A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs Part 9

[Footnote 34: Mr. Nairne claimed as compensation for his _lods et ventes_ 4,560, 9s. 6d., (Halifax currency) and for the ba.n.a.l rights 3,400. He probably received considerably less. More than 400 dwellers in the seigniory still pay the annual _cens et rentes_.]

[Footnote 35: Malcolm Fraser's seigniory, Mount Murray, remained somewhat longer in the family of its original owner. On Fraser's death in 1815 his eldest son William, who had become a medical pract.i.tioner and a Roman Catholic, succeeded. He died without issue in 1830 and his brother, John Malcolm Fraser, then fell heir to the seigniory. When he died in 1860 the property pa.s.sed by will to his two daughters, both married to British officers. The elder, Mrs. Reeve, succeeded to the manor house. The younger, Mrs. Higham, soon sold her share to the Cimon family who became prominent in the district and one of whose members sat in Parliament at Ottawa on the Conservative side. Mrs. Reeve died in 1879 leaving the use of the property to her husband, Colonel Reeve, for his life. When he died in 1888, his son Mr. John Fraser Reeve, Malcolm Fraser's great-grandson, became seigneur. In 1902 he sold the property to the present seigneur, Mr. George T. Bonner, of New York, a Canadian by birth. Though there are numerous living descendants of Malcolm Fraser, Murray Bay knows them no more.]

[Footnote 36: Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant Colonel John Nairne, First Seigneur of Murray Bay. This Gallant Officer during 38 years distinguished himself as an able and brave Soldier. For simplicity of manners as a man, for Intrepidity and humanity as a Soldier, and for the virtues of a Gentleman, his memory will long be respected and cherished.

Born in Scotland, March 1, 1731. Died at Quebec, July 14, 1802.

Lieutenant Colonel Nairne first entered the Dutch Service where he belonged to that distinguished Corps, the Scotch Brigade. He afterwards entered the British Service where under Wolfe he was present at the taking of Louisbourg and Quebec. He also served under Murray and Carleton and distinguished himself in a most gallant manner when Quebec was attacked by the Americans in the years 1775 and 1776.

And of his eldest son, Lieutenant John Nairne of the 19th Regiment of Foot, who fell a victim to the climate of India when returning with the victorious troops from the capture of Seringapatam in the 21st year of his age; also of his youngest son, Captain Thomas Nairne, of the 49th Regiment of Foot who bravely fell at the head of his Company in the Battle at Chrysler's Farm in Upper Canada November 11, 1813, aged 26 years.

Also of John Leslie Nairne, great grandson of Colonel Nairne, born July 23, 1842, died March 18, 1845; and of John Nairne, Esq., Grandson of Colonel Nairne, born at Murray Bay, March 22nd, 1808, died at Quebec June 8, 1861; and of his Widow, Maria Katherine Leslie, died at Quebec, August 25, 1884, deeply regretted by her friends and by the poor of whom she was the constant benefactress.

This monument is erected in affectionate remembrance of much kindness by one who was privileged to enjoy their friends.h.i.+p during the best part of his life.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMING OF THE PLEASURE SEEKERS

Pleasure seeking at Murray Bay.--A fisherman's experience in 1830.--New visitors.--Fis.h.i.+ng in a mountain lake.--Camp life.--The Upper Murray.--Canoeing.--Running the rapids.--Walks and drives.--Golf.--A rainy day.--The habitant and his visitors.

In the Middle Ages mankind in pursuit of change of air and scene and of bodily and spiritual health went on pilgrimage to some famous shrine; in modern times dwellers in cities, in a similar pursuit, go in summer to some beautiful spot by sea, or lake, or mountain. To many these places then become as sacred as was the saint's shrine of an earlier age. Busy men have leisure there to be idle, to read, to enjoy companions.h.i.+p, to pursue wholesome pleasures. Such a spot has Murray Bay become to many.

Their intrusion was not looked upon with favour by those who wished to preserve the old simplicity, but it could not be resisted. More than a hundred years ago Colonel Nairne and Colonel Fraser had parties of guests in the summer that must have made the two manor houses lively enough. The beauty of the place, its coolness when Quebec and Montreal suffered from sweltering heat in the short Canadian summer, the simplicity and charm of its life, proved alluring. There was also excellent sport. Salmon and trout abounded. Though time has brought changes, in some seasons the salmon fis.h.i.+ng is still excellent and, in all the world, probably, there is no better trout fis.h.i.+ng than in the upper waters of the Murray and in some of the lakes.

