In almost all the industries of the city you are struck by the ancestral aspect of the trades, the continuance of a business from father to son, or the gradual change of firms by the absorption of partners. Boughman, Thomas & Co., established in a handsome, modern-looking bookstore, represent a business as old as 1793, uninterrupted since the time when the founder, James Wilson, hung the sign of Shakespeare at his door. The young girl of the period, who goes to their place from one of the model seminaries of which Wilmington is so full to buy a little paper for confidential notes or perhaps a delicate valentine, sees the old brown advertisement framed against the wall, and behind it, in sign-painting of her great-grandfather's time, the head of him who wrote Romeo and Juliet.
While in this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers. These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid. The very special attitude of Wilmington, however—a Yankee town in perpetual protest with a Bourbon State—has inspired its press with peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington Commercial: it is not in its columns that you will see ingenious defences of the whipping-post at Newcastle or of the crushing taxes levied at Dover, whereby a lazy State feeds greedily upon a hard-working metropolis. The Commercial (Jenkins & Atkinson) is a staunch Administration sheet, sound on the subject of industrial protection, and highly appreciated by the manufacturers. Founded in 1866, it was, we believe, the sole daily until eighteen months ago, when some of the sober-sided weeklies began to understand that they must bestir themselves and put forth a diurnal appearance. The Gazette (C. P. Johnson), a paper nearly one hundred years old, now appears daily, and expresses the opinions of the State Assembly, where the Senate has but a single Republican member, and the House of Representatives stands fourteen Democrats to seven Republicans. Here the conservative thought of Kent and Sussex counties is kneaded up into the requisite coherency and eloquence. Every Evening (Croasdale & Cameron), a smart paper without political bias, flies around the city as the shadows begin to lengthen, selling at one cent a sheet, and liked by everybody.
To be candid, however, we do not suspect that this unique old city thinks through its newspapers. The circumstances here are so peculiar, the neighborhood so close, activity so concentrated, and the circumjacent neighborhood so little congenial, that an order of things has been established unusual in modern times. Mind acts on mind by personal contact; the strong men meet and support each other; the Board of Trade assembles daily in beautiful rooms, and discusses every interest as quickly as it arises. It is like the order of things of old, ere the press and telegraph undertook to express our views before we had formed them ourselves. We are reminded of the guilds of labor in ancient Flanders or the fondachi of Venice. The State of Delaware, meanwhile, comes up and looks in at the windows, only half satisfied with the rapid fortunes making by the civic trades. What the Delaware yeomen know is, that they have broad acres of sunny land, on which they are perpetually wanting advances of money. They therefore instruct their legislators to fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends! As Florence in Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk and all curious works; Arras in Artois by those fair hangings; many cities in Spain, many in France, Germany, have none other maintenance, especially those within the land.... In most of our cities" (continues the mortified Englishman), "some few excepted, we live wholly by tippling-inns and ale-houses."
The average Delawarean of 1873 is the average Oxford gossip of 1620, with the scholarship left out. But he has the unfortunate advantage for mischief that he is in a position to enact laws over the producers of "all curious works." These anomalies, however, must soon pass away with the march of the age, leaving Wilmington less individual perhaps, but more free.
How deftly, by the by, Burton picks up the distinction between an inland city, living by handicraft, and a port city, handling weighty materials and feeding freely on commerce! His livers by their finger-ends are especially "those within the land." Just so the great capital of France, arbitrarily concentred amongst her provinces, and deprived of a port, can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved articles de Paris. The site now under our consideration, however, means to have no such one-sided success. If her horoscope be not cast amiss, this American Glasgow will both make whatever human ingenuity can make, and she will also distribute. One of the first things she intends to do is to tap the stream of food, fuel and lumber destined for the South, and now laid up in the winter in Philadelphia by the closing of the Delaware, and send it to the Southern consumer by her cheap water-transport. Connected with this enterprise will be the multiplication of her steam colliers, ultimately scattering the crop of breadstuffs to the South Atlantic and Gulf States (if not the Eastern), and coming home with ballast of the varied iron ores those States abound in. When Delaware Bay begins to be whitened with the sails of returning coal-vessels, or lashed with the wheels of steam carriers, bringing in the oxides and magnetite ores of North Carolina and the hematite and other varieties of the extreme South, to mix with the rail-brought ores of interior localities, then Wilmington proposes to be the chosen centre of industry in cast iron. This production, it is now well understood, is no longer carried on most advantageously in the neighborhood of any one great natural deposit of ore. The important thing is to be at a meeting of all varieties of the metal: chemistry then selects the proportions for mixture, and the best stock is produced with scarcely any greater expense than the lowest grade. The situation at the head of Delaware Bay is one where every choice of the ores can be easily swept together by rail or water. It also controls fuel, by both means of carriage, from either of the great anthracite regions—a matter of special importance in this time of "strikes," as the operatives of both districts rarely throw up work at the same time. Wilmington thus proposes to obtain its iron at three dollars per ton less than Pittsburg.
To properly digest these advantages, the city needs a large furnace, centrally located, to work for all the foundries and forges of the place. This construction is now being earnestly advocated, and will doubtless soon take form.
Thus we see the northernmost of the slave-State cities leaping up to catch first the advantages of perfect commercial union under the new regime. Affiliated with the South, inspired by the North, we should watch her as a standard and a type.
Meantime, her labor problem, as a city crammed with proletarians, she meets with consummate tranquillity. The paternal relations between the good old Brandywine millers and their journeymen are continued through the immense operations of the present day. A singular harmony has thus far subsisted between employers and employed: the prosperity and calm which travelers used to praise among the operatives of New England mills are perhaps now best seen here. To this result both Nature and man contribute. The country round about is so bounteous, is such a garden, that the pay of the workman represents a far higher grade of social life than anywhere else in manufacturing regions. Rents so far are low, but a beneficent system is in active operation amongst the working-classes which helps a man to own his own house, and avoid the teasing periodical drain of rent.
This is the associative system, here in faultless operation, by which the fragments of a large piece of ground are paid for by degrees and cleared of all incumbrance in eight or nine years by the profit on the contributed moneys. This plan is assisted by the best men in the town, who participate in the associations, receive themselves a reasonable profit, and supply the credit and advantages necessary for the safety of wholesale enterprises. They have thus far worked with their workmen for the latter's profit, with perfect honor and without a stain of scandal. The great advantage, after all, is to themselves; for a workman owning his own home, accumulating comforts and a family, is indissolubly tied to the city and its peaceful order.
Various plans for the improvement of the workmen are afoot, including a "Holly-Tree Inn" for the supply of harmless refreshment and evening relaxation, the ground for which is bought and a stock-company forming. A public park, for which a beautiful stretch of the Brandywine, on Adams street and north of Levering Avenue, is recommended, is already engaging the attention of the citizens as a necessary provision. A "fountain society" is in active operation, offering cool, wholesome drink to the thirsty workman and the tired beast: the principal of its fountain-structures forms a memorial monument to a young gentleman who had distinguished himself by his liberality in preparing scientific lectures for the free entertainment of the working public. Shut up in the public hall among the materials of his lecture, he was found dead from the result of some solitary experiment—slain by his own kindness. A rich monument to the soldiers and sailors slain in the civil war was unveiled in 1871: it is formed of a pillar from the old United States Bank, surmounted by an eagle cast from captured cannon.
