the winding roadway.  In the upper river the fishing is still unsurpassed.  Of small trout there are vast numbers, excellent for the table, but in the deep pools are also huge trout, ranging in weight from three to eight pounds.  The surrounding country is open; there are only clumps of scrubby timber; and the plain is covered with deep moss readily beaten into a hard path upon which the foot treads silently.  Here the bears come to feed upon the berries and the Canadians have called the plain prettily the “Jardin des Ours.”  Other sport than trout fishing there is.  In season the caribou and the moose are abundant—­but that is a sportsman’s tale by itself.

Fishing and hunting are not the sole diversions.  As long ago as in 1811, when young Captain Nairne came here fresh from Europe, the boating attracted him and he spent much time on the bay and the river.  No doubt the young seigneur was soon skilful in the art of paddling a canoe.  In those days there were real Indians and no other canoes than those of birch bark; now these have well-nigh disappeared and, indeed, few visitors at Murray Bay, use any kind of a canoe.  The pastime is thought too dangerous for all but the initiated.  Amid these mountains, winds rise quickly and beat up a sea, and it is well to keep near the shore.  The rising tide sweeps like a mill race over the bar at the mouth of the bay and when one has passed out to the great river it is like being afloat on the open sea.  On perfectly calm days we may go far out to be swept up with the tide; but it is both safer and pleasanter to glide along close to shore under the shadow of the cliffs, around sharp corners, dodging in and out among boulders submerged, or now being submerged, by the rising tide.  The successive sandy beaches are each backed by high cliffs.  The river is a shining, spangled, surface of light blue and white, reflecting the sky sprinkled with fleecy clouds.  Here a chattering stream, the Petit Ruisseau, falls over white rocks to lose itself in the sand.  Far ahead now one can see the Church of Ste. Irenee perched on a level table-land, two or three hundred feet above the river.  Soon a dark green line on the high birch-clad shore marks the gorge by which the Grand Ruisseau flows to the St. Lawrence.  At its mouth is a good place to land and make tea.  The canoes are drawn up on a sandy beach under the shadow of cliffs, a medley of red and grey and brown.  Near by, the Grand Ruisseau, a fair sized brook, babbles in its bed crowded with great boulders.  A wild path, part of it including steps from rock to rock in the bed of the stream itself, leads to a lovely little cascade where, in white foam, the water falls into a deep dark pool.  One hurries to visit it and then, with the evening shadows falling and the narrow gorge becoming sombre, it is wise to hasten back.  As one steps out from the wooded path to the shore of the great river the scene is enchanting.  The river’s shining surface is perfectly smooth.  Far across it is a dark-blue serried line of mountains.  Houses, twenty miles distant, stand out white in the last light of the sun.  From the tin-covered spire of a church far away, the flash of the rays comes back like the glow of fire.  Standing in shadow we look out on a realm of light: