HOW I CAUGHT MY FIRST SALMON. 179 



jours; il n'y a pas de danger." Thus speaking he 

 would have renewed his conversation with me, had 

 my stoicism been quite equal to the occasion. 



However, the accident delayed us many hours, and 

 we had to pass the night on board our dilapidated 

 vessel, and it was broad daylight when we came in 

 sight of Quebec, the most picturesque town on the 

 Western continent. I need not dwell on the beauties 

 of Quebec. To many of your readers they are fami- 

 liar. To those who have not visited our great colony 

 I will only say : Imagine an old French town rising 

 with an almost startling abruptness on the left bank 

 of a broad deep stream, a stream such as America 

 alone can boast of. For miles along the banks of 

 the St Lawrence the traveller has seen nothing but 

 wooden shanties, standing amongst semi -cultivated 

 fields. When, too, as in my case, the eye has been 

 fatigued for months by the monotonous regularity of 

 American cities, resembling, with their rectangular 

 and equidistant streets, one of those children's puzzles 

 fitted in piece by piece, and stowed away safely at 

 night in a cardboard box, then, I say, the voyager, 

 coming suddenly on the glittering tin roofs and 

 narrow streets of Quebec, and hearing the patois of 

 its inhabitants, may be pardoned in supposing for a 

 moment that some merciful enchanter has spared him 

 the pangs of sea-sickness, and has conveyed him with 

 a stroke of the wand to one of those quaint old 

 Norman or Breton towns, whose picturesque squalor 



