The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE GASPÉ SHORE
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The Bay de la Chaleur is responsible for the creation of the great "near island" of Gaspésie which but for this deep indentation would continue from the portals of the River St. Lawrence into the New Brunswick coast line. The interior of the Peninsula is a maze of mountains, forests, mines, fishing waters, plains and high barrens. The area of nearly three million acres is portioned into three counties, Matane, Bonaventure and Gaspé. The north shore has fewer villages than the south, and no railway. Above the Bay Chaleur defiles a splendid range of serrated peaks which climb down to the margin of the sea, terminating there in massive cliffs and ramparts.
The principal settlements are on coves and bays where fishing craft flock like homing sea-birds. Into these serene havens sailed the Bretons who entered this "biggest bay" long before Cartier piloted his ships thither while seeking a water route to far Cathay.
Lescarbot disputed Cartier's statement that this golfe was "hotter than Spain," saying a rule had been implied from an accident of heat," for the bay being in 48½ degrees latitude could not be so hot as that country even though it was in July that he came here." Cartier's account in the original makes it very plain that he meant no reflection, but rather wished to emphasise the balminess and fertility of these northern shores where the natives revelled in fruits and wild grains and were so little restricted by inclement weather that they went about their fishing clad "like the Egyptians." Baedeker and other writers of handbooks persistently denote this arm of the sea as the "Bay des Chaleurs." Map-makers name it the "Baie du Chaleur." Cartier who christened it said, "Nous appellasmes ce golfe, golfe de la chaleur."
Not only the seas but the rivers of Gaspé are full of fish. The Nouvelle, a mountain stream sought for its lively trout, has its outlet near Carleton opposite the wide mouth of the Restigouche. Carleton lying in the shadow of Mount Tracadièche is the commercial centre for a productive agricultural district and in summer-time commands a clientele which enjoys the fishing and the mild boating and bathing. The Grand Cascapedia is the Restigouche of Peninsula rivers, a salmon stream pre-eminent for the weight and vigour of its fish. New Richmond set round by the hills behind Cascapedia Bay was for many years the favoured fishing resort of the Dominion's Governors-General. Lessees of the Grand and Little Cascapedia go into their lodges from New Richmond and Cascapedia Village. New Carlisle is the headquarters for sportsmen who follow the salmon of the Bonaventure, and is the capital of Bonaventure