But the best thing a manufacturing town can do for her workman is to educate his children. During the old aristocratic days of Wilmington she was satisfied with the reputation of her private tutors and of her young ladies' seminaries, where "sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair" cultivated cheeks like the surrounding peaches, while they learned Shakespeare, musical glasses and the use of the globes. It was not until 1852 that the Delaware Legislature chartered a board of education for the town. In these twenty years fifteen schools have been put up, with five thousand attenders. Schoolhouse No. 1, shown in the illustration, accommodates four hundred and thirty-six pupils, and furnishes an education, in the words of the late Bishop Potter, "good enough for the richest and cheap enough for the poorest."
The choice streets of the city are filling up with tasteful residences. As a specimen we present the house of Colonel McComb, an old favorite of Wilmington, where his familiar appellation of "Harry McComb" is as often uttered day by day as it was at Washington during the exposure by its owner of Congressional honesty and piety—or magpiety.
A hotel of the first class has been erected, and baptized with the commemorative name of the Clayton House. It has one hundred and five chambers and every improvement. A very characteristic fact, showing the spirit of integrity and goodness which here travels hand in hand with modern enterprise, is that the owners sacrificed full three-quarters of the rent they could have obtained, in order to keep it pledged as a temperance house. Another elegant building has been put up by the Masonic fraternity for their own purposes and those of the Board of Trade, etc., including a handsome opera-house on the ground floor. The auditorium is praised for its acoustic properties by Parepa-Rosa, Wallack, Davenport and other performers, seats about fifteen hundred, and is furnished with the inevitable drop-curtain by Russell Smith. Faced with iron painted white, and very rich in mouldings and ornaments, the building presents as cheery a front to enter as any similar place of attraction known to the American tourist. The Masonic rooms above, and those of the Board of Trade, Historical Society, etc., are provided with every beauty and comfort.
Here are the indications of a prospering, laboring, thinking, virtuous city of the New World. We have tried to sketch it both as a city with a past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that is good in American life?
Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes: her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her mother in the market-place of Aubette.
Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen elsewhere—white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers ranged in a formal row in front of them.
But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young countrymen who came in to Aubette—either to bring mothers and sisters with their produce or to purchase for themselves.
Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly.
There is an extra buzz in the market to-day. It is September, the epoch of the Mascaret, for the dreaded flood-tide seldom visits the Seine more than twice a year, and always draws dwellers in the neighboring towns to see its autumn fury. There is an influx of strange faces in the little place beneath the richly-sculptured spire of Notre Dame—the cathedral of Aubette, as strangers call it, although it is only the parish church of the quaint little town—and a certain extra excitement is communicated to the settlers under the canvas-covered booths and to the humbler sellers of wares in baskets. Mademoiselle Lesage, a short, plump young woman dressed in black, flits in and out of the chattering crowd more busily than usual. Mademoiselle holds herself of a rank above the country-folk who bring in their poultry and garden produce to Aubette. In token of this she wears a round black mushroom-shaped hat, and a holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly for some hundreds of francs. Watch her collecting her dues. She goes rapidly from stall to stall, jingling her pockets, laughing and chatting with the farmers' wives, all the time keeping a hawk's eye on the basket-carriers, not one of whom may presume to sell so much as an onion without the weekly toll of one sou. She darts in and out among them, and her pockets swell out in front as if they were stuffed with apples.
She has left Marie Famette's stall till the last. She crosses over to it now as quickly as she can go, but there is no means of darting in and out here, as there was just now among the basket-women. Old Floris Marceau has covered a good-sized space with his heap of green and yellow melons, and he stands behind these marchandéing, gesticulating, brandishing the knife with which he slices his citrouilles and inveighing against the folly of his customers. "Will mam'selle believe," he says, addressing her as she approaches, and wiping his knife on his often-patched blouse, "they come to buy fruit of a respectable vegetable-seller and they don't know the price of a melon? Ten sous for a cantaloupe like that!" His blue eyes gleamed furiously under his frowning gray eyebrows. "Ten sous! I told them to be off and buy chickens." He broke into a laugh, and pointed to a tall, bent old gentleman, who seemed covered with confusion at this public rebuke, and sidled his way out of the throng without attempting an answer.
"Buy a turkey, m'sieur?" A smiling, dark-eyed woman in a close-setting white cap went on with the joke and pointed to her basket, but the old gentleman had had enough: he hurried away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet then, ne soyez pas bête."
Mademoiselle Lesage approaches Marie's stall at a leisurely pace: she wishes to see her ground before she speaks. By the extra sweetness of her smile one might suppose that mademoiselle loved the gay little beauty: "Bonjour, Marie. Madame Famette trusts you alone again, I see?"
Marie does exactly that which Mademoiselle Lesage intended to make her do: she starts violently and she looks annoyed.
Elise Lesage glances quickly from Marie to the two young men who stand beside her. One of these, tall, well-dressed, with a Jewish face, and a sparkling pin in his brilliant blue scarf, is Alphonse Poiseau, the son of Monsieur Poiseau of the large clockmaker's and jeweler's shop at the corner of the place next the church: the other is Nicolas Marais, a handsome, gypsy-looking fellow with no decided occupation. He is sometimes at work on his uncle's farm at Vatteville, and when he falls out with his uncle and tires of Vatteville he comes across the Seine and gets employed by Léon Roussel, the chief timber-merchant of Aubette.
People say that old Marais, the miser of Vatteville, means to make Nicolas his heir; but Nicolas takes no pains to please the old man: he goes here and there at his pleasure, a favorite wherever he shows his handsome dark eyes and his saucy smile. The men like him as much as the women do, he has such a ready, amusing tongue, and he never says a spiteful word; so that more than one of the keen, observant poultry-sellers standing beside their baskets near Marie's stall have commented on the scowl with which for full five minutes Léon Roussel has regarded Nicolas. Léon Roussel is a middle-sized, in no way remarkable-looking person, with honest brown eyes and a square, sensible face. His father, the wealthy timber-merchant on the Yvetôt road, died when he was a boy, and Léon is one of the most prosperous citizens of Aubette, and well thought of by all. Léon is ostensibly in consultation with Monsieur Houlard, tailor and town councillor, but as he stands at the worthy's shop-door he is raised above the level of the place, and is exactly opposite the stall of Marie Famette.
"Nicolas is out of favor with Monsieur Roussel: he has worked badly in the lumber-yard," says La Mère Robillard.
