250 THE HALCYON IN CANADA. 



each. Little girls came aboard or lingered about the 

 landing with cornucopias of birch-bark filled with red 

 raspberries ; five cents for about half a pint was the 

 usual price. The village of St. Alphonse, where the 

 steamer tarries, is a cluster of small humble dwellings 

 dominated, like all Canadian villages, by an immense 

 church. Usually the church will hold all the houses 

 in the village ; pile them all up and they would 

 hardly equal it in size ; it is the one conspicuous ob- 

 ject, and is seen afar; and on the various lines of 

 travel one sees many more priests than laymen. 

 They appear to be about the only class that stir about 

 and have a good time. Many of the houses were cov- 

 ered with birch bark the canoe birch held to its 

 place by perpendicular strips of board or split poles. 



A man with a horse and a buck-board persuaded 

 us to give him twenty-five cents each to take us two 

 miles up the St. Alphonse River to see the salmon 

 jump. There is a high saw-mill dam there which 

 every salmon in his upward journey tries his hand at 

 leaping. A race-way has been constructed around 

 the dam for their benefit, which it seems they do not 

 use till they have repeatedly tried to scale the dam. 

 The day before our visit three dead fish were found 

 in the pool below, killed by too much jumping. 

 Those we saw had the jump about all taken out of 

 them ; several did not get more than half their length 

 out of the water, and occasionally only an impotent 

 nose would protude from the foam. One fish made 

 a leap of three or four feet and landed on an apron 



