IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



may bring uncomfortable heat. The river 

 stabilizes the temperature in summer and 

 winter, but only along its shores. A dif- 

 ferent isothermal line runs a few miles in- 

 land, as vegetation rain and snowfall prove, 

 and the common experience of mee'ting art- 

 other climate in half an hour's drive. When 

 Pointe au Pic is chilly, Ste. Agnes may be 

 sweltering. Changes come very swiftly. 

 A breeze from the river, when the ther- 

 mometer is in the eighties, will send it 

 down faster than a degree a minute to 60'', 

 or below — once, as I remember, from 86° 

 to 46° in a quarter of an hour. 



Murray Bay is in truth the battle ground 

 of two types of weather, the Continental 

 and the Gulf; the season's character de- 

 pending upon which gains the mastery. 

 Speaking broadly, there are for the hnbi- 

 tanf but the two winds — the vent d'en haut 

 and the vent d'en has. The latter, the ill- 

 omened nord-est, covering the N. E. and 

 S. E. quadrants, brings rain, tempest, cold. 

 The former is, without fine distinction, 

 from any other quarter and means good 

 weather, present or to come. Clear gales 

 from the north-east are not quite unknown, 

 with a sharp salt tang, straight from the 

 arctic current and the ice; but generally 

 66 



