THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF PERCE. 43 



breeding-places of the gannets the Bird Rocks of the Magda- 

 len Island group and Bonaventure Island near the Isle Perce 

 off the north shore of the Baie des Chaleurs. " Warm Bay " it 

 means, but we may judge the warmth of the region when the 

 first of June sees the stunted little cattle dragging the wooden 

 ploughs through ground hardly thawed as yet, while snow- 

 drifts still lie in the fields. It is a bleak and sterile land, 

 pinched with cold, and chilled with vapor steaming up from 

 the melting icebergs that drift past in summer. 



But sometimes a clear morning of midsummer comes to glad- 

 den the poor fishermen of the coast. The sea is as blue as the 

 sky, and as calm too ; the rough rocks and stunted trees bask 

 in sunshine, and, a clear note of color in a scene usually too 

 gloomy, shines out the- red mass of Perce Rock. 



Nearly three hundred feet high, steep from the sea, springs 

 the great Arch Rock, inaccessible except to the birds that 

 cover it. A thousand feet long, and nearly a third as wide, its 

 broad and nearly level top harbors myriads of birds that 

 scream and fish about. They nest there by the acre, black for 

 the cormorants and white for the sea-gulls, sitting in colonies 

 as close as they can huddle ; and a mile off is Bonaventure, 

 whose whiteness is the snowy backs of gannets that breed here 

 by themselves. 



The great Arch Rock, or Pierced Rock, in literal translation, 

 gets its name from a lofty arch like a great doorway worn 

 through it near one end an open door, as it were, through 

 which boats may pass,' and we may see the blue water beyond. 

 Perse Rock it is called by the fishermen, who ignore the second 

 syllable in this as they do in the little town of Perce (or Perse) 

 which you can find on your maps. Imagine the low rude huts 

 of this hamlet strewn about with nets, spars, lobster traps, and 

 fishing-gear, and the little fleet of black-hulled, broad-bowed 



