FISHERIES OF THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC 37 



Bonaventure Island. The brutal destruction of this Perce 

 mission, in 1690, is related further on. 



FATHER CHRESTIEN LE CLERCQ. 



Following the two first missionaries to Perce, there came 

 two years later, namely in 1675, Father Chrestien le Clercq, 

 to minister to the Indian tribes of the Gaspe coast. After 

 twelve years' labor in the Indian settlements from Gaspe to 

 Miramichi, he published, on his return to France, a descrip- 

 tion of Gaspesia and its inhabitants 1 which is of entrancing 

 interest, and in which he speaks of the importance of the 

 Gaspe cod fishery, for which four or five hundred French 

 fishermen visited Perce every season, in his time, and states 

 that in the Baie des Chaleurs are found "prodigious quanti- 

 ties of all kinds of fish; cod, salmon, herring, trout, bass, 

 mackerel, flounders, shad, sturgeon, truckers, pikes, pondfish, 

 eels, squid, pickerel, oysters, smelt, skate, whitefish. In a 

 word, one can say that the hunting and fishing there are pro- 

 fuse, and that one can find, without much diificultv. every- 

 thing necessary for life." 



Le Clercq also refers to the tomcod, and relates that tho 

 Micmac Indians caught the little fish on lines through holes 

 cut in the ice just as we do now in the St. Lawrence. The 

 Micmac name for the tomcod was ponamon, according to 

 ^e Clercq, which gave its name to Bonodemeguiche (Decem 

 ber) the month in which the tomcod ascends the rivers. 



In 1765 we find a third Monsieur Denys "very well 

 established, "to use the words of Father Le Clercq, "upon 

 the border of a basin commonly called La Petite Riviere" 



i Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspesie Par le Pere Chrestien 



le Clercq. Paris, M.D.C. XCI. 



The Champlain Society published in 1910, a new edition of this 

 work with English translation and notes, edited by Dr. William 

 F. Ganong. 



Le Clercq was also the author of a very valuable and now rare 

 work entitled Premier Etablissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle 

 France, from which is taken the map on the following page, show- 

 ing what was known of New France in 1691. 



