244 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



however, for of late years the little ragged urchins from 

 the Acadian settlement on the south shore have imbibed 

 a strong love of sport in addition to their hereditary 

 poaching propensities, and with a rough pole, a few 

 yards of coarse line, and a bait in appearance anything 

 but a salmon fly, they will hook some dozen or more 

 salmon in a day when they are running freely, of 

 course losing nearly every fish. 



Distant eight miles from Bathurst, and accessible by 

 a fair waggon road, are the Pabineau Falls, one of the 

 choicest fishing stations on the river. The scenery here 

 is most beautiful ; the forest has now claimed the banks, 

 and, as the stranger emerges from its shade, and stands 

 on the broad, smooth expanses of light grey and pink 

 rocks which slope from him towards the brink of the 

 stream, viewing its clear grass-green waters rolling in 

 such fierce undulations over long descents, and thun- 

 dering, enveloped in mist, through various contracted 

 passes into boiling pools, with congregated masses of 

 foam ever circling over their black depths, he becomes 

 impressed with the idea of irresistible power, and is 

 constrained to acknowledge that he stands in the pre- 

 sence of no ordinary stream, but of a mighty river. 



I have here stood by the margin of the water, where 

 hundreds of tons momentarily rushed past my feet in 

 a compact mass, and watched the bright gleam of the 

 salmon as they would dart up from below like arrows to 

 encounter the fall ; a slight pause as they near the head ; 

 another convulsive efibrt, and they are safely over ; but 

 many fall back, at present unequal for the contest, into 

 the dark pool. 



There are several well-built bark shanties on the rocks 



