GRAND ROMAINE AND OLD ROMAINE 



Perroquets on the west. We sailed by a long 

 stretch of sandy shore, backed here and there 

 with a strip of pale-green beachgrass on sandy 

 dunes. Back of that was the dark spruce for- 

 est. In places the sand-banks were cut away 

 in cliffs. The low range of mountains was so 

 distant at this point that we could see only 

 the highest peaks. It was a desolate shore, 

 harborless and unprotected, low and unin- 

 teresting. From the deck of our little schooner 

 it was every now and then entirely swallowed 

 up as we descended into the hollow of the waves. 

 Twenty-two miles from Natashquan we 

 passed Kegashka, a small hamlet of three or 

 four houses at the mouth of the river of that 

 name. Here is a good harbor "secure against 

 the thirty-two winds indicated on the com- 

 pass" according to the Abb6 Huard,^ but dif- 

 ficult to enter. It was to this place in 1854, 

 a year before the settlement of Natashquan, 

 that the first group of Acadians came from 

 the Magdalens. I do not admire their choice. 

 The principal man there now is Jim Forman, 

 salmon-fisher. 



1 Labrador et Anticosti, par TAbbfi V.-A. Huard, A.M. 

 (Montreal et Paris, 1897.) 



81 



