SEA TROUT. 51 



spawning beds. There is the stony pool for the salmon, 

 the pebbly one for the trout, and never do the two 

 spawn, and rarely even live, in the same. The pool 

 where the salmon lie is deep and rapid, with a bottom 

 composed of dark limestones averaging about the size of 

 a bantam's egg. While the trout hide in a sluggish pool, 

 and often one worn away by the water and hollowed 

 from a clay bank. It is a tradition, but one by no means 

 well substantiated, that trout never eat young salmon, 

 nor salmon young trout. As trout are more fond of their 

 own species than almost any other delicacy, it is not 

 probable they would be fastidious about swallowing a 

 nice, juicy little salmon. 



The country through which these streams run is very 

 peculiar : rough hills of granite rise almost perpendicu- 

 larly from the edge of the water, many hundred and 

 sometimes many thousand feet. Their sides are bare 

 and bleak, and if adorned at all with verdure, it is with 

 a stunted pine and spruce, that only half hides the white 

 rock beneath. The streams wind in tortuous course 

 among the crags, and slowly gain a high elevation. 

 These bare, unprofitable hills extend back from the north 

 shore of the St. Lawrence as far as the foot of man has 

 penetrated, and only at long intervals by the shore of 

 some of the larger rivers, where forty centuries of storms 

 have worn away and washed the detritus from the moun- 

 tain into some little bay, have half civilized beings been 

 enabled to build rough cabins and glean a scanty sub- 

 sistence. Thus are these waters, the home and nursery 

 of the trout and salmon, protected forever by nature 

 against the pervading destructiveness of man. Judicious 



