Sea - Trout Fishing. 



515 



EN ROUTE. 



smoke — the homely shrine for the simple faith of a poor and kindly 

 race. The hotel is everything that our sea-side caravansaries are 

 not, — small, neat, quiet, with the host's hand for every wayfarer 

 instead of being against him. Its neighborhood to the Saguenay 

 attracts always a group of salmon -fishers, ready, for the stranger's 

 benefit, with courtesy, information, and news from the streams. 

 Everything, indeed, about the settlement is salmonoid. A short walk 

 along the sands leads to a cluster of habitans houses in a corner 

 of the bay. Here, if the angler has taken due care for his arrange- 

 ments in former years, his guides and skipper welcome him, and his 

 impedimenta for the month's work are gathered. David, Gedeon, 

 Edouard, Pierre Jacques, Fabian, with a dozen children, French and 

 Indian mixture, meet him with hearty greeting. Poor Cyrille is 

 missing. No paddle was more deft than his, no shot for a seal surer. 

 Three years ago, in the St. John's, a treacherous whirlpool, boiling 

 up at the foot of a rapid, wrenched the canoe out of his grip and 

 sucked him with it to the bottom. The lot of these habitant is mis- 

 erably hard and poor. The stony soil grudges a little grass or a 

 handful of oats and potatoes. They make the rivers their farm, 