"Chut! chut!" says her gossip, Madelaine Manget, and she gives at the same time a pat to a refractory chicken. "Nicolas looks too hard at Marie Famette. Ma foi! there are men in the manger as well as dogs. If Monsieur Léon wants Marie to be for his eyes only, why does he not ask for her and marry her, the proud simpleton?"
"Ah, but look you, Madelaine, Léon is not proud: he never turns a poor man from his door without a morsel to quiet hunger, and he must be clever or his business would not prosper."
La Mère Manget shrugs her shoulders. "Will you then not buy turkeys at eleven francs the couple, ma belle dame?" she cries shrilly to a passer-by.
While Marie Famette recovers herself, Nicolas answers Mam'selle Lesage. "Pardon, Mam'selle Lesage, but Mam'selle Marie is not alone," he says, raising his hat with exquisite politeness—Alphonse Poiseau tries to follow suit, but his bow is stiff and pompous—"the whole market is her body-guard, and she permits Monsieur Poiseau and myself to act as sentinels." He throws an insinuating glance at Marie, which deepens the gloom on Léon Roussel's face.
Elise Lesage has taken in the whole situation, and she knows exactly where to look for the timber-merchant. An uneasy consciousness makes Marie follow her glance: she looks red and confused when she sees Léon's stern, disapproving face. His eyes are fixed on her as she looks across, but he withdraws them instantly and turns to Monsieur Houlard.
Marie bites her pretty red under-lip: she can hardly keep from crying: "If we were alone and he scolded me, I would not mind; but he has no right to frown at me before the whole town. It is enough to compromise me. It will be said presently that I am a bold girl, while I only amuse myself, and never move a step from my stall to speak to any one. It is too bad!"
She gulps down a lump in her throat, and gives Nicolas Marais a smile that makes the clockmaker long to knock his rival's head against the gray buttress of the old church.
"Sentinels!" Elise Lesage laughs. "Is Marie afraid, then, that some one will steal her?"
"Marie is afraid of nothing, Mademoiselle Lesage." The little beauty is glad to be able to vent her vexation on some one. "What right has she to call me Marie?" she says to Nicolas in a very audible under-tone.
Mademoiselle's black eyes close till they look like lines: Marie does not see her face, but Nicolas Marais shivers, he hardly knows why.
A restraint has come over the merry trio, and Nicolas abhors restraint. "Tiens!" he says carelessly, "there is a fresh bevy of basket-women, Mam'selle Lesage."
Elise darts off like a greyhound, and Marie forgets her vexation and laughs out merrily at Nicolas's ruse: "She is such a busybody!" The girl glances across to see what has become of Léon: he is talking to Mademoiselle Lesage.
Alphonse Poiseau has kept silence, but he has observed. "I should not like to offend mam'selle," he says, "her eyes are so like a snake's."
Market has come and gone again. Marie Famette was not happy as she went home last Saturday, but to-day her heart aches sorely as she goes along the dusty road to St. Gertrude. Last Saturday was the first market-day this year that Léon Roussel has not helped her into her cart and taken a friendly leave of her; but he disappeared before market was over, and to-day he was not there at all.
"And he might have walked home with me!" Tears are in poor little Marie's eyes. Léon Roussel has seemed her own special property, and he has not been to her mother's house for a fortnight. "And if he had been at market to-day, he would have been content with me: poor Nicolas must be ill indeed to stay away from market. Ma foi! I have been dull alone. Elise Lesage was civil, for a wonder: I hope she will give old Marais's note safely to his nephew. I wonder why she goes to see Nicolas?"
As she says the word a strange foreboding seizes Marie: she cannot tell what causes it, but her old dislike to Elise rises up, mingled with a kind of fear. "I ought to have given Nicolas the note myself; and yet—"
The road is very long and very dusty to-day: it is never an interesting way out of Aubette, except that being cut on the hillside it is raised high, the little river meandering through the osier meadows on the left, and also commands a fine view of the beautiful old church. But Marie does not turn back to look at the church: her heart is too heavy to take interest in anything out of herself. She has left the cart behind to bring out crockery and some new chairs which she has purchased for her mother, and she wishes she had stayed in Aubette till her cargo was packed. All at once a new thought comes, and her eyes brighten. A wood clothes the hilly side of the road, but on the left there is a steep descent into the valley, and the road is bordered either by scattered cottages or by an irregular hawthorn hedge. A little way on there is a gap in this hedge, and looking down there is a long steep flight of steps with wooden edges. At the foot stands a good-sized house divided now into several cottages. The walls are half-timbered with wood set crosswise in the plaster between two straight rows. Ladders, iron hoops and a bird-cage hang against the wall, and over the door is a wooden shelf with scarlet geraniums. There is a desolate garden divided into three by a criss-cross fence and a hedge, and over the last a huge orange citrouille has clambered and lies perched on the top.
Marie knows that Nicolas Marais sometimes lodges in one of the cottages, but she knows too that the property belongs to Léon Roussel, and that he lives close by. A blush comes to the girl's cheeks: she may see Léon there. She stops and looks down: Elise Lesage is coming out of the doorway, but she is talking over her shoulder to some one behind her. Marie sees her put her fingers into one of the brown holland pockets, pull out a note and give it to her companion.
Marie draws a deep breath: "How I wronged her! Ever since I gave her that note I have felt anxious and troubled. She seems so spiteful to me that I feared she might somehow get me into trouble with it, and yet I don't know how."
There were footsteps coming along the road, but Marie did not look round: in the quick revulsion of feeling toward Elise she was eager to make atonement. She leaned on the hand-rail that went down the steps, waiting for Mademoiselle Lesage: if she had listened she would have noticed that the footsteps had come nearer and had suddenly ceased.
Nicolas Marais came forward out of the cottage, and then Elise looked up and saw Marie. She smiled and nodded. "I am coming," she called up in her rasping voice; and she did seem in high haste to get to Marie Famette, but Marie saw that she looked beyond her at some one or something else. The girl looked over her shoulder, and there was Léon Roussel, but he did not care to look at her. His eyes were fixed sternly on Nicolas Marais, but Nicolas did not seem to care for his employer's anger: he was smiling rapturously up at Marie, and as she now looked at him he first kissed his hand and then put the note to his lips and kissed it twice.
Marie grew crimson. Elise, who had just reached the top of the steps, laughed, and Léon Roussel stood an instant pale and defiant, and then turned back toward Aubette.
"Stay, stay, Monsieur Léon!" Elise darted after him; then, stopping suddenly, she nodded back at Marie: "Stop and talk to Nicolas, mon enfant: I will make it all right for you with Monsieur Roussel;" and she hurried on in pursuit.
But Marie was too angry with Nicolas to give him even a moment: "How dare he kiss his hand to me? And oh, Léon will think that I wrote that note to him, and how can I ever tell him the truth? Will Elise Lesage tell him?"
She had just a faint hope; and then she reproached herself. Why should not Mademoiselle Lesage tell the truth? She was cross and spiteful, but then, poor thing! she was old and ugly. "And it may be," Marie thought, "that one is not half thankful enough for one's gifts, and that it is very irritating to be plain. It is Alphonse Poiseau who has made me think evil of Elise, and one should not cherish evil thoughts."
