BAIE DES CHALEURS. 157 



Grand River, a crooked but wide and deeply-flowing stream 

 and thence the journey to St. John is all down hill and 

 easy. The nasty little creeks that make this portage so in^ 

 tensely disagreeable are called the Waagan and Waagansis 

 respectively. Emigrants sometimes travel this route with a 

 pirogue, and attaching horses to the craft, pull through with 

 comparative ease. 



The journey down the Grand River, fourteen miles, is run 

 in about two hours, and brings us to the Acadian settlement 

 of Madawaska, on the St. John. A mile above its month it 

 is crossed by a bridge, over which passes the mail route from 

 Grand Falls to Riviere du Loup. Just at the bridge is the 

 house of one Violet, a hospitable Frenchman, who has enter- 

 tained many a sportsman, to say nothing of scores of lum- 

 bermen and emigrants, who never solicited assistance in 

 vain. The Royal Mail Route, a most excellent road, was the 

 regular winter route of travel between the Lower Provinces 

 and Quebec until the completion of the railway between 

 St. John and Bangor last^ear. During the late war it was 

 much used by the Confederates, who passed from Canada to 

 Halifax, and thence by sea through the blockade into the 

 seceded States. It runs through the Madawaska settlement 

 for twenty miles, skirting the St. John River, and then turns 

 off and follows the valley of the Madawaska River to Temis- 

 couata Lake. Upon the opposite side of the St. John is the 

 State of Maine. The entire Madawaska settlement extends 

 sixty miles, and the population is about 6,000. One-half are 

 English and the other half Yankees ; yet all are Frenchmen, 

 and speak no English ! And the little fenced-off farms, of 

 uniform frontage but running back indefinitely, the hay- 

 ricks and well-tilled fields, the sleek cattle, the clumsy wains 

 and rude cabriolets, the houses of squared logs, painted in 

 Indian red, with doors of gaudy -colors, the quaint little 

 chapels and the windmills, are all of Normandy. Then the 

 interior of each house the large, open, uncarpeted rooms, 



