THE SALMON FISHER. 69 



ite ledge sloped gently, and at Chane's there was an 

 inky depth in a rocky cliff said to be fathomless to 

 untold lengths of cedar-root line, and tenanted, the 

 Indians said, by a big salmon, "more long as one 

 canoe." Once, subsequently, I went in company 

 with Captain Barnard, of H. M. S. " Barracouta," a 

 practice ship then off the coast, whose guns had 

 already battered the romance out of all the fantastic 

 promontories from Escuminac to Tracadigash ; and 

 one delectable summer I made the acquaintance of 

 " Johnny " Mowatt, the river guardian, whose now 

 grown-up sons fill prominent official positions on the 

 Canadian Fisheries Commission in British Columbia. 

 Occasionally, as the years passed, a stray rod 

 would find its way to the river from some distant 

 region, and Aleck Shewan, the pedagogue, got into 

 the habit of coming down every season from Mon- 

 treal, but there were no accommodations for kid 

 glove tourists along those tangled banks above Dan 

 Eraser's quiet hostelry, where he and " Black Aleck," 

 of blessed memory, did the gustatory honors. The 

 river for the most part ran through a wilderness, 

 crossed only by the moose path or the Indian trail. 