Marie went home happier and lighter-hearted: that little glimpse of Léon had quieted the sore longing at her heart, and at first the joy of having seen him made her dwell less on his stern looks and his avoidance of herself.
She came to the broad grassed turning that leads off the main road to St. Gertrude. A saddled donkey was grazing on one side, and on the other an old woman sat on a stone post. She jumped up when she saw Marie. She had looked tall as she sat: she was as broad as she was long now she stood erect in her dark striped gown and black jacket, and white cap with its plain border and lappets pinned together over her forehead.
"Well, well, well!" She spoke in a short bustling voice—a voice that would have been cheering if it had been less restless. "Hast thou then seen Léon Roussel, Marie? Hast thou learned the reason of his absence?"
Marie's tender, sweet look vanished: she tossed her pretty head and pouted: "Léon was not at the market, but I saw him as I came home; only he was not close to me, so we did not speak."
"Didst thou see that vaurien Nicolas?"
"Yes, I saw him."
Marie blushed, and her mother burst out into angry words: "Foolish, trifling child that thou art! thou lovest that black-eyed gypsy boy; and for him, the idle vagabond, thou hast flung away the best parti in Aubette. Ciel! what do I say? In Bolbec itself there is no one with better prospects than Léon Roussel." Madame Famette always failed in managing her daughter.
Marie smiled and kept down her indignation. "I hardly know that," she said: "old Marais will make Nicolas his heir, and there is no saying how rich a miser is." She crossed the road, caught the donkey by the bridle, and held him ready for her mother to mount.
Madame Famette went on grumbling, but Mouton the donkey soon drew her anger on himself; and by the time the three reached the triangle of gray, half-timbered cottages which surround the old church of St. Gertrude, the easy, sieve-like nature of the woman had recovered from its vexation.
"Holà, Jeanne, Jeanne! run there and take Mouton from Mam'selle Marie, who is tired with the market. Come, thou, mon cher, and tell me the news." Madame Famette rolled off her donkey, and then rolled on into the house.
Marie Famette was ill—much too ill to go to market.
"I will go. Do not vex thyself, my child, and I will see our good doctor and bring thee back a tisane." The bustling woman, with her blue eyes and light eyelashes, bent down and kissed Marie's forehead, and then departed.
"A tisane!" The bright blue eyes were so dull and languid now, half closed by the heavy white eyelids. "I wonder if even Doctor Guéroult is wise enough to cure the heart when it aches like mine? Ah, Léon, I did not think you could be so hard, so cruel; and how could he know, how could he see into my heart, while I stood laughing so foolishly with Nicolas and Monsieur Poiseau? If Elise Lesage had not teased me about Léon, it might have been different, but I could not let her think I cared for him after what she said." She leaned back her head and cried bitterly.
Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought. Léon Roussel had begun to be a regular Sunday visitor at the cottage, and now three weeks and more had gone by and he had not come; and a gossip who had walked home from church with her overnight had told Madame Famette that Mam'selle Lesage was going to marry a Monsieur Roussel: whether it was Léon or a Monsieur Roussel of some other place than Aubette her gossip could not affirm; and in this uncertainty the mother's heart was troubled. She was very proud of Marie's beauty and graceful ways, and she had thought it a just tribute when the young timber-merchant had asked her permission to call at the cottage; and now, just when she had been expecting that his aunt, La Mère Thérèse, the superior of the Convent du Sacré Coeur in Aubette, would send for her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Léon Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the gossip about Elise Lesage.
"I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion.
The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does not seem itself without Marie Famette."
Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.
Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual.
She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry with Elise Lesage?"
Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend! what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear—that is but convenable—but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?"
Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le curé."
Madame Houlard had felt unwilling to tell her news, but this aggravating sentence goaded it out of her mouth: "It is to Monsieur Roussel, the timber-merchant, that Elise Lesage is to be married: see, he is talking to her now." There is a slight tone of satisfaction in Madame Houlard's smooth voice, and yet in her heart she is sorry for her friend's disappointment. All the market-place of Aubette had given Léon Roussel to the charming Marie.
"Léon Roussel! Why, she is as old as he is—older; and, ma foi! how ugly! and her parents—no one knows where they came from; and she—she is nothing but a money-grubber."
The day was tedious to Madame Famette. She tried to speak to Léon, but he avoided her with a distant bow. There was not even Alphonse Poiseau to help her: only little Pierre Trotin came and carried her baskets to the donkey-cart. She called at the doctor's house, but she could not see him. Madame Famette's heart had not been so heavy since her husband died. "It is that serpent"—she wiped her eyes on a huge blue-and-yellow pocket handkerchief—"who has done it all; and my poor unsuspecting child has flirted with Nicolas, and made the way easy. Ciel! what do I know? It is possible that Marie loves Nicolas, and is willing to throw herself away on a vaurien with a pair of dark eyes; and the news will not grieve her as it has grieved me."
She met her servant Jeanne at the entrance of the road, and gave up the donkey-cart to her care. Then she went on sorrowfully and silently to find Marie. The door stood ajar, just as she had left it. She went in more quietly than usual, but Marie heard her. The girl sat just where her mother had left her: the loaf of bread lay untouched. It was plain that Marie had gone without breakfast. Her face was very pale, and her eyes fixed strainingly on her mother, but she did not speak.
Madame Famette's vexation had made her cross, and Marie's pale face increased her trouble: "How naughty thou art then, Marie! I set thee a knife and a plate: thou hadst but to stretch out thy hand. Ciel! but the market tires!" She cut a slice of bread for her daughter, and then she seated herself.
"Mother"—Marie bent forward and shaded her eyes with her hand—"didst thou see Léon Roussel?"
Madame's shoulders went up to her ears in a heave of disgust: "Thou mayest as well know it, Marie: Léon Roussel is promised to Elise Lesage, and they were together in the market. See what thy folly has caused!"
But Marie scarcely heard her mother's reproaches. The blood flew up to her face, and then it left her paler than before. She bent lower—lower yet, until she overbalanced and fell like a crushed lily at her mother's feet.
"How is Marie Famette?" Monsieur Houlard the tailor asks of Monsieur Guéroult the doctor of Aubette, as he meets him hurrying through the Rue de la Boucherie.
"She is better, the poor child! but she must be careful this winter." Then, seeing Houlard look anxious, the good doctor says, "But she is so far better that I have discontinued my visits: I have given Marie leave to come to Aubette."
"That is good news," says Houlard as the doctor shoots past him, and the tailor tells the next person he meets that Marie Famette is as well as ever, and is coming to market as usual.
It is Léon Roussel to whom he tells this, and Monsieur Houlard is pained at the young man's want of interest.
"One would have thought," he says to his wife when he reaches his shop, "that Roussel was displeased with Marie for recovering her health."
"Perhaps he thinks she will make a fool of herself, now she is well again, by marrying Nicolas Marais: I hear they are lovers."
