228 A BIRCH-BARK CANOE TRIP 



Still later in the evening shouts were heard from some French 

 half-breeds, who always make a noise as they travel, and are there- 

 fore poor guides, if any hunting is aimed at. 



Two Boston gentlemen one of whom, an old college chum, 

 I had last met quite as unexpectedly on Fleet Street, an antithesis 

 as direct as conceivable to this quiet scene of sylvan beauty- 

 were making a canoe voyage up the Nepisiquit, intending to 

 portage to the Tobique River, and descend by that stream to the 

 St. John. After a pleasant exchange of hospitalities they pushed 

 on to the pools of the Upper River, haunted by the giant trout ; 

 while I concluded to remain here to do another day's salmon fishing 

 below the falls, and to enjoy the quiet repose of the succeeding 

 Sunday in this romantic spot, from the allurements of which I 

 found it d mcult to tear myself away. 



It is difficult to decide which view of the falls is most impressive, 

 that from the canoe below, looking upward at the seething torrent 

 in the act of taking the delirious bound, or that from the cliff above, 

 where one looks down upon the white and tortured waters, writhing 

 between the rocky barriers after they have made the fearful leap. 

 On the cliff above are carved the names of many, who, like us, have 

 with awe bent over the giddy summit, and looked down upon the 

 raging abyss immediately beneath. Among them we recognize 

 the names of officers in Her Majesty's service, now, perhaps, in 

 sun-scorched India or Egypt, who, doubtless, when oppressed with 

 the glare of eastern skies, sometimes think tenderly and affection- 

 ately of such spots as these, in our happier climes. 



Leaning over the edge of the protruding rock, I counted sixty 

 salmon fanning the sands of the pool below, but I was told th.it 

 many years back it was a common thing to count upward of two 

 hundred in this pool. After vainly essaying to scale the falls. 

 they slink back here to show their disappointment by indulging 

 in a lazy sulk. In vain for them exist in the upper river above 

 the falls most lovely pools and boiling rapids which their restless 

 intrepid spirits would have delighted to achieve. They have 

 come only some twenty miles from the river's mouth. Could not 

 a small grant of Government money be made to build a fish ladder 

 that would enable the fish to surmount this great natural obstacle 

 and open to them the remaining sixty-five miles of river, and the 

 three lakes, and furnish a journey from the sea worthy the ambition 

 of the most aspiring salmon ? 



Of course, so famous a pool is not without its salmon myths 

 and traditions. The writer has been told, on excellent authontv. 

 how one forty-five pounder committed suicide by leaping into 

 the canoe, how another rushed down stream with a line of one! 



