14 
Forest and Stream 
Vol. LXXXII. 
April 4, 1914 
No. 
'o* 
APR 8 19 T 
Angling at San Souci 
Wherein the Author Shifts His Scene from California to the Atmosphere of the Tales of Drummond 
By Charles Frederick Holder, 
Author of "The Game Fishes of the World,” ‘‘Recreations of a Sportsman,” etc. 
T HE best laid plans of men or anglers are 
liable to change. It is a far cry from the 
summer slopes of the California coast 
range and the purple canons of the Santa Ynez 
or the upper reaches of the Yaqui to eastern 
Canada. But not long after my eyes had been 
regaled with the golden car¬ 
pet of the Santa Ynez and 
I had angled for brown 
trout in Mexico, I found 
myself riding north over 
the green fields and lands 
of the country about 
San Flore, a little hamlet in 
the Laurentian hills in the 
province of Quebec, with 
nothing but an occasional 
camp between us and Hud¬ 
son’s Bay. 
Perhaps you know the 
Abemiki country by having 
been there, or love it 
through the poems and tales 
of Drummond, as it was his 
land of the habitant by 
right of discovery. The 
little house on the hill must 
have been the home of 
“Poleon Dore,” and over 
there where the blue door 
has opened and a crowd of 
children fill the opening, 
there surely lived “Maxime 
Labelle”; and over the hills 
is St. Mathieu, where possi¬ 
bly “Bateese” came home. 
We had just arrived from Montreal, and Eu- 
bald Juneau, with traps of various kinds, had 
met Mons’ Weber, the lord of the manor of San 
Souci, at the train; and there was Eubald’s son 
and Philorum Juneau, his uncle, who was to be 
my guide, singing and talking, laughing, all but 
weeping in the joy of seeing “Monsieur Webaire” 
again who, I could see, was the Pere Bountiful 
of the region. “Oui, oui, the children were well, 
das fac’; wan? No, no, two; oui mon Dieu! 
Certain fine country for children. I have plenty 
children.” Eubald had twelve or thirteen, and 
these were the habitants who cared for our 
friend’s great estate in the winter, trapped and 
kept off the poachers. 
I never was more impressed with the joy of 
laughing. These people were always laughing, 
and delighted to see even those of us whom they 
had never seen before. They had a manner that 
was charming, ingenious. I noticed this particu¬ 
lar something in the air at the very start, and 
Building a Birch Bark Canoe. 
wondered what it was. I took to Phil-o-rum and 
Eubald Juneau and Ephram at the hand clasp, 
and later I found out what it was. 
The two older men were men with all the 
meaning you can put into it. Each had lived all 
his life in the wilderness and loved it and heroic 
things, things requiring red blood. Muscle, 
cleverness, friendship and faithfulness had be¬ 
come habitual. In a word, Phil-o-rum and Eu¬ 
bald were the kind of men you would have se¬ 
lected for a last chance in the forest when the 
food was low, for a desperate canoe trip down 
the rapids of the St. Maurice, or for any des¬ 
perate thing that required true men. I knew 
this when I grasped the hand of Eubald and 
Phil-o-rum, and the latter paddled for me when 
he was off duty for the next few weeks, as Phil- 
o-rum was in his country’s service as game in¬ 
spector, and a terror to evil doers. 
You must know Phil-o-rum, as he heads a 
poem in Dr. Drummond’s “The Habitant,” and 
tells the weird story of the 
return of the ghostly voy- 
ageurs, coureurs de bois, 
for the feast of the Jour 
de L’an: Phil-o-rum told 
me this himself, how the 
mysterious canoes came 
sailing through the air and 
every one who visits this 
region is assured of the 
truth of La Chasse Gallerie. 
Dr. Drummond took but 
one poetic license, he re¬ 
ferred to Phil-o-rum as 
old; and I doubt if he ever 
grows old. Certainly he is 
in his prime now, or he 
never could have carried 
my canoe up the mountains 
and through the brush up 
the steep trail to little Lac 
Grenier and others which 
seemed to hang in the air 
above Sans Souci. 
The greetings over, the 
trunks and rods from Cali¬ 
fornia were packed and we 
were off for San Souci, 
over the little winding road 
through fields of flowers. 
It is delightful to live in a country where you 
know everyone and where the face of everyone 
lights up when you go by, and I fancied our 
host and his habitants illuminated the country in 
just this way as they drove along in the old land 
of the Abemikis and into St. Flore, that had a 
charm of its own; not that it was in any way 
remarkable. I doubt if it would ever have taken 
the prize as an exhibit at a fair, though its babies 
would. 
It was too small; you had to be told when you 
reached it, and you never really knew when you 
were out of it and in St. Mathieu or Bonne Jour, 
as the little village was strung along the flower- 
grown road in a bewildering fashion. There were 
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