Thus it happened that the earliest annals of pleasure seeking at Murray Bay relate to fis.h.i.+ng. It is at least possible that more than two hundred years ago the Sieur de Comporte tried his fortune as a fisherman in the lake that bears his name. A hundred and fifty years ago, as we have seen, Captain Nairne and his guest Gilchrist had such excellent salmon fis.h.i.+ng that Gilchrist thought this sport alone worth a trip across the Atlantic. Many other fis.h.i.+ng expeditions to Malbaie there must have been and, fortunately, a detailed narrative of one of them, made in 1830, has been preserved. The fishermen were Major Wingfield and Dr. Henry--attached to the 66th regiment at Montreal.

They went by steamer from Montreal to Quebec and an American General on board jeered at them for travelling three hundred miles to catch fish which they could buy in the market at their door! When they reached Quebec they found no steamer for Murray Bay,--hardly strange as then the steamboat was comparatively new. Three days they waited at Quebec until at length they bargained with the captain of a coasting schooner bound for Kamouraska, on the south sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence, to land them at Malbaie. The weather was stormy, the s.h.i.+p nearly foundered, and the eighty miles of the journey occupied no less than four days and nights.

The fishermen had brought with them a quarter of cold lamb, a loaf, and a bottle of wine, but, before the journey was over, sheer hunger drove them to the s.h.i.+p's salt pork and to sausages stuffed with garlic. Rather than take refuge below among "thirty or forty dirty habitants from Kamouraska" they stuck to the deck and encamped under the great sail, but the rain fell so heavily that they could not even keep their cigars alight. At length "with beards like Jews," cold, wet, half-starved and miserable, they reached their destination. As they landed at Murray Bay they saw a salmon floundering in a net, bought it, and carried it with them to the house of a man named Chaperon where they had engaged lodgings. Here, says Dr. Henry, the sensation of being clean and comfortable in their host's "pleasant parlour" was delicious. The tea, the toast, the dainty prints of fresh b.u.t.ter were all exquisite "after rancid pork and garlic," and he declares that they ate for two hours and consumed "some half gallon of thick cream and half a bushel of new laid eggs." Under their window bloomed a rose bush in full flower. Murray Bay was at its best.

On Monday morning, July 5th, 1830, the two fishermen engaged a _caleche_, and a boy named Louis Panet drove them up the Murray River.

The present village church was already standing, "a respectable church,"

says Dr. Henry, "with its long roof and glittering spire and a tall elm or two"; the elms, alas, have disappeared and now there are only willows. A wooden bridge crossed the Murray and its large abutments loaded with great boulders told of formidable spring floods sweeping down the valley. A recent "eboulement" or land slide had blocked the road along the river and men were still busy clearing away the rubbish.

Eight or ten miles up the river at the fall known as the Chute, still a favourite spot for salmon fis.h.i.+ng, they had magnificent sport. One Jean Gros, in a crazy canoe, took them to the best places for casting the fly. The first salmon weighed twenty-five pounds and they had to play it for three-quarters of an hour. That evening when they returned to M.

Chaperon's, to feast once more, they had five salmon weighing in all one hundred and five pounds and forty-five sea trout averaging three pounds each. No wonder Gilchrist has said such fis.h.i.+ng was worth a trip across the Atlantic! The blot on the day's enjoyment was that in the July weather they were pestered with flies.

