THE PRINCESS AND THE SALMON. 69 



i 



now, to recount an incident of ambidextrous prowess wherein no less a personage 

 than an estimable daughter of Queen Victoria of England took a hand, maintaining 

 an obstinate contest for two mortal hours with a 28-pound salmon which had the 

 temerity to enter the lists with her royal highness. This happened years 

 ago, before the era of clubs and cottages, while the wilderness was still a solitude 

 and few champagne bottles glistened on the margin of the stream. Only a few 

 Canadian officials who had learned the superlative quality of the fishing had acquired 

 some privileges on the river, and one of them, Mr. Brydges, of the Grand Trunk 

 Railway, had built himself a house boat christened "Great Caesar's Ghost," which 

 teams of horses were wont to haul to advantageous stands up the main river or into 

 the Upsalquitch or Patapedia and even to the Quatawatatamkagearick, sixty miles 

 above. On the occasion in mind this novel conveyance was appropriated by the 

 Marquis of Lome, then governor general of Canada, and. the vice-regal party, with 

 the princess Louise pre-eminent. It was fitted up with dining-room, cabin, prome- 

 nade deck, berths, kitchen, and every domestic convenience, and was regarded as 

 more desirable than a short camp, because it could be shifted, and when in mid- 

 stream was comparatively exempt from mosquitoes and midgets. 



Returning to her royal highness, it comes in my way to mention that I was 

 stopping at that famous old hostelry of line officers and anglers at Quebec, the St. 

 Louis hotel, when I received one morning the following mandatory note : 



MONDAY. Mr. Hallock: The Marquis of Lome will be at my office in a few 

 minutes. If you wish to see him. come down at once. 



J. U GREGORY. 



Mr. Gregory was naval agent at the port. Obedient to the behest, I mounted 

 a caleche at once and rattled down the hillside through the old Prescott gate to the 

 lower town and along the one thoroughfare under the cliff almost tc the very base 

 of Cape Diamond, where so many people were killed by a landslip not many years 

 ago, though, as luck would have it, the naval office escaped. Presently I was ushered 

 aboard the government steamer Druid, which lay at the admiralty wharf, and pre- 

 sented without ceremony to Major De Winton, Lome's aide de camp, who .has since 

 received signal promotion in India, and by him to the marquis. 



HOW THE PRINCESS APPEARED. 



While we were all engaged in discussing salmon rivers and the most killing 

 flies in an informal sort of way, the princess came forward to the quarter rail 

 where we were standing and was gracious enough to interest herself in the con- 

 versation and to inquire about the prospects of the trip to the Restigouche, whither 

 we were all bound. She looked severely plain and respectable in a dusky alpaca 

 dress and seaside hat. 



After an uneventful interval she mentioned incidentally that she was covering 

 a lounge in the cabin, and wouldn't I step down the companionway and inspect her 

 handiwork? Without claiming to be a connoisseur in such things, I put on my best 

 possible face and expressed myself pleased with what I saw ; and, indeed, everything 

 in the apartment was very charming and domestic, with a quiet half-tone about it 

 which was altogether too soothing and assuring to a republican citizen outside the 

 pale of the court. I afterward begged a piece of the chintz covering as a memento 

 of the interview and contributed a couple of salmon flies to the vice-regal outfit. 



Then, the interview being formally concluded, I returned to the deck and backed 

 circumspectly down the gangway to the quay, with pulse in equipoise, and received 

 the congratulations of my official friends. Subsequently, we all duly arrived at the 



