THE ICI ON PARLE FRANÇAIS. THE northern counties of the Province of | dom molested by the hunter, who looks for noNew Brunswick that border upon the Bay bler game. Here are trout and salmon that Chaleur afford unquestionably the best field for live in blissful ignorance of the sportsman's artsportsmen to be found in America, east of the ifices. All the valuable fur-bearing animals Rocky Mountains. The assertion will not be abound-the bear, the sable, marten, lucifee, regarded too broad by those who are able to fox, otter, mink, and musquash-and trappers judge from personal knowledge. The scenery often earn their hundred pounds currency as is extremely picturesque, and, in some locali- the profits of a single winter's toil. ties, almost Alpine in its features. No malaria poisons the air, no venomous reptiles or insects infest the forests. Game is not only found in greater variety, if not in more abundance than elsewhere, but the wilderness is almost primeval in its freshness. In the Restigouche country especially few traces of man are visible, except where the axe of the lumberman has left its mark upon the borders of the principal streams. Here are 1,266,560 square acres of land, of which no more than 10,000 have yet been cleared. The lordly moose every where patrols the forest labyrinths. The beaver, which has been almost exterminated in other places, constructs its dams on every stream and river. Cariboo dwell here in large communities, sel But the Restigouche country is not remarkable merely as affording a superlative Paradise for the hunter. It is also rich in historic and traditional interest. Traces still remain of an early civilization that was contemporary with the first settlement of New England. Jacques Cartier discovered it in 1534, three hundred and thirty-four years ago. During the year 1578 no less than 330 fishing vessels of various nations visited the Bay Chaleur and the coasts adjacent. It was at the mouth of the Restigouche River that Jean Jacques Enaud planted his little colony of Acadians in 1638, and laid the foundation of the fortified town of Petite Rochelle. Here, far remote from the civil strife that vexed the factions in the southern districts, and the more bloody conflicts between French and English that disturbed the peace of a country which changed hands no fewer than nine times, Enaud enjoyed for many years a plenitude of prosperity and good fortune. But calamity came at last: first through the treachery of the Indians, whose alliance he had courted; and afterward from the attacks of the English, who finally scented out his retreat. The colony was dispersed, and a few piles of stones are all that now mark the site of ancient Petite Rochelle. Forests vegetate in luxurious growth where (according to the Abbé Raynal) 60,000 head of horned cattle grazed in 1749, and batteries that once bristled with guns are now overgrown with timber. Nature has resumed her ancient sway, and thus we find in the Restigouche, at present, a population scarcely equal to what it boasted a hundred and twenty years ago. Here, also, we tread the battle-fields where the Micmacs fought the hostile Mohawks, and from the few survivors of to-day learn of the fame and vaunted exploits of the great chief Argimoosh, and of Halion, no less renowned. The gelid Restigouche flowed between the tribes, but could not cool their ires. Here we find memorials of the pioneer missionaries who labored to convert the savages to the religion of the Cross. Here the pirate Kidd at one time busied himself with his work of pillage. And here we listen to traditional stories of adventurers of princely lineage who took to themselves wives from among the dusky daughters of the aborigines, and find them verified in the mongrel inhabitants of certain districts, who are unmistakably their descendants. This much is necessary preliminary to explain what induced the itinerant Penman of early remembrance to exchange the hearth-rug once more for the comparative discomforts of an unbroken wilderness. Natural scenery of the grandest character, an unrivaled fishing region, rare historical associations and ancient landmarks, the companionship of the rude intelligences that people the backwoods-these, together with the promise of relaxation from toil, would have sufficed to tempt a less sanguine temperament than his. The wonder is that tourists, and especially sportsmen, whose steps are annually turned toward the smoothlyworn paths of travel and the well-beaten bush, do not oftener seek out those fresh fields of adventure which are to be found among the mountains of northern New Brunswick and Gaspé. At least so Penman thought, as he sat upon the VOL. XXXVI.-No. 214.-F F deck of the steamer that plowed the Bay of Fundy on her regular trip from Boston to St. John. For several hours the New Brunswick coast had been in sight, rocky, indented, and forbidding. Milky masses of fog hung over the headlands and filled up the occasional coves and bays. Sometimes they lifted and floated sluggishly away, settling down at other points. Finally they gathered together and rolled up the bay in dense, murky phalanx, enveloping the steamer, and shutting out the view altogether. Then followed a season of careful groping through misty uncertainty, and after that there was a shuffling on deck, the engine bell sounded "slow," and the rumor ran through the passengers that the steamer had reached St. John. The delighted Penman hastened forward to enjoy a first view of the chief city and commercial metropolis of the Province. It was low tide; and as the vessel gradually succumbed to the straining hawsers that had been made fast to the shore, a huge fabric of timber and piling loomed out of the fog. Its