Excellent sport continued from day to day. Once Jean Gros lost his hold of the pole by which he controlled the canoe and it drifted helplessly towards a rapid, Henry all the time playing a salmon. The man was alarmed and knelt to mumble prayers but Henry caught up a board thrown from the sh.o.r.e, gave him a whack with it on the back and shouted: "_Ramez! Sacre! Ramez!_" The effect was electrical. The old fellow seized the board, paddled with it like mad, steered down the rapid, and Henry finally landed his salmon. Day after day the two fishermen drove up to the Chute to fish until, after a fortnight, the river fell and the salmon ceased to rise; then they went down in a large boat to Riviere Noire, said never yet to have been fished with a rod, slept at night on the sandy beach, but had no luck. Henry tells of an annoyance at Malbaie that still continues; mongrel dogs ran after their _caleche_; sometimes one would try to seize the horse by the nose and nearly cause a run-away. Each cur pursued the vehicle and barked himself hoa.r.s.e, and then, when he retired, his neighbour would take up the task. At length, after this experience had been frequently renewed, they decided to retaliate. One black s.h.a.ggy beast had made himself specially obnoxious; with his thick wooly fur he did not mind in the least being struck by the whip. So one day Dr. Henry got ready the salmon gaff and, as the brute darted out at them, skilfully hooked him by the side. The driver whipped up his horse, which seemed to enjoy the punishment of his enemy, and the vehicle went tearing along the road, the dog yelling hideously as he was dragged by the hook. The people ran to the doors holding up their hands in astonishment. The Doctor soon shook off the dog and he trotted home little the worse. Next day when he saw the fisherman's caleche coming he limped into the house "as mute as a fish"

with his tail between his legs.

Dr. Henry thought Murray Bay an earthly paradise. The people in this "secluded valley" were the most virtuous he had ever seen. Flagrant crime was unknown,--doors were never locked at night. There was no need of temperance reform; "whole families pa.s.s their lives without any individual ever having tasted intoxicating fluids." The devout people, he says, had social family wors.h.i.+p, morning and evening; the families were huge, fifteen to twenty children being not uncommon; when a young couple married the relations united to build a house for them; and so on. Unfortunately we know from other sources that conditions were not as idyllic at Murray Bay as Dr. Henry describes; but it was, no doubt, a simple and virtuous community.

In time its isolation was to disappear before invaders like Dr. Henry, in pursuit of pleasure. So gradual was the change that we hardly know when it came. By 1850 there was a little summer colony mostly from Quebec and Montreal. Soon a few came from points more distant. As means of transport on the St. Lawrence improved a great many travellers pa.s.sed Murray Bay on their way to the Saguenay. Tadousac, at its mouth, was already well known and an occasional stray visitor stopped off at Murray Bay to see what it was like. The accommodation offered was rude enough, no doubt, but perhaps less rude than one might suppose. At Pointe au Pic stood a substantial stone house. This was turned into a hotel and known some fifty years ago as Duberger's house. There were besides a few other houses for summer visitors. Thus, long ago, was there tolerable comfort at Murray Bay. In any case visitors soon found that the place had abundant compensations even for discomfort. They came and came again.

Friends came to visit them and they too learned to love the spot. Some Americans from New York chanced to find it out and others of their countrymen followed; by 1885 already well established was the now dominant American colony.

The influx has limited and restricted but has not destroyed the old diversion of fis.h.i.+ng. There are still many hundreds of lakes in the neighbourhood on which no fisherman has ever yet cast a fly. But nearly all the good spots within easy range are now leased or owned by private persons and clubs; no longer may the transient tourist fish almost where he pleases. All the better for this restriction is the quality of the fis.h.i.+ng. What magnificent sport there is in some of those tiny lakes on the mountain side and what glorious views as one drives thither! To reach Lac a Comporte, for instance, one crosses the brawling Murray, drives up its left bank for a mile or so and then heads straight up the mountain side. Turning back one can see the silver gleam of the small river winding through its narrow valley until lost in the enveloping mountains. From points still higher one looks northwestward upon the mountain crests worn round ages ago, some of them probably never yet trodden by the foot of man. Most are wooded to the top but there are bare crags, a glowing purple sometimes in the afternoon light; but the prevailing tone is the deep, deep blue, the richest surely that nature can show anywhere. Along the road where we are driving stretch the houses of the habitants and sometimes, to survey the pa.s.sing strangers, the whole family stands on the rude door-step. They rarely fail in a courteous greeting, with a touch still of the manners of France.

