The Land of the WinaniJu 



monument to the Cure who led the set- 

 tlers of Lake St. John, and incidentally to 

 the fecundity of the first habitant of the 

 New France of Champlain. Dablon and 

 De Quen now stand side by side on the 

 railway-table, as those names did once in 

 the roll of the Societas Militans. And 

 how are the old trapper and to-day's man 

 of business confronted in Lac Gros Visons 

 and Skroder's Mills ! 



From the Riviere a Pierre to De Quen 

 is a stretch of more than one hundred 

 miles which, except for the railway, is an 

 unbroken wilderness. Occasionally the 

 train halts for a sportsman whose canoe 

 waits at the lake beside which we are 

 running. The valley of the wild river 

 Batiscan leads up to the head of Lac 

 Edouard, where we dine and are told tales 

 of wonderful trout-fishing to be had for 

 the asking, as the lake is leased by the 

 railway company. At the end of the 

 afternoon we arrived at a cross-road, which 

 at that unfinished state of the line was 

 " nowhere in particular," * but presented 

 the only feasible way of getting to the 

 highway which, skirting the lake, gives 



* The road has since been completed; and the region, with its 

 railway, its tiny boats on Lake St. John and adjacent waters, its 

 hotels and rush of summer visitors, is now about as sophisticated as 

 the Adirondack^. But the winanishe still survives. 



44 