lower portion was covered with hissing barnacles and festooned with dripping sea-weed, while thirty feet above dense lines of human figures were dimly defined through the mist; for, be it known that it is the custom of the St. John people, both rabble and élite, to crowd to the wharf whenever the steamer departs or is due. Directly in front of the gangway a long float rose and fell with the waves, and this swarmed with clamorous hackmen, cased in rubber, and thrusting long whips menacingly at the passengers. This was all of St. John that could AN UNCERTAIN VIEW. be distinguished within the scope of Penman's clear atmosphere. Then he was carried a eircumscribed vision. The tide rises from thirty-six to seventy feet in the Bay of Fundy. The constant agitation of this tremendous volume of water fills the air with moisture. When the tide has run out to its lowest stage, every thing is left high and dry-the wharves, the shipping, the beacons, the rocks, the mud-flats, and the herring-nets clinging to long poles. Then every thing drips like a saturated sponge. Exudations and exhalations infinite in number, countless little rivulets trickling over the slimy flats and out of the wooden piers, the drippings from a myriad kelp-covered rocks, all make up a vast aggregate of moisture which soon condenses into fog, and rolls in on the surge of the incoming tide. Upon this the inhabitants grow fat, it is said. But St. John is not always seen under a cloud. It has other beauties than the damp draperies about the wharves. Its natural scenery is highly picturesque. It has a diversity of surface and a combination of sky, land, and water, of interior and seaboard landscape, seldom to be found elsewhere. Its pleasantest days are not usually flashed into the world upon a gleam of blue and sunshine, but grope their way into being like some nonentity born of the Milky-way, swathed and belted in mists. If at early daybreak the fog hangs in a luminous halo over the city and bay, if the atmosphere is still and glows with a pleasant warmth like the reek of a vapor-bath, it is most auspicious of glorious sunshine. The morning will soon lift her veil upon a field of clear cerulean and reveal the perfect day. But it was not ordained that such an occasion should greet the advent of Mr. Penman, and he did not tarry for its consummation. When he had been safely landed he was hurried off to the railway station, and in twenty minutes after the train started emerged from the fog into bright sunshine and a hundred and ten miles over a fine road, to the terminus at Point du Chene, and graciously set down beside an oyster-bed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He did not see the oysters, however, because they were not open at that hour; but report has it that there are few bivalves ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK. more luscious than the Shediac oysters. Besides | red-nosed layman, anathemas from the old wothe oysters, the only noteworthy object here was man, and believed that the damsel was intera long pier extending three quarters of a mile ceding for him as Pocahontas did for John over a mud-flat to deep water. From thence Smith. Meanwhile the circle around him inthe steamer Lady Head was wont to start on creased. He was in despair. Oh, for one hour her fortnightly voyage to Quebec, touching at of patois! At length, in the extremity of dessundry intermediate ports; but as she would peration, he broke from the crowd, and would not be due for several hours, Penman drove have fled from the ground, had not a native back two miles, to Shediac, which is one of the "Blue-nose" opportunely come to his rescue. early Acadian settlements. It was the shortest Explanations followed (in English), and he was trip that he ever made from English to French thenceforth happy. soil. The change would not have been greater had he been dropped from a balloon into the midst of some village on the Seine. When he embarked on board the steamer he still seemed to breathe the atmosphere of France. Although the English ensign floated The Acadians are remarkable for their ex- at the peak, the captain and crew were all clusiveness and the tenacity with which they Frenchmen. There were more French priests cling to old habits and associations. All the in flour-scoops, French schoolmasters in black national characteristics are retained, even to gowns and high-crowned hats, and a couple of the primitive simplicity of dress and manners. nuns. Besides these there were several memFew understand English or care to. Now it bers of the Provincial Government returning so happened that all the Jeans and Jeanettes from the labors of a Legislative session, a numof the neighborhood were out in holiday attire ber of militia officers, with their wives and to attend the consecration of a chapel. The daughters, and some Micmac Indians-sixty occasion being observed with time-honored passengers all told, for whom only twelve berths ceremonies, of course any English taint, how- were provided. Harmony prevailed notwithever slight, that the few might have acquired, standing. The ladies took the berths, the priests was put aside for the time being. French and schoolmasters kept in a knot by themselves, flags streamed from tall, fresh-peeled poles and the nuns retired within their dismal hoods and from booths and bowers of evergreen. Here conventual character, the Indians maintained were damsels in kirtles, and swains in blouses their habitual exclusiveness, and the legistators of blue homespun; priests in the old style of drank beer and discussed Confederation. Conchapeau resembling flour-scoops. There were federation was the engrossing topic of the voyprayers inside the chapel, and fandangoes