or for a birch-bark canoe journey away into the wilderness. The head waters of Miramichi tributaries are within comparatively easy portages of the St. John and the Tobique Rivers on the other side of the province. In 1825 scores of lives and 3,000,000 acres of Miramichi Valley forest were destroyed in an appalling conflagration which, nearly a century later, the inhabitants awesomely refer to as the Great Fire.
There are 52,000 French in the Catholic diocese of which Chatham is the ecclesiastical capital. Journeys by launch or steamer to Bay du Vin and Burnt Church, and up the Gloucester Coast to Tabusintac, Pokemouche and Shippegan afford passing impressions of grey little hamlets that from season to season are whipped by the raging gulf winds. Often must these pecheurs repeat with their Breton brothers:
Lord, ere we go, to thee we trust our all,
Thy sea is mighty, and our boats so small!
A railway skirts this coast from Tracadie to Shippegan and Caraquet and goes thence to Bathurst on the main line.
The name Burnt Church calls to mind the reprisals unjustly committed against Acadian settlers who inhabited the north side of Miramichi Bay a century and a half ago. The commander of the vessel which was bearing Wolfe's body to England sent members of his crew ashore at the
