102 IN THE HAUNTS OF 



glacial period ; as it gradually receded following back, returning 

 to breed as near as possible to the old location at the edge of the 

 glaciers. 



One of their favourite halting places is an immense shallow 

 bay on the coast of Northern New Brunswick. More exactly 

 speaking, it is a tranquil lagoon, into which empties an ample 

 river noted for its sea-trout. It is changed by the ebb of the tide 

 into a veritable prairie of bronze sea-grasses intersected by a wind- 

 ing creek through which the tide rushes like a rapid river. A 

 narrow strip of sand, with undulating sandhills in the form of 

 snowdrifts, separates its quiet waters from the tumbling surf of 

 the Atlantic, and forms a shining shield to fend off the shock of 

 the white ocean breakers racing to its strand. 



Both bay and river bear one of those picturesque Indian names 

 that, lingering on many a river, mountain, and headland, will 

 perpetrate* the memory of the red man long after his feeble race 

 has melted away. 



These simple children of nature thus recognized the fact that 

 both are inseparable, that a description of the bay of necessity 

 includes the river. For does not the river lure hither the black 

 bass, the sea-trout, the aristocratic salmon the support of the 

 fishermen ? and, best of all, swarming schools of smelts, which 

 in winter are pulled up through cuttings in the ice, one draught 

 of. the net sometimes capturing a ton of these bright, silvery, 

 slippery, quivering little fishes, pulled up as from some mysterious 

 subterranean retreat ? Does not the brackish element made by 

 the ' sea-change ' of its waters nourish acres of luxuriant sea 

 grasses which draw hither thousands of geese and brant ? 



Hence it should be described how many a mile behind the 

 long stretch of evergreen trees, which form the background to 

 the few fishermen's huts dotting the white beach, it issues from the 

 distant cloud-like outline of blue hills, the nursery of several 

 noble streams ; how it comes from the homes of the beaver, moose 

 and caribou ; through a region of mossy silver birches, elms, and 

 sugar maples ; passes the base of many a bleak, bear-haunted 

 mountain ; sometimes placidly, gently, falls for miles like a mirror 

 set sloping on Nature's breast ; again roars hoarsely through gorges 

 cleft in ancient Laurentian rocks ; plunges with delirious bound 

 over rock precipices into dark, deep pools, kissed by drooping 

 branches, haunted by monstrous greedy trout ; how its banks echo 

 to the scream of the golden eagle and the fishhawk, the rattle of 

 the kingfisher, the carpenter work of the big scarlet-headed 

 woodpecker performed on giant hollow red pines, while ov i iN 



