434 
FOREST AND STREAM 
but two short rows of houses on either side of 
the road to St. Flor, and out of every door and 
window children looked and laughed as we rode 
by. They filled the windows, doors and passage¬ 
ways, and waved Eubald a welcome as he rolled 
by with the anglers from the States. And how 
delightful were these little houses of the French 
Canadians! Some had red doors, some blue, and 
one in which we stopped to avoid a thunder 
storm was so immaculate with its scoured floors, 
its pictures of the Pope and the cathedrals, that 
it was a mortal sin for a mere angler in big 
bottes sauvage to cross the threshold. 
Think what a delight it would be if you knew 
everyone in New York or Boston, and as you 
went by everyone smiled and said something 
pleasant about you. A train of smiles and laugh¬ 
ter and friendly words followed Eubald through 
San Flor. Every child knew him and had he 
not eight or ten children of his own? Every girl 
might have loved him. Perhaps they did, anyway. 
So San Flor made a great impression on us as 
a very friendly town, though there was not a 
man, woman or child who could speak English. 
Through San Flor we rolled, out into the country 
again, between gorgeous, rippling fields of grain, 
and all about lay tne rolling hills which merge-J 
into the Laurentian mountains, whose bases were 
lined with hundreds of lakes, and whose crests 
were covered with the primeval forests of 
Canada. 
The further we went into the Laurentian Hills 
the more beautiful the land became. The con¬ 
trast between the little valleys and gardens, the 
broad grain fields, the old-fashioned flowers in 
the gardens—old, so very old. New-fangled no¬ 
tions had not disturbed the peace of these little 
valleys. We were shown a shiny bit of water, the 
first of the lakes, Lac Perchaud, that fed the St. 
Maurice; then the home of Eubald and a rush 
of children, then through the gates and down 
through a field of exquisite daisies, and up a long 
reach to San Souci, on the very edge of the Lau¬ 
rentian forest and Lac Perchaud. 
The Lord of the Manor chose to call it a 
“camp,” but it was the biggest and finest log 
house I had ever seen, a small hotel in size, and 
we did not have to walk many times around the 
broad piazza to make a mile. It was all front. 
To the east you looked into the deep and mys¬ 
terious forest, out of which might come occa¬ 
sional bears to parade around, or a moose to fol¬ 
low down to the lake—a forest of radiant maples, 
merging into wilder trees. To the south the 
green lawn, adapted to the rolling ground, led 
you to the valleys, which reached away to the St. 
Lawrence country, and to the north you gazed 
through a forest of silvery birches down into the 
clear waters of Lac Perchaud, that rested, a 
veritable emerald, in the hills, a little lake that 
was a gateway to an angler’s paradise and the 
series of lakes, rivers and forests which make 
up the Laurentian Club preserves. 
Over to the right a few miles away was the 
fine St. Maurice and Lac des Piles; in fact, the 
forest of San Souci reached back to Lac des 
Piles and around Lac Perchaud, so that the Lord 
of the Manor had a forest possession wild, prac¬ 
tically unknown and uncontaminated, over which 
he could stroll for miles and never repeat. Every 
trail had its old and new moose or bear prints, 
the little rivers abounded in trout, and each lake 
had its peculiar charm. Then, if this were too 
luxurious, too civilized, our host had about sev¬ 
enty square miles of forests, lakes and rivers 
about Lac Marcotte, and Lac Weber some 
twenty-five miles away, with here and there little 
camps or log cabins. 
This was virgin soil. No profane outsider 
fished or hunted it, and in and about it and its 
radiant lakes and in the deep forests we roamed 
and fished, with all the joy of new discoverers. 
In fact, the Lord of the Manor did not know 
how many lakes he had, and one day I had the 
pleasure of naming one “Lac Weber,” after him, 
though “The Lake of a Thousand Trout” would 
have been more descriptive. It was interesting 
to be lost in your own preserves, and once for 
two days with Eubald, the cleverest woodsman in 
all the region, he wandered about trying to get 
out of his own forests and very glad when 
he did. 
To the north as a boundary was the Mattawin, 
which found the St. Maurice at the farm of Bap¬ 
tiste just above Lac Little Ling, but there was 
nothing beyond, I fancy, until you came to Hud¬ 
son’s Bay. Yet at times when we were out, down 
the lake in a canoe, would come some bronzed 
and bearded fellows, swinging along like autom¬ 
atons, having been way up the country after 
moose, perhaps. There may have been camps in 
the far beyond, but personally I never saw but 
two strangers in that country. 