"It is a pity," says the dutiful husband. "Girls should not choose for themselves. You did not, my dear, and that is why our life has gone so easily."
But Marie is not really as strong as the doctor pronounces her to be: her cheeks are hollow, and the color on them is feverish and uncertain. If she could get away from home she would have more chance of mending. Madame Famette's sorrow at her daughter's changed looks expands itself in querulous remonstrance on the folly of flirting and on the good-for-nothing qualities of Nicolas Marais. Nicolas has come to inquire for Marie, but Madame Famette has received him so uncourteously that the poor fellow contents himself with hovering about on the chance of meeting Marie alone. But he never sees her, although the rumor grows strong in St. Gertrude, and is wafted on to Aubette, that Nicolas and Marie will be married as soon as she gets well enough to see about wedding-clothes.
It is the beginning of October, a bright clear morning. The red and yellow leaves come swiftly to the ground with a sudden snap from the twigs that held them: the rabbits move about briskly, and a couple of field-mice in search of winter stores run across the road nearly under Marie's feet. Marie's cheeks are rosy with the fresh, crisp air, but she does not look gay or happy. Life seems to have got into a hard knot which the poor little girl finds no power to untie. Market-day used to be a fête to Marie, but to-day she considers it a penance to be sent in to Aubette. She is not going to hold her stall—ah no, she is not nearly strong enough for such a task—but Madame Famette has a severe attack of rheumatism, and Jeanne cannot be trusted to buy the weekly provision of groceries. Marie shrinks as she goes along at the thought of meeting Léon Roussel. There is another thought, which she will not face—that it is possible Léon and Elise Lesage will be together in the market-place. "I need not go into the Grande Place at all," the poor child says. "I can get all I want in the Rue des Bons Enfants;" and she goes there when she reaches Aubette.
But Marie has miscalculated her strength. She grows suddenly so white that Monsieur le Blanc, the épicier of the Rue des Bons Enfants, takes her into his daughter's room and makes her lie down on the little sofa. Marie lies there with widely-opened eyes, wondering how she shall get back to St. Gertrude.
"You are to lie still till Thérèse comes back from market," the old man says, "and then she will arrange about your going home."
Marie lies gazing dreamily at the blue-papered ceiling. "I used to think Thérèse le Blanc a cross old maid," she ponders: "shall I be a cross old maid too?" And then the pale, stricken girl holds up her thin hand and sighs: "I shall not be old: I shall die soon. Poor mother! she will forgive Nicolas when I am gone away."
There is a bustle in the shop, but Marie does not heed it. She smiles when Thérèse comes in, but she is too weak to talk—too weak to make any objection when she hears that a farmer who lives some miles beyond St. Gertrude has undertaken to convey her in his huge green-hooded wagon as far as the cross-road.
Thérèse stands over her while she eats a piece of bread and drinks a glass of wine, and then the farmer, a stout old Norman in a gray blouse, helps her into the back of the wagon, and makes a resting-place for her on some of the hay still left unsold, under the lofty arched roof.
"Get up my friend, get up: you will reach Yvetôt sooner if I give you a lift than if you wait. The diligence does not leave Aubette till six o'clock, remember, and my old horses get over the ground surely if not quickly."
Marie rouses from a sort of doze, but she cannot see the farmer or the wayfarer to whom he speaks: a pile of new fruit-baskets fills up the middle of the huge vehicle, and makes a wall between Marie and the driving-seat.
"Well, mon gars, it is a long time since I saw you, and the town-gossip of Aubette tells me more of your affairs than you ever condescend to inform your cousin of. Your mother was different, Léon. Dame! I could never pass her door after your father died but she would stop my wagon and ask me for just five minutes' counsel. But you young ones are all alike: the world has got a new pivot, it seems, for this generation, and it will move round more easily when we graybeards are all kicked out."
"I don't think so, for one." Marie had known she must hear Léon Roussel's voice, and yet her heart throbbed at his first words. "But, my cousin, what is the news that thou hast learned about me in Aubette?"
"Well, the news varies: sometimes I hear thee coupled with one girl, and then again with another, till I do not know what to think, Léon. I am afraid thou art fickle."
There was a pause. Marie raised herself on one elbow and listened breathlessly: it never came to her mind that she was listening to talk not intended for her ears.
"Well, man"—the farmer seemed nettled—"why not speak out and say thou art promised to old Lesage's daughter?"
"Because I am not promised to her."
Marie stifled a sob. It seemed as if her heart could not much longer hold in its agitation, she longed so intensely for the farmer's next question and for Léon's answer.
"Art thou promised to the beauty of the market, the little Marie?"
There was no pause this time. Léon's words came out rapidly with bitter emphasis: "Marie Famette is going to marry Marais of Vatteville."
"Marry! Ma foi! I hear the girl is very ill. I forget—there is a sick girl in the wagon now."
It seemed to the listener that Léon spoke heedless of the farmer's last words: "Once again the town-gossip has deceived you, Michel. I heard a week ago, and Houlard had just learned it from the Doctor Guéroult, that Marie Famette is as well and gay as ever. I believe she has come back to the market."
No reply. The silence that followed oppressed Marie: a sense of guilt stole over her. It was not likely that old Michel Roussel knew who she was when he helped her into the wagon: she remembered now that Léon had told her of his rich cousin at Yvetôt; she knew she must get out soon, and then Léon would see her and know that she had heard him. She felt sick with shame. Would it not have been more honest to have betrayed her presence? It was too late now. "And I could not—I have not the courage." Marie crouched closer under the wall of baskets.
Suddenly, Léon spoke. "Well, Michel, I will get out here," he said.
The wagon stopped. Marie heard farewells exchanged, and then on they jogged again to St. Gertrude.
Marie's heart was suddenly stilled: its painful throbbing and fluttering had subsided—it sank like lead. Léon was gone, and she had flung away her only chance of telling him that Nicolas Marais never had been—never could be—more to her than a friend.
"Oh what a fool I am! I may often see him, but how can I say this? And just now the way was open!"
When Farmer Roussel stopped the wagon again, and came round to the back to help Marie out, he found her sobbing bitterly.
"Here we are at St. Gertrude, but—Ma foi! but this is childish, ma belle," he said kindly, "to go spoiling your pretty eyes because you feel ill. Courage! you will soon be well if you eat and drink and keep a light heart." He helped her down tenderly, and shook both her hands in his before he let her go. "Well," he said as he rolled up on to the seat, "I wonder I had not asked for a kiss. She is rarely pretty, poor child!"
Marie stood still just where she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope—the hope given by disbelief in Léon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Léon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Léon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a kind of desperation: she would go and seek Léon, and tell him the truth that some one had set on foot this false report of her promise to Nicolas Marais. She turned again toward the high-road, and then her heart sank. How could she seek Léon? He did not love her, and if she made this confession would it not be a tacit owning of love for himself? The weight at her heart seemed to burden her limbs: she dragged on toward home wearily and slowly.
