CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 
the ice a hundred and fifty miles up the Romaine 
River one winter, hunting and dragging stores 
on a sled for men who were measuring and 
charting that great stream. His clever pan- 
tomime made his patois more intelligible, and 
every now and then he would favour us with 
snatches of song. He was a merry fellow. The 
songs of Mathias were slower and more solemn, 
and I often wondered whether they were not 
some of the old songs brought by the Acadians 
from France in 1605. His family name is 
among the list of those expelled from the basin 
of Minas in 1755. 
Sunday, May 30th, was a cloudy, rainy day 
with a cold northeast wind, and, under reefed 
sails, we threaded the narrow passages among 
the islands in a manner that showed a wonderful 
knowledge of this region by our men. The charts 
we brought with us they never looked at, and 
indeed these charts showed but a small part of 
these islands and of the intricacies of the coast. 
Up Yellow Bay, a long, narrow land-locked pas- 
sage, we sailed with apparently no chance of 
escape, but suddenly we opened up what on 
the eastern coast would be called a “ tickle,”’ 
and through this we glided to the open sea. 
121 
