108 TRAVELS IN THE EIGHTIES. 



actually saw none. Mr. Joseph Badford, an English- 

 man, who superintends the Government Artificial Sal- 

 mon Hatching Establishment at Tadousac, and has a 

 thorough knowledge of the habits of fish in the river, 

 informed me that in July and August the caplin 

 (which I believe to be a kind of smelt) ascend the 

 river, coasting along the precipitous shores, and that 

 the sea and hybrid trout follow them. These latter 

 will then, but not till then, take the fly; but, 

 curiously enough, only the small trout will do so. 

 The larger ones must still be fished for with the sand- 

 eel (elanqori). These sand-eels are caught in miniature 

 staked brushwood weirs on the sand as the tide 

 retires. 



Some distance out in the gulf a grampus was blow- 

 ing and snorting, and attracting by the process a 

 crowd of spectators, for even in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence a grampus is not seen every day. At the same 

 time what had seemed to me ever since my arrival at 

 Quebec a most mysterious occurrence was satisfactorily 

 explained. I allude to the appearance of apparently 

 small animated icebergs. Imagine a lump of white 

 opaque glacier ice rising slowly partly above the 

 surface of the sea, and quietly sinking out of sight 

 again, and you have a picture of that curious fish, the 

 snow-white porpoise. 