Two or three days spent on one of these wild mountain lakes, such as Lac a Comporte, is as pleasant an experience as any one can have. The walk is beautiful from the last cottage where the vehicles are left and the two or three men are secured who shoulder the packs with the necessary provisions. At first the forest path is hewn broadly in a straight line but it soon narrows to a trail winding up the mountain side. The way is rough; one must clamber over occasional boulders and turn aside to avoid fallen trees. The white stems of birches are conspicuous in the forest thicket. After a stiff climb we have pa.s.sed over the shoulder of the mountain; the path is now trending downward and at length through the arch of green over the pathway one catches the gleam of the lake. The pace quickens and in a few minutes we stand upon the sh.o.r.e of a lovely little sheet of water with a sh.o.r.e line perhaps three miles long, lying in the mountain hollow. Evening is near and, half an hour later, each fisherman is in a boat paddled softly by a habitant companion. In a thousand places the calm water is disturbed by the trout feeding busily; they often throw themselves quite clear of the water and, when the sport has well begun, at a single cast one occasionally takes a trout on each of his three flies. Before it is dark the whole circuit of the lake has been made and a goodly basket of trout is the result.

A camp at evening is always delightful. The tired fishermen lie by the cheery fire while the men prepare the evening meal, to consist chiefly of the trout just caught. They have the vivacity and readiness of their race: rough habitants though they are their courtesy is inborn, inalienable. After the meal is over silence often falls on the group of three or four by the fire. Every one is tired and at barely nine o'clock it is time for bed. Before each of the two or three small tents standing some distance apart by the water's edge the men have built a blazing fire which throws its light far out over the tiny lake. All round rise the mountains, now dark and sombre; a sharp wind is blowing and as one stands alone looking out over the water there comes a sense of chill; for a moment the mountain solitude seems remote, melancholy and friendless: with something like a s.h.i.+ver one turns to the cheerful fire before the tent. Here blankets are spread on sweet scented boughs of _sapin_; the bed is hard, but not too hard for a tired man and one quickly falls asleep.

Other fis.h.i.+ng expeditions at Murray Bay take one farther afield and into more varied scenes. In its upper stretches, three thousand feet above the sea, the Murray River flows through a level country before it plunges into mountain fastnesses, almost impregnable in summer, for a long and troubled detour, to emerge at length into this last valley. To reach this flat upland one must drive through a beautiful mountain pa.s.s with great heights towering on either side of the winding roadway. In the upper river the fis.h.i.+ng is still unsurpa.s.sed. 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 fis.h.i.+ng there is. In season the caribou and the moose are abundant--but that is a sportsman's tale by itself.

Fis.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e.

The rising tide sweeps like a mill race over the bar at the mouth of the bay and when one has pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.h.i.+ning, spangled, surface of light blue and white, reflecting the sky sprinkled with fleecy clouds.

Here a chattering stream, the Pet.i.t 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e of the great river the scene is enchanting. The river's s.h.i.+ning 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:

"As when the sun prepared for rest Hath gained the precincts of the West, Though his departing radiance fail To illuminate the hollow vale, A lingering light he fondly throws On the fair hills, where first he rose."

The sh.o.r.e is strangely silent; one hears only the occasional puffing of the white whale or the sad cry of the loon.

A thrilling diversion is that of running the rapids in the Murray River.

The canoe is sent up by _charette_ and after luncheon it is a walk or drive of eight or nine miles up the river to the starting point--a deep, dark-brown pool, which soon narrows into a swift rapid, the worst in all the stretches to the river's mouth. Formerly a procession of half a dozen canoes would go through the rapid with light hearts, but, long ago, when the river was very high, a canoe upset here and one of its occupants was never seen alive again. As one paddles out into the pool and is drawn into the dark current moving silently and swiftly to the rapid the heart certainly beats a little faster. The water's surface is an inclined plane as it flows over the ledge of rock. Straight ahead the current breaks on a huge black rock in a cloud of white foam. One must sweep off to the right, with the great volume of the water, and need catch only a little spray in swinging safely past the danger point.

Then, in the waves caused by the current, before the canoe is quite turned "head-on" a wave may curl over the bow and leave the occupants kneeling in half an inch of water. In such a case it is wise to land and empty the canoe. In the next rapid, a tangled maze, the water is shallow and skill is required to wind in and out among the rocks and find water enough to keep afloat. Then the canoe slips over a ledge with plenty of water and the only care is to curve sharply to the left with the current before it strikes the bank straight ahead. The whole trip down the river occupies two glorious hours. There are short stretches of smooth and deep water; then the river contracts and pours with impetuous swiftness down a rocky slope. Sometimes trees stand close to the river; then there are bare grey banks of clay; then smiling fields sloping gently up to the high land; at times the canoe is in shade, then in the flas.h.i.+ng sunlight. The river grows milder as it nears its mouth but the excitement does not end until we float under the bridge at Malbaie village and lift the canoe over the boom fastened there to catch logs in their descent. To paddle home in calm water across the bay seems tame after dancing for two hours on that tossing current.

Of course there are many walks and drives--on the whole the most delightful of Malbaie's diversions. The favourite walk is to "Beulah." A generation that does not read its Bible as it should may need to be told that Beulah is the name of the land no more desolate in which the Lord delighteth; some Bible reader so named a spot on the mountain where one looks out far, far, afield in every direction for immense distances. It may be reached by a forest path straight up the mountain side from Pointe au Pic. We go through spruce and birch woods till we reach an opening where we look out northward on rounded mountain tops blue, silent, immeasurable, spreading away, one might almost fancy to the North Pole itself, so endless seems their ma.s.s. On beautiful turf through woods, then by a cow path across a bog, the path leads until a bare hill top lies full in view. This is Beulah. Standing there one seems to have the whole world at one's feet. When Petrarch had climbed Mount Ventoux, near Avignon, the first man for half a century to do so, the scene overwhelmed him; thoughts of the deeper meaning of life rose before his mind; he drew from his pocket St. Augustine and read: "Men go about to wonder at the height of the mountains and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers and the circuit of the ocean and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." I never stand on "Beulah" without thinking of this pa.s.sage. Far away to the distant south sh.o.r.e, and up and down the river we can survey a stretch of eighty or ninety miles. We stand in the midst of a sea of mountains and look landward across deep valleys in all directions with the ranges rising tier on tier beyond.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GOLF LINKS AT MURRAY BAY]

Among diversions for men golf, in spite of a certain reaction, has still the chief place. The club house is on the west sh.o.r.e of the bay. One plays out northward. The players zigzag here and there among curious earth mounds formed by the eddying swirl of water when the river's current held high carnival over these level stretches. Then the course leads up to the higher slope and mounts steadily, until, at the farthest hole, a considerable height has been reached. As one turns back towards the river he faces a wonder scene of changing grey and blue and green and white. The smoke of pa.s.sing steamers floats lazily in the air; they take the deep channel by the south sh.o.r.e and are a dozen miles away. It is usually a silent world that one looks out upon; but when there is a north-east wind great green waves come rolling in upon the sandy sh.o.r.e of the bay and fill the air with their undertone.

Even the rainy days have their own pleasures. One is glad of its excuse to sit before a crackling fire of birch wood and read. When the rain has ceased and the sun comes out, looking across to Cap a l'Aigle and up the river valley one sees new beauties. The mist disperses slowly. First it leaves bare the rounded mountain tops; they stand out dark, ma.s.sive, with bases shrouded still in fleecy white. When the sun grows strong, river and valley are soon clear again, though the outlines are still a little softened. Up over the sand and boulders of the bay comes the rising tide changing sombre brown to s.h.i.+ning blue. It rushes noisily across the bar at the bay's mouth a few hundred yards away.

The visitors to this beautiful scene gather year by year from places widely separated and form in this remote village a society singularly cosmopolitan. English, French, Americans, Canadians, all mingle here with leisure to meet and play together. For a time far away seems the hard world of compet.i.tion. Rarely do newspapers arrive until at least the day after publication; the telegraph is used only under urgent necessity; as far as possible business is excluded. The cottages are s.p.a.cious enough but quite simple, with rooms usually divided off only by boards of pine or spruce. Very little decoration makes them pretty.

Gardening has a good many devotees; the long day of suns.h.i.+ne and in some seasons the abundant rain of this northern region help to make vegetation luxurious. If one drives he may take a _planche_--the convenient serviceable "buck-board,"--still unsurpa.s.sed for a country of hills and rough roads. But to me at least the _caleche_ is the more enjoyable. It comes here from old France, a two-wheeled vehicle, with the seat hung on stout leather straps reaching from front to back on each side of the wooden frame. It is not a vehicle for those sensitive to slight jars. The driver sits in a tiny seat in front and one is amazed at the agility with which even old men spring from this perch to walk up and down the steep hills. Their ponies are beautiful little animals, specially fitted by a long development for work in this hilly country. So well do they mount its heights that travellers repeat an unconfirmed tradition of their having been known to climb trees!