The road turns suddenly into St. Gertrude, and takes a breathing-space at a sharp angle with a breadth of grass, bordered by a clump of nut trees. Before Marie reached the nut trees she saw Léon Roussel standing beside them. She stopped, but he had been waiting for her coming: he came forward to meet her.
When he saw her face he looked grieved, but he spoke very coldly: "I have been to your cottage to inquire for you"—he raised his hat, but he made no effort to take her hand—"and then I heard you were expected home from Aubette. I did not know how ill you had been till to-day, Marie: I had been told you were quite recovered."
His cold, hard manner wounded her: "Oh, I am better, thank you;" but as she spoke her sight grew dizzy: she would have fallen if Léon had not caught her in his arms. She felt that he clasped her closely for an instant, and then he loosed his hold.
"Thank you!" She freed herself. "I am better. I will go home now, Monsieur Roussel."
He took off his hat mechanically, and Marie turned toward St. Gertrude.
But she did not move: she had no power to go forward. An impulse stronger than her will was holding her. She looked round: Léon had not moved—he stood with his eyes fixed on the ground.
"I must tell you something," she said. Léon started: he had never heard Marie speak in such a humble tone. "I was in the wagon just now, and I listened to your talk with Monsieur Michel." Her cheeks grew crimson. "But, Monsieur Roussel, you are in error about me. Nicolas Marais is my friend"—Léon's face grew so stern that her eyes drooped and her voice faltered—"but he will never be more to me. He has always been my friend."
Léon came close to her and took her hand: "Marie"—his voice was so harsh and severe that she shrunk from him—"you must tell the truth, and you must not be angry if I doubt you. My child, did I not see Nicolas kiss the letter you sent him, and look at you as he kissed it?"
"Did Elise Lesage tell you I wrote that letter?" But Marie's fear had left her. She smiled up at her lover, once more his own arch, bright Marie: "How dared you believe her, Léon? I have a great mind not to tell you the truth."
But Léon Roussel was satisfied, for while she spoke his arm had folded round her again, and he was much too happy to trouble himself about Nicolas Marais.
Léon and Marie are to be married in November, and Mam'selle Lesage has been so indisposed that for two consecutive Saturdays she has sent a deputy to collect sous in the market of Aubette.
Katharine S. Macquoid.
Fifty years ago, when the manners and habits of the Americans were very different from what they now are, there lived in Boston two gentlemen so far in advance of their age as to devote much time to shooting and fishing. These pursuits were denounced by the Puritans and their descendants as a sinful waste of time, and there is a letter extant from one of the early Massachusetts governors, in which he reproaches himself for indulging in "fowling," the rather because, as he confesses, he failed to get any game. These two bold Bostonians were wont to go to Scotland for salmon-fishing, having a belief that the salmon of the American rivers were too uncultivated in their taste to rise at a fly. However this may have been in 1820, the salmon of the Dominion are to-day as open to the attractions of a well-tied combination of feathers and pig's-wool, as those of the rivers of Norway or Scotland; and as, under the protection which the Canadian rivers now enjoy, the fish are becoming plentiful, sport is offered in the numerous streams which flow into the St. Lawrence, the Bays of Chaleur and Miramichi, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, probably superior to any now to be found elsewhere.
Having last year paid a visit to one of these beautiful rivers, I propose to give an account of my introduction to the art and mystery of salmon-fishing, to the end that other anglers, whose exploits have hitherto been confined to the capture of a pound trout or a four-pound pickerel, may know the joy of feeling the rush of a twenty-pound salmon fresh run from the sea—the most brilliant, active and vigorous of the finny tribes, the king of the river, using the term in its original sense—the strongest, the ablest, the most cunning. A late writer on English field-sports says: "I assert that there is no single moment with horse or gun into which is concentrated such a thrill of hope, fear, expectation and exultation as that of the rise and successful striking of a heavy salmon."
And first, let me say something of the system of protection to these fisheries adopted by the Canadian government, which renders this sport possible. Finding that under the constant slaughter of salmon and trout, by the Indians with spears and by the whites with nets, the fish were becoming not only scarce, but in danger of extinction, the government interfered, and a few years ago passed laws the effects of which are already apparent. Certainly, a paternal government is sometimes a good thing. On our side the line a ring of wealthy men, with a large capital in nets, seines, pounds, etc., will, as has been seen in Rhode Island, depopulate a coast in a few years of its food-fishes, leaving nothing for increase; and when the poor fishermen, whose living depends on these free gifts of God, ask for protection from the legislature, the ring is too powerful, one of its members being perhaps governor of the State.
In the year 1858 the colonial government resumed possession of all the salmon and sea-trout fisheries in Lower Canada, and after the enactment of a protective law offered them for lease by public tender. A list is given of sixty-seven salmon rivers which flow into the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, and of nine which flow into the Bay of Chaleur. There are also tributaries of these, making over one hundred rivers which by this time contain salmon, and many of them in great abundance. Licenses are granted by the government for rod-fishing in these rivers on payment of sums ranging from one hundred to five hundred dollars the season for a river, according to its size, accessibility, etc. These rivers are generally taken by parties of anglers, but of late I learn that licenses for single rods have been granted, so that all may be accommodated. Applications for a river or part of one can be made to Mr. William F. Whitcher of Ottawa, who is at the head of the Fisheries Department. Our party of four persons had obtained, through the courtesy of Messrs. Brydges and Fleming of the Intercolonial Railway of Canada, the upper part of the Restigouche, a river flowing into the Bay of Chaleur, and one of the best in the Dominion. Three of us had never killed a salmon, though we were familiar with other kinds of fishing. We had, however, for teacher one who for fifty years had been a salmon-fisher—first as a boy in Ireland, and since that for many years in Canada, in most of whose rivers he had killed salmon. As an angler he was a thorough artist, as a woodsman he was an expert, and as a companion he was most agreeable. Among the Indians, who have the habit of naming every person from some personal trait, he was known as "the Kingfisher," and by that name I shall call him. The second of our party, who procured the right of fishing the Restigouche, and made up the party, I shall call Rodman, which suits him both as fisherman and in his professional character of engineer. The third, being a tall man of rather military aspect, we knew as "the Colonel;" and the fourth, who writes this narrative, shall be called "the Scribe."
Behold us, then, at Quebec in the last week of June, making our preparations—laying in stores for camping out, and buying fishing-tackle, which for this kind of sport is best procured in Canada. On the 25th of June our thirty-one packages were on board the steamer Miramichi, piled on the upper deck, with many more of the same appearance—tents, buffalo robes, camp-chests, salmon-rods and gaff-handles—belonging to other parties bound on the same errand as ourselves. Three were British officers going to the Upsalquitch, men of the long-whiskered, Dundreary type, who soon let us know with many haw-haws that they had fished in Norway, and had killed salmon on the estate of my Lord Knowswho in Scotland, while guests of that nobleman. There were two Londoners in full suits of tweed, with Glengarry bonnets, who were bound to the Cascapediac: they tried to imitate the bearing of the military men; and why not? As Thackeray says, "Am I not a snob and a brother?" There was a party of Americans on their way to a Gaspé river—veteran anglers, who had frequented these rivers for some years. The rest of the company was made up of Canadians from Montreal and Quebec, many of them pleasure-seekers—stout elderly men, with equally full-fed, comfortable-looking wives, and rosy-faced daughters with straight, slender figures, by and by to emulate the rounded proportions of their mammas. The young men were mostly equipped with white canvas shoes and veils twisted round their hats—for what purpose I have not been able to discover, but it seems to be the correct thing for the Canadian tourist.
