Sea -Trout Fishing. 519 



this point she is moored and the canoes then unlashed, loaded with 

 the tents and a day's rations, and headed against the current for a 

 six miles tug to the lower camp. 



With a sweep around the first point hiding the chaloupe, you take 

 possession of the wilderness, or rather the wilderness of you. The 

 sense of loneliness descends suddenly, oppressively, yet with a charm. 

 Stretched along the bottom of the canoe, reclining against cushions 

 of well-stuffed canvas sacks, with pipe alight, the quiet movement, 

 the profound stillness, the lifeless aspect of nature, lull you into 

 dreamy delight. The river is not picturesque, in the usual sense — 

 its beauty is a stern beauty of its own. For some distance the rocks 

 stretch along the bank, alternating with precipitous masses of clay, 

 and sinking gradually into ranges of bowlders, then spreading out 

 in pebbly beaches, where the first murmur of the rapids touches the 

 ear from a distance. The hills are clothed with tall spruces, here 

 descending rank on rank to the edge, there shattered and piled 

 across gaps in the clay ramparts. Birches, some of noble height, 

 are intermixed, and at the rim stout alders thrust their snaky 

 branches in. At some points the shore falls level, sweeping back 

 for a tract covered with bushes and such forest trees as the climate 

 spares. But the pervading effect is somber, the prevailing color 

 gloomy. Grays of the rocks, bluish browns of the clay, and the 

 mournful hue of the spruce shadow the water, which struggles in 

 vain with its crisp breaks of white foam to brighten their reflections. 

 Under the trees the color of the stream is dull olive, paling into 

 hrownish-yellow in the open reaches, but with no tone of the brandy 

 tint that often stains waters flowing from spruce forests. While the 

 tide holds, the rapids are drowned, but a mile or two up they begin 

 to show their teeth and sound their dash. Shifting the paddle for 

 the setting-pole, we work through the first of these, and glide into 

 a still stretch of deep water covering great scattered rocks. In such 

 pools salmon lie on their way up, but the trout prefer smaller and 

 less smooth ones. From the break of the current among the surface 

 rocks it can easily be seen what the height of the water in the river 

 is, — whether the stream is so shrunken as to need tediously careful 

 treatment, or so swollen that the turbid wave cheats both fish and 

 fisher, or at that happy, just medium in which the latter will go most 

 safely and the former most in danger. The guide slackens his stroke 



