CANADIAN ENVIRONMENT OF THE OUANANICHE 125 



urous angler, with both leisure and means at his dis- 

 posal, undertook the overland journey from Chicou- 

 timi, at the head of steamboat navigation on the Sag- 

 uenay, to the then isolated Lake St. John. But it 

 was a long and tedious trip, occupying in the first 

 place a passage by steamer for twenty-four hours, and 

 then necessitating a cross-country journey of fifty to 

 sixty miles, and it is very small wonder that it was 

 not more often made, even with the belief then en- 

 tertained by many anglers and ichthyologists that it 

 conducted to the only waters in which one might 

 expect to find a ouananiche. 



The revolution which has taken place in angling 

 matters in northern Quebec during the last decade is 

 directly traceable to the construction of the Quebec 

 and Lake St. John Eailway. This road has not only 

 opened up to anglers the magnificent stretches of for- 

 est, lake, and stream through which it runs for one 

 hundred and ninety miles from the city of Quebec to 

 Lake St. John, and again for fifty miles from the 

 great lake to Chicoutimi, but has rendered accessible 

 to tourists and sportsmen that wonderland of the 

 North that terra incognita that stretches away from 

 Lake St. John towards and beyond mysterious Mis- 

 tassini. A trail three hundred miles long from Quebec 

 into these magnificent wilds is now as frequent an 

 occurrence as was one of thirty miles from the same 

 city little more than a decade ago; while camping 

 and exploring parties in quest of adventure and sport 

 have penetrated by portage and canoe to the great 

 'lake Mistassini, some two hundred and fifty miles dis- 

 tant from Lake St. John, going towards the north. 