Four hundred and fifty miles from Quebec we reach the entrance of Gaspé Bay, at the head of which fine sheet of water, in a landlocked harbor, stands the town of Gaspé, distinguished as the place where Jacques Cartier landed in 1534. It is now a great fishing-station, employing thousands of men along the coast in the cod-fishery. Here are fine scenery, clear bracing air, good sea-bathing, excellent salmon- and trout-fishing and a comfortable hotel. What more can a well-regulated mind desire? Into Gaspé Bay flow the Dartmouth, the York and the St. John—good salmon-rivers, while both they and the smaller streams abound with sea-trout and brook-trout. Thirty miles south of Gaspé is the little town of Perce, also a fishing-station. Near this stands a rock of red sandstone, five hundred feet long and three hundred high, with an open arch leading through it, under which a boat can pass. It stands a mile from the shore in deep water, and its top affords a secure breeding-place for hundreds of sea-fowl.
South of Gaspé Bay we pass the mouths of the Bonaventure and the Grand and Little Cascapediac—rivers well stocked with salmon—and reach Dalhousie on the Bay of Chaleur about midnight on the 28th. We land in a small boat in the darkness, and soon find ourselves at the comfortable tavern of William Murphy, where we breakfast the next morning on salmon-trout and wild strawberries. The town contains about six hundred inhabitants, and has a pleasant seat along the bay. Its principal industry seems to be lumber, or deals, which mean three-inch plank, in which shape most of the pine and spruce exported from the Dominion find their way to England. Here they also put up salmon and lobsters for the American market—America meaning the United States. Two steamers touch here weekly, and there is a daily mail and telegraphic communication with the outside world. A few tourists, mostly from Montreal and Quebec, fill two or three small boarding-houses.
The next morning we started in wagons for Matapedia, thirty miles up the river, where we expected to secure canoes and Indians for our trip to the upper waters of the Restigouche. Our road was good, following a terrace about fifty feet above the river, which here is about a mile in width, and flows placidly through a wide valley, with high hills on both sides covered with a growth of spruce and cedar. Fifteen miles above Dalhousie, at the head of navigation for large vessels, lies the village of Campbellton. Here the character of the river changes: it becomes more narrow and rapid, the hills come down closer to the shore, and it assumes the features of a true salmon-river. It was formerly one of the most famous in the provinces, and the late Robert Christie, for many years member for Gaspé, used to take two thousand tierces of salmon annually from the Restigouche.
Here we fall in with the Intercolonial Railway, which has its western terminus at Rivière du Loup, below Quebec, and its eastern at Halifax. The line is to cross the river at Matapedia on an iron bridge, and follow down the valley. About 1 p. m. we crossed the ferry in a row-boat, just below Fraser's hotel. The river is deep, swift and very clear, with a rocky bank, from which they are getting out stone for the abutments of the bridge. This bridge, and another similar one where the line crosses the Miramichi, are building at Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and we saw at Campbellton a large bark discharging her cargo, consisting of the bridge-work ready to set up.
We arrived at Fraser's in time to partake of a fine boiled salmon, and we observe a constant improvement in this fish. Those in Montreal were better than those in the States; those in Quebec still better; those we ate on board the Gulf steamer a shade finer still. At Dalbousie we thought that salmon had reached perfection, but were undeceived by those upon Fraser's table, which far surpassed all that we had yet tasted in succulence and flavor.
We had hoped to go up the river on the morrow, Saturday, but found it was a great festival of the Catholic Church, and the Indians would not start till Monday. Great was the indignation of the British officers who were preparing to go up the other river. To be delayed by the religious scruples of an Indian was too absurd. But even the "superior race" had to submit. So the next day we all went down the river trout-fishing.
I went about two miles to the "flat lands," and fished some pretty pools and rapids: the day was very bright and hot, so that I thought the trout would not rise to a fly, and I put on a small spoon, which I dropped into the rapids at the end of a long rod. After catching three or four they grew suspicious, and I changed my lure for an artificial minnow, and with it I had better success, though I have often tried it in Western trout-streams ineffectually. I got about a dozen, from four ounces to a pound weight: they were sea-trout, Salmo Canadensis, and the first of that species that I ever saw. They are handsome and active fish, lighter in color than the brook-trout, with silvery sides and belly. The flesh is red like a salmon, and is of higher flavor, I think, than that of Salmo fontinalis. My companions, Rodman and Kingfisher, both used the fly, and got, I think, more fish than I did.
The next day, June 30th, was Sunday, and the law of the Dominion prohibits fishing on that day. The weather was intensely hot, and we stayed in the house and enjoyed the fine scenery all about us. At night a heavy thunder-storm cooled the air for our next day's journey.
July 1. Our canoes and Indians arrived this morning about ten o'clock, and instead of being shepherds of the forest, with their blankets tied with yellow strings, they had no blankets at all, but wore coats and trowsers—yea, even boots, which I had always been told had no business in a canoe. There were four bark canoes and eight Mic-macs—one boat for each of us—and as we had a large amount of baggage and provisions, it was thought best to send off the canoes with these, while we went in wagons across a great bend of the river to the house of Mr. John Mowatt, the river overseer. We crossed the Matapediac in a dug-out: this is a tributary of the Restigouche, which comes in at Fraser's. On the other side we found wagons which took us to Mowatt's, seven miles over the hills, arriving at 4 p. m. The canoes arrived about sunset, having come twelve miles since noon against a strong current.
July 2. Starting in the morning at sunrise, the canoes took us six miles by seven o'clock, when we stopped in the woods for breakfast. The river has a very strong current, and from two to three miles an hour is all that can be done against it with setting-poles when there is a heavy load in the canoe. In places the water was too shallow even for a bark, and the men stepped over-board and lifted her along. The Restigouche is a beautiful river, with few islands or obstructions of any kind: the water is perfectly transparent, and very cold—the chosen haunt of the salmon. We see few houses or farms: rounded hills, from three to nine hundred feet high, border the stream, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, which is free from bushes or fallen trees. These are probably all swept away by the ice in the spring freshets. The hills somewhat resemble those on the Upper Mississippi, except that here there are none of those cliffs of yellow limestone which are remarkable on the great river of the West. About eight miles farther on we stopped for dinner near a cold brook, from which I took half a dozen trout. In the afternoon we proceeded five or six miles, and then camped for the night upon a rocky beach, and, though somewhat annoyed by the sand-flies, we slept well upon our beds of spruce boughs.
