Chapter XIV: Descending the River St. Lawrence (4)

Below the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence stretches four hundred miles to the ocean, its broad estuary constantly growing wider. On the southern shore, below Cacouna, there is another resort at a little river's mouth, known as Trois Pistoles. It is related that in the olden time a traveller was ferried across this little river, the fisherman doing the service charging him three pistoles (ten franc pieces), equalling about six dollars. The traveller was astonished at the charge, and asked him the name of the river. "It has no name," was the reply, "it will be baptized at a later day." "Then," said the traveller, anxious to get the worth of his money, "I baptize it Three Pistoles," a name that has continued ever since. This diminutive village seems rather in luck, for unlike most of the others, it has two churches, each with a tall spire. The Lower St. Lawrence shores maintain communication across the wide estuary by canoe ferries, established at various places. A stout canoe, twenty feet or more long, and having a crew of seven men, usually makes the passage. The boat is built with broad, flat keel, shod with iron, moving easily over the ice which for half the year closes the river, not breaking up until late in the spring, and sometimes obstructing the outlet through the Strait of Belle Isle until July. Farther down the southern shore, below Trois Pistoles, is Rimouski, a much larger place, described as the metropolis of the Lower St. Lawrence, and the outlet of the region of the Metapedia. This town has a Bishop and a Cathedral. Beyond are Father Point and Metis, and the land then extends past Cape Chatte into the wilderness of Gaspé. When Jacques Cartier first entered the river in 1534, he landed at Gaspé, taking possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France, and erecting a tall cross adorned with the fleur-de-lys. Very appropriately, Gaspé means the "Land's End." They found here the Micmac Indians, who were then reputed to be quite intelligent, knowing the points of the compass and position of the stars, and having rude maps of their country and a knowledge of the cross. Their tradition, as told to Cartier's sailors, was that in distant ages a pestilence harassed them, when a venerable man landed on their shore and stayed the progress of the disease by erecting a cross. This mysterious benefactor is supposed to have been a Norseman, or early Spanish adventurer. An old Castilian tale is that gold-hunting Spaniards, after the discovery by Columbus, sailed along these coasts, and finding no precious metals, said in disgust to the Indians, "Aca náda," meaning, "there is nothing here." This phrase became fixed in the Indian mind, and supposing Cartier's party to be the same people, they endeavored to open conversation by repeating the same words, "Aca náda! aca náda!" Thus, according to one theory, originated the name of Canada, the Frenchmen supposing they were telling the name of the country. Another authority is that the literal meaning of the Mohawk (Iroquois) word Canada is, "Where they live," or "a village," and as it was the word Cartier, on his voyages up the river, most frequently heard from the Indians, as applied to the homes of the people, it naturally named the country.

The surface of the southern country behind Cape Chatte, and of Gaspé (Cape Gaspé being a promontory seven hundred feet high), rises into the frowning mountains of Notre Dame, the most lofty in Lower Canada, the chief peak elevated four thousand feet. In 1648 a French explorer wrote of these stately ranges that "all those who come to New France know well enough the mountains of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived at that point of the great river which is opposite to these high mountains, baptize, ordinarily for sport, the new passengers, if they do not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism, which is made to flow plentifully on their heads." The bold southern shore of the St. Lawrence finally ends beyond Cape Gaspé, where its mouth is ninety-six miles wide in the headland of Cape Rosier, described by dreading mariners as the "Scylla of the St. Lawrence."

The northern shore of the great river, beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, is almost uninhabited. There is an occasional fishing-post, but it is almost an unknown region, though once there were Jesuit missions and trading-places, the Indians having since gone away. The iron-bound coast goes off, past Point de Monts, the Egg Islands and Anticosti, to the Strait of Belle Isle. This strait is named after a barren, treeless and desolate island at its entrance, about nine miles long, which has been most ironically named the Belle Isle, but the early mariners, nevertheless, called it the Isle of Demons. They did this because they heard, when passing, "a great clamor of men's voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you hear from a crowd at a fair or market-place." This is explained by the almost constant grinding of ice-floes in the neighborhood. The Mingan River, a beautiful stream where speckled trout are caught, comes down out of the northern mountains, opposite Anticosti Island, and is occasionally visited by enthusiastic anglers. This is the boundary of Labrador, which stretches almost indefinitely beyond, comprising the whole northeastern Canadian peninsula, an almost unexplored region of nearly three hundred square miles. It is described as a rocky plateau of Archæan rocks, highest on the northeast side and to the south, more or less wooded, and sloping down to lowlands towards Hudson Bay. It is a vast solitude, the rocks split and blasted by frosts, and the shores washed by the Atlantic waves, where reindeer, bears, wolves and a few Esquimaux wander. Its great scenic attraction is the Grand Falls. To the northward of the headwaters of Mingan River is a much larger stream, the Grand River, draining a multitude of lakes on the higher Labrador table-land, northeastward through Hamilton Inlet into the Atlantic. In 1861 a venturesome Scot of the Hudson Bay Company, prospecting through the region, first saw this magnificent cataract. For thirty years the falls were unvisited, but in 1891 an expedition was made to them, and they have been since again visited. The cataract is described as a magnificent spectacle, the river with full flow leaping from a rocky platform into a huge chasm, with a roar that can be heard twenty miles and an immense column of rainbow-illumined spray. The plunge is made after descending rapids for eight hundred feet, and is over a precipice two hundred feet wide, the fall being three hundred and sixteen feet. The water tumbles into a canyon five hundred feet deep and extending between high walls of rock for about twenty-five miles. The distant Labrador coasts on bay and ocean abound in seals and fish, and the adjacent seas are vast producers of codfish and herring. There are few visitors, however, excepting the hardy "Fishermen," of whom Whittier sings:

"Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed!

"Now, brothers, for the icebergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine,
Along the low, black shore!
Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murr are flying,
Like bleak scuds, overhead;

"Where in mist the rock is hiding,
And the sharp reef lurks below,
And the white squall smites in summer,
And the autumn tempests blow;
Where, through gray and rolling vapor,
From evening unto morn,
A thousand boats are hailing,
Horn answering unto horn.

"Hurrah! for the Red Island,
With the white cross on its crown!
Hurrah! for Meccatina,
And its mountains bare and brown!
Where the Caribou's tall antlers
O'er the dwarf wood freely toss,
And the footstep of the Micmac
Has no sound upon the moss.

"Hurrah! Hurrah!--the west wind
Comes freshening down the bay,
The rising sails are filling,--
Give way, my lads, give way!
Leave the coward landsman clinging
To the dull earth, like a weed,--
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed!"

END OF VOLUME II.