born of four hundred miles of travel and 
three years of waiting. 
We toiled up the mountains; we rested 
at mossy springs; we gazed at giant 
spruces, tall and straight ; we wondered 
at mighty black birches and marveled 
that a horse could play goat over the 
great rocks in the road and at the same 
time drag aheavy buckboard. A mighty 
ascent scaled, we tumbled down the 
northern side, and, with a rattle and 
bang and a twist in the road, we came 
to Copeland’s, our goal. 
Did you ever hear of Copeland’s ? 
Well, other great men have, for I saw on 
its register names of well-known men 
from nearly all the great cities of the 
United States, for it is mostly Ameri- 
cans who go there. 
No inconsequential man ever put such 
an establishment in the north woods. 
Here, amid primeval forests—itself the 
last habitation northwards—with trout 
in their natural supply right off the door- 
