
Picturesque Gaspé landscape. 
“Gimme a light” and “no-good job.” I 
had arranged to go out with him and 
one morning in July, two hours before 
sunrise, I joined him and his brother 
on their way down to their fish house. 
Each of them went out to the Banks 
in his own boat, their joint catch for 
the morning averaging five hundred 
fish, under favorable conditions. 
We pushed off from the rocky beach 
in the dory. After rowing a hundred 
yards to the motor boat the dory was 
made fast to the mooring, and Adrien 
put aboard the bucket of herrings. We 
changed to oilskins and then cast off for 
the Banks, half a mile out in the Gulf. 
Most of the men on the south shore 
are employed by companies and unload 
their catch at a central factory. One 
of the interesting features along the 
Chaleur coast is the common wharf that 
runs out of the shallow sandy beach at 
each town. Here the fishing fleet ties 
up with furled sails and spreads out 
the herring nets on the drying racks. 
The mackerel boats open their blood red 
sails to the evening breeze and before 
dark they have disappeared over the 
southern horizon, to come back well 
loaded the next morning. 
N the north shore the boats are 
without masts, and of a smaller 
size. Ten or twelve put out from Mont 

York Lake, where the Canadian red trout beat salmon at their own game, 
388 
Here the painter may find subject matter aplenty. 
Louis each morning, and outside the 
small bay they turn to their regular 
places. Adrien dropped anchor in 
twenty fathoms and then rigged up two 
lines for me, one on either side of the 
bow. He handed me a much sharpened 
table knife to use in cutting up the 
herrings, and when my hooks were 
baited he went aft to adjust his own 
tackle. 
Is the pangs of hunger should over- 
take me, Adrien said, I could reach 
under the seat and help myself to the 
cheese and pilot biscuit. Then he lit 
an Angora (the chosen cigarette of the 
coast) and leaned over his lines. First 
one and then the other line would be 
pulled in for a yard or so and its weight 
tested. When it was heavy enough in it 
came hand over hand, until a fish was 
finally dangling alongside. There was 
no more sport to me in the operation 
than bringing so much lead up from the 
bottom of the sea. After a cod had 
been taken off the hook and dropped 
into the bottom of the boat it would 
squirm once or twice and then fall back 
exhausted with the effort. 
There were other things besides fish 
to make the experience worth remem- 
bering. The boat was stationed far 
enough out to give a fine view of the 
mountains piling up behind the shore. 
Adrien’s fish house was built 
at the foot of a low cliff 
where the road climbed up 
from the water’s edge by 
means of a complicated 
foundation of logs. Far- 
ther along, the road passed 
under sea cliffs more than 
a thousand feet high; in- 
land densely wooded foot- 
hills sloped up gradually to 
the main ridge of the Shick- 
shock Mountains. 
These high summits stand 
like a great wall overshad- 
owing the rugged coast line. 
Each year thousands of 
people sailing for Europe 
from Montreal have this 
view of Gaspé, yet no ac- 
curate detailed map of the 
country itself has ever been 
published. The whole sec- 
tion forms the stamping 
ground for a large number of caribou, 
and here they have made their last 
stand south of Labrador, seventy miles 
across the Gulf. 
Fog hanging over the cold water 
tinted the sun a deep red. The calm 
was at an end, and our boat was begin- 
ning to pitch madly up and down. Now 
and then ducks would move by, with the 
haze making them seem a string of de- 
coys pulled along mechanically. Black 
Guillemots, called “sea pigeons” by 
Adrien, were continually coming up 
from a long dive almost under our boat; 
or one would fly past like a shot, then 
suddenly dart into the water and be lost 
among the waves. ; 
HE Herring Gulls entertained us 
faithfully as long as scraps of bait 
were thrown to them. A trio of the 
birds manoeuvred back and forth over- 
head with their graceful flight all the 
time we fished, and Adrien assured me 
the same group kept him company every 
morning. Their incessant shrieking 
and cackling echoed back from the Gulls 
waiting in attendance on the other fish- 
ing craft dotting the horizon eastward. 
A good sized specimen now and then 
kept up Adrien’s interest in the day’s 
work, and it gave him real satisfaction 
to have a spectator for lucky streaks. 
Pulling in the fish is the best part of 
the business. After the cod 
have been unloaded from 
the dory into a wheel bar- 
row on the shore comes the | 
nasty job of standing up to 
the cleaning table and sort- 
ing heads and rivers out of 
the mess. A good profit is 
made from the sale of 
liver. A few of them are 
laid aside as tasty bits for 
supper, but the best part is 