The delight of San Souci was that it was very 
available, yet altogether out of the world. The 
solid and material comforts of civilization had 
impinged on the eternal forest in this magic 
camp. The big living room with its cases of 
rods, guns and every possible appliance, the great 
cellars, the sumptuous kitchen, the ice house, the 
cache of maple syrup, the boats and canoes of 
all kinds, the commodious verandas, cozy nooks 
and corners made “roughing it” a delight to 
those who do not like it. And still San Souci 
was wild and in the wilderness. 
In ten minutes you could find the trail of a 
moose; a black bear had smashed down Eubald’s 
barley the night before; in two minutes you 
could steal down through the silver birch and 
cast for a certain fish known as black bass, or at 
night you could crouch on the wide veranda not 
a stone’s throw from the deep forest and listen, 
half in terror or anticipation, to the mysterious 
sounds, the weird cries, and the crashing of 
branches as it, whatever it was, could be heard 
as it came on and on, at last stopping just at the 
edge of the forest. 
You held your breath and listened—a moose 
probably; then it moved again; you could hear it 
walking down the little dry, weed-grown stream 
bed not twenty paces distant; then it stopped, 
then went on and its footsteps were lost in the 
deep gloom of the night. The next morning Eu¬ 
bald or Phil-o-rum would follow up the trail, 
and “a young moose had gone down the night 
before to drink the waters of San Souci.” 
So this was San Souci of the silver birches, 
where the winds whispered and the notes of wild 
birds sounded in the green deeps far away. 
When you go to functions in effete civilization, 
you are bidden on parchment. My invitation to 
San Souci was in the shape of a split bamboo rod 
made for the country, and a pair of old regime 
bottes sauvage made by an artist, and hardly had 
our welcome died away before the Lord of the 
Manor appeared in his bottes sauvage, khaki 
trousers tucked into them, woolen shirt and lurid 
bandana at the neck, loose and comfortable; wide- 
brimmed sombrero, belt with moose-skin scab¬ 
bard for his hunting knife and tobacco pouch, 
and on his hip a “coco” cut by an artist at the 
trade, a delight to the eye, a joy forever. 
It was a delight to see him greet the place that 
was doubtless nearest his heart. Every tree was 
remembered, the white birch forest and the old 
trees along where the trail was cut down into 
the forest; all the vistas came in for a greeting 
and I climbed to the top of the carpenter shop, 
where he gave employment to the natives—I 
fancy to help them—that we might see a special 
view and a beautiful one of the lake. Then we 
strolled down to it and he greeted the canoes 
and told about the merits of this one and that. 
Eubald, who was with us, laughed and reminded 
“Mons. Webaire” of the night they were caught 
in a gale and what a narrow escape they had. 
“Mons. Webaire” had already told me that Eu¬ 
bald was the finest paddler in the world, and 
Eubald, at the first opportunity, related to me 
in confidence that “Mons. Webaire” was without 
equal as a canoe paddler, that he could have his 
own with any man, and to prove it told me the 
story of a winter tramp in their snow shoes when 
one of their best men dropped in his tracks, and 
his patron, a city man, came in and got help and 
went back for him, saving his life. I listened to 
both sides, and after angling with both for sev¬ 
eral weeks, agreed with both. There was some¬ 
thing particularly delightful in the friendship of 
these two men, the master and man. 
“Ma frien’ ’e don live roun’ ’ere, 
Beeg city’s w’ere ’e’s at, 
But hees ’eart she’s on de contree— 
Hees mos’ gran’ part is dat.” 
THE SCREEN AT STRINGER DAM. 
The policy of the Massachusetts Commission 
in regard to the proposed removal of a screen at 
Stringer Dam, near Worcester, was the subject 
of a recent statement by Commissioner George 
H. Graham, when he said in part: 
“Regarding the screen at Stringer Dam, I am 
of the opinion that we should give this a fair trial 
before we think of changing it. If the perch can¬ 
not go below it they will surely spawn in the 
shallow water along the shores in the upper basin 
where they will not be disturbed as much by their 
enemy, the pickerel, which are very plenty in the 
lower basin. 
“I believe that fishermen will begin to catch 
salmon during the next year and that they will 
get just as many or more white perch from now 
on as last year. Therefore, why not try out the 
plan that we are working before we upset things?” 