upon age, on deck or below, at meals or siesta, in the lawn outside; also plenty of stimulating sunshine or rain, by night or by day; and often, beverages, which were served to the thirsty in in the wee sma' hours, the uneasy occupants of the booths aforesaid. The crowd oscillated be- table and floor were roused from their cat-naps tween the prayers and the fandangoes, elbow- by noisy wrangling about Confederation. This ing their way in two opposing streams through continued until a couple of the members were the chapel door. Occasionally bursts of sono- happily set ashore at Miramichi. The rest rous discord from half a dozen brass instru- steamed up the Bay Chaleur toward Dalhousie. ments issued from the chapel. Thus there be- Dalhousie is the shire town of Restigouche came alternate intervals of quiet and hubbub; County, and lies two miles above the mouth of but there was no disorder, as the priests acted the Restigouche River. At that point Penman as constabulary. was to leave the steamer. Such was the condition of affairs when Pen- Just here is one of the most superb and fasciman strode upon the scene. He would fain nating panoramic views to be found in America. have entered the chapel, but met difficulty at If one of our artists would only transfer it to the start. As he advanced he presently found canvas, he would astonish the world with a novhimself a special object of attention. With that elty as striking as the "Heart of the Andes" or courtesy which the French generally bestow the "Yosemite Valley." The whole region is upon strangers, one of the priests took him by mountainous, and almost precipitous enough to the arm to lead him to a booth; at the same be Alpine; but its grandeur is derived less from time one of the laymen, whose nose was red cliffs, chasms, and peaks, than from far-reachand breath pungent, pulled him toward the ing sweeps of outline and continually rising chapel; a damsel entreated him with winsome domes that mingle with the clouds. When smile to join her in a jig; at the same time an Penman longed to enjoy the landscape a proancient maiden inquired if he was un beau Amer-voking curtain of densest fog hid it from sight; icaine; and an official, or master of ceremonies, but, just as he had abandoned himself to exwho flaunted a huge rosette in his button-hole, tremest despair, the veil was suddenly lifted at advised him that there would soon be a gr-r-and refection. But, alas! Penman did not speak French, and only French was spoken here. He thought the simple people regarded him as an intruder, and he longed to define his position. He expected summary excommunication from the priest, an argumentum à posteriori from the the most opportune moment, and then its glories were trebly enhanced. He had not to await the gradual development of the landscape's opening beauties, but they all burst forth simultaneously in fullest effulgence. The surface of the river was unrippled, and gleamed like polished steel. Two headlands guarded the entrance, which is three miles wide and nine fathoms deep to their | decidedly sleepy, and suggestive of a dolce far very bases. On the Gaspé side precipitous cliffs of brick-red sandstone flanked the shore, so lofty that they seemed to cast their gloomy shadows half across the bay; these yawned with rifts and gullies, through which fretful torrents tumbled into the sea. Behind them the mountains rose and fell in long undulations of ultramarine, and, towering above them all, was the famous peak of Tracadegash, flashing in the sunlight like a pale-blue amethyst. On the New Brunswick side the snowy cottages of Dalhousie climbed a hill that rose from the river in three successive ridges, backed by a range of fantastic knobs and wooded cones that rolled off to the limit of vision. These mountains constitute the northeastern extremity of the Alleghany chain. Encircled by this amphitheatre, the harbor of Dalhousie looked like a placid lake. Two wooded islands in the distance seemed to float upon its surface. An English man-of-war lay in the shadow of the cliffs. Not a single craft was on the wing to animate the scene; only a few lumber ships floated lazily at anchor near the land, with an air of sleepy indifference whether they loaded that season or the next. A reek of black smoke drifted sluggishly from the stack of a gigantic saw-mill that stood on a projecting point. The whole landscape was niente unusual beyond the latitude of palms and bread-fruit. However, the steamer's gun presently disturbed its repose. It startled a multitude of echoes from the hills, but summoned scarcely a dozen persons to the rickety staging that sometimes served the purposes of a wharf. In the present instance the steamer lay a few cable-lengths off, and as no boats were visible, it became a matter of perplexity how to land. At length an unwieldy lugger got under way, and by dint of persistent pulling and poling and continual shifting of a huge sprit-sail that did no service in the calm, was engineered alongside. She was manned by two white men and a negro. The negro exercised the prerogative of giving orders which no one obeyed. He was dirty, stalwart, unctuous, and disgustingly familiar. He was no respecter of persons. As soon as the craft touched the steamer he scrambled headlong over the rail among the passengers, elbowing some aside and stumbling over others, to greet all he recognized with tremendous guffaws of delight. Some he shook by both hands, some he embraced, called the honorable member of Her Majesty's Legislative Council "John," and fairly reveled in the realm of perfect equality. He answered all questions, to whomsoever put, and interrupted the adieus of parting friends. Then he suddenly discov |