It is not strange that in our happy summer days we acquire a deep affection for this northern region, its brilliant colouring, its crisp air. Not its least charm is in the cheerful and kindly people. One would not have them speak any other tongue than their French, preserving here archaic usages, with new words for new things, influenced of course by English, but still the beautiful language of an older France than the France of to-day. The people have their own tragedies. One sees pale women, over-worked. The physician's skill is too little sought; the country ranges are very remote; it is difficult and expensive to get medical aid; and there are deformed cripples who might have been made whole by skill applied in time. Consumption too is here a dread scourge, though against it a strenuous campaign has now begun. Many children are born but too many die. Still, most of the people live in comfort and they enjoy life--enjoy it probably much more than would an Anglo-Saxon community of the same type.

We who are among them in the summer are citizens of another and an unknown world. New York and Chicago, Boston and Was.h.i.+ngton, Toronto and Montreal are to us realities with one or other of which, in some way, each of us is linked. To this simple people they are all merely that outer world whence come their fleeting visitors of summer, as out of the unknown come the migrant birds to pause and rest awhile. We bring with us substantial material benefits; but it is not clear that our moral influence is good. Leaving his farm the habitant brings to the village his horse and caleche to become a hired _charretier_. He often gets good fares but there is much idle waiting. Bad habits are formed and regular industry is discouraged. The cure finds Malbaie a difficult sphere. We alone get unmixed benefit from this fair scene, its days of glad serenity, and of almost solemn stillness, when even a bird's note is heard but rarely.

Because all that concerns it interests us I have tried to put together from scattered fragments the story long forgotten of the past of Malbaie. In it there is abundance of the tragedy never remote from man's life: if the telling of the tale has been a pleasure it has proved not less a sad pleasure. But the story adds only a deeper meaning to our beautiful playground. After all it is man and his activities which give to nature's scenes their deepest interest; Quebec's chief charm is due to Wolfe and Montcalm, St. Helena's to Napoleon. The s.h.a.ggy mountain crests which we view from our valley, the glistening blue river, the strong north-east wind which clouds the sky, turns the river to grey, and sprinkles its surface with white caps,--all are full for us of joyous beauty. But how much less of interest would there be did the white spire of the village church not peep out above the green trees up the bay to tell of man's weakness and his hopes! The story of the brave old soldier who peopled this valley, the pathetic tragedy of his successor's fate, add something here to the bloom of nature. It may be that the chief service of the chequered and half-forgotten past when it speaks is to show how vain and transient is all we think and plan,--"what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue." But be it so.

One would not miss from life this last joy of knowing what it really means.

AUTHORITIES

CHAPTER I.--For Jacques Cartier see his Voyages of 1535-36, in French (Ed. D'Avezac) Paris, 1863, translated into English (Ed. Baxter), New York, 1906. For Champlain see his Oeuvres (Ed. Laverdiere) Quebec, 1870. Bourdon's Act of Faith and Homage is in Canadian Archives, Series M., Vol. I, p. 387. M. B. Sulte gives an account of the Carignan Regiment in the Proc. and Trans. of the Royal Society of Canada for 1902. The account of the Sieur de Comporte in France is in Canadian Archives Series B., F., 213, p. 46; that of the auction sale of his property is in a MS. preserved at Murray Bay, while a record of the sale of Malbaie to the government is in Canadian Archives, Series M., Vol.

LXV, p. 75. "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Doc.u.ments" (Ed. Thwaites) (Cleveland, 1900), Vol. LXIX., pp. 80 _sqq._ contains the account of Malbaie in 1750. The authority for the burning of Malbaie in 1759 is Sir James M. Le Moine, "The Explorations of Jonathan Oldbuck," Quebec, 1889, based upon doc.u.ments printed by "T.C." in _L'Abeille_, Nov. and Dec., 1859. Standard histories of the time such as Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" give references to authorities for the events of the Seven Years'

War.

CHAPTER II.--The "Dictionary of National Biography" contains good articles on Lord Lovat, General Murray, &c., with references to authorities. Alexander Mackenzie's "History of the Frasers of Lovat"

(Inverness, 1896) is the most recent detailed history of the family.

MacLean, "An Historical Account of the Settlement of Scotch Highlanders in America," (Cleveland, 1900), contains valuable information. The portion of the chapter relating to Malbaie is based upon MSS. preserved there in the Murray Bay Manor House.