July 3. Broke camp at 5 a. m., and went up six miles to a place called Tom's Brook, where we breakfasted. Here I killed a dozen trout with the spoon. Six miles from Tom's Brook we came to the first salmon-pool, of which there were six in the portion of the river assigned to us—viz.: First, Big Cross Pool; second, Lower Indian-house Pool; third, Upper Indian-house Pool; fourth, Patapediac Pool, called by the Indians Paddypajaw; fifth, Red Bank Pool; sixth, Little Cross Pool. These pools are the places where the salmon rest in their journey from the sea to the headwaters of the river. They are usually in spots where there is a strong but not violent current, perhaps six or eight feet deep, running off to shoal water on one side of the river. The pools have been found by the Indians, who search for them by night with torches, which show the fish as they lie near the bottom, and they do not differ materially in appearance from other parts of the river where no salmon are to be found.
The salmon is what is called anadromous—that is, though an inhabitant of the ocean for most of the year, it ascends the fresh-water rivers in summer to spawn. In this function it is guided by curious instincts. The female deposits her eggs in swift shallow water at the heads of streams, in trenches dug by herself and the male fish in the gravelly bottom; but it must not be fresh gravel: it must have been exposed to the action of water for at least two years, or they will have none of it; and if a freshet should bring new gravel from the banks, they will abandon the place and seek for new spawning-grounds. It is only when the salmon are resting in these pools that they will take a fly.
The first pool was at a point where the river made a short turn around a large rock: the current was swift, with a hole at the foot of the rapid perhaps twenty feet deep, with a rock bottom. Here our leader, Kingfisher, rigged his salmon-rod, put on two flies and began to cast. I trolled in the swift water as we proceeded, and with my spoon took a few small trout. A salmon rose to the fly of Kingfisher, but was not hooked; this was the first fish that we saw. (The term "fish" is always applied to the salmon by anglers: other inhabitants of the water are spoken of as "trout" or "bass;" a salmon is a "fish.") Although we had seen none before, our keen-eyed Indians had seen many as we came up the river.
We then went on to the Lower Indian-house Pool, two miles farther, and Kingfisher made a few casts; but raising no fish, we went up a mile farther to our camping-ground, an island between the two pools, having plenty of wood upon it, with a cold spring brook close by—an old and famous camping-place for salmon-fishers—and here we intended to make our permanent quarters. We had four tents—one to sleep in, fitted with mosquito-bars; one for an eating-tent, with canvas top and sides of netting: in it was a rough table and two benches, hewed out with an axe by one of our men. There was also a tent for storing provisions and for the cook, for we had brought with us a man for this important office. A fourth tent for the Indians, and a cooking-stove with camp-chests and equipage, completed our outfit, which all belonged to Kingfisher, and represented the results of many years' experience in camping out. The cooking-stove is made of sheet iron and packs in a box, and is one of the most valuable utensils in the woods.
It took the rest of the day to make the camp, and in the evening Kingfisher and the Colonel went in their canoe to the lower pool, and the former killed two salmon, weighing eighteen and twenty-two pounds. These, our first fish, were objects of much interest to us new hands. The Colonel took his first lesson in salmon-fishing, and thought he could do it himself.
July 4. We proposed to celebrate this day by each of us killing a salmon, but I thought it would be prudent first to go out with Kingfisher and see how he did it, before attempting it myself. So I got into his canoe, and the Indians paddled us to Upper Pool, within sight of our camp but for a bend in the river. Kingfisher had the canoe anchored within casting distance of the channel, and there, as he sat in the bottom of the boat, he made his casts with a nineteen-foot rod, first about twenty-five feet, and rapidly letting out more line he increased the length of his casts to sixty feet perhaps, the big salmon-flies falling lightly on the water, first across the channel to the right; then letting the current take the flies down to the end of the line, he drew them round to the left in a circle; then raising them slowly from the water, he repeated the process, thus fishing over all the water within his reach. Now the Indians raise the anchor and let the canoe drop down a few feet. At the first cast after this change of ground a bulge in the water showed where a salmon had risen at the fly and missed it. "We will rest him for five minutes," said Kingfisher, and lighted his pipe for a smoke. Then he changed his fly for a larger and more brilliant one, and at the first cast a big fish rolled over at the fly and went off with a rush, making the reel whiz.
"I've got him," said Kingfisher, calmly putting up his pipe and bringing his rod to a nearly perpendicular position, which threw a great strain on the mouth of the salmon from the spring of the rod. He ran about twenty-five yards, and then leaped six feet into the air. Kingfisher dropped the point of his rod as the fish leaped, and then raised it as the salmon went away with twenty yards more of line.
"Up anchor, Hughey: we must follow him." So they plied their paddles after the salmon, who was making down stream, Kingfisher reeling up his line as fast as possible. Up went the salmon again, striking at the line with his tail as he came down; but this trick failed, and he then sulked, by diving into the depths of the river and remaining there motionless for half an hour. Suddenly he rose and made for the heavy current, from which Kingfisher tried to steer him into the still water near the shore, where it was about three feet deep, and where he could be played with more safety. After about forty minutes' play the fish was coaxed alongside the canoe, evidently tired out and having lost his force and fury, when Hughey struck the gaff into him near the tail, and lifted him into the canoe, where he struggled very little, so nearly beaten was he.
"About nineteen pounds, I think," said Kingfisher, who from long experience could name the weight of a fish very correctly.
Returning to the spot where he had hooked the fish, Kingfisher after a few casts rose and hooked another, which he killed in twenty-five minutes—a fish of twelve pounds. After seeing the method of this artist I was presumptuous enough to suppose that I could do it also, and I determined to open the campaign the next day.
July 5. Bent on salmon-killing, I was off this morning at five, hoping to bring home a fish for breakfast. The Upper Indian-house Pool is for Rodman and me to-day, the others going to Patapedia, three miles above. Kingfisher fitted me out with a Castle Connell rod, quite light and pliable, with which he has killed many a fish; a click reel, which obliges the fish to use some force in getting out the line: of this I have one hundred yards of oiled silk, with a twelve-feet gut casting-line, to the end of which is looped a brilliant creature almost as large as a humming-bird—certainly the likeness of nothing inhabiting earth, air or water. Mike and Peter, my Indians, took me to the pool, and I began casting at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. I had fished but a few yards of water when the quick-eyed Peter cried, "Lameau!" which is Mic-mac for salmon. He had seen the rise of the fish, which I had not. And here I may observe that good eyes are necessary to make a salmon-fisher, and a near-sighted person like the Scribe can never greatly excel in this pursuit. All the salmon which I hooked fastened themselves: I had only this part in it, that I was the fool at one end of the rod. I waited five minutes, according to rule, and cast again. "Habet!" There can be no mistake this time: my eyes were good enough to see the savage rush with which he seized my fly and plunged with it down to the depths.