CHAPTER XXXI 



THE CANADIAN LAKES AND STREAMS 



' For dere's no place lak our own place, din't care de far you're goin' 

 Dat's w'at de whole worl's sayin', w'enever dey come here, 

 'Cos we got de fines' contree, an' de beeges' reever flowin' 

 An' le bon Dieu sen' de sunshine nearly twelve mont' ev'ry year.' 



Dr. Dnmvmond. 



FEOM the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian line north, 

 there is what can be described as an angler's paradise, and 

 one can say this without being suspected of having contributed to 

 contumelious fiction. For many years I fished the beautiful Eiver 

 St. Lawrence, with its thousand islands, that becomes a sea before 

 it reaches the Atlantic, and which gives us the splendid fjord of the 

 Saguenay and countless rivers and streams, telling of sea trout, 

 salmon, black bass, muscallunge, ounaniche, wall-eyed pike, red 

 trout and many more. In troUing for muscallunge or bass on 

 the St. Lawrence, I was in, and out, and across the Canadian 

 line time and again, without knowing it. 



An adequate description of the charms of this region from 

 Clayton east to Tadousac, the region I know the best, would 

 require a volume in itself 5 but I wish to refer to one feature 

 rarely mentioned, owing to the fact that the scenic attractions 

 are pre-eminent. This is the remarkable health-giving quality 

 of the St. Lawrence and Canadian air. The spring of eternal 

 youth may have been in Florida in the time of De Soto ; but 

 it is in the Canadian woods and the Adirondacks now, and the 

 region from the Eiver north for several hundred miles is, with 

 its balmy air, to my mind at least, one of the great ' cures ' of the 

 world. I recommend it to worn out and weary anglers and busy 

 men. 

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