Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/361

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THE GASPÉ SHORE
303

terrace satisfy the eye. The incomparable atmosphere has sparkle and warmth. In the Baker pools on the York and St. John Rivers salmon 16 to 20 pounds in weight rise to the fly. Camping parties come and go with their reports of forest happenings. Even if one is not ambitious to hunt or fish he gets a taste of the wild life by driving a rugged road to the St. John, there feasting among the boulders à la nature and after the open-air banquet, well-seasoned with the piquant sauce of appetite, making a thrilling canoe run down stream with master guides at bow and stern. Yachting and motor-boating while sunny days on the bay. At Hauldiman's Beach the rollers provide sport for sea bathers. Unforgettable views are disclosed during the drives to Cape Gaspé, and by the Kings Road across the Forillon peninsula from Grand Grève to the gulf, and southward toward Barachois and Percé. A road bordered on every hand by pastoral beauties follows the right bank of the basin, crosses the York River and returns by the left bank to the railway station. Here the carriage is run onto a scow which the motor ferry tows to the opposite shore. In a clearing above the left bank lives Abner Coffin whose life is nearing its hundredth mile-stone. His ancestor, Long Tom Coffin, was a Nantucket whaler who came to Gaspé with other Tory seafarers. Abner was a whale-killer like Long Tom. If you sit with him and his aged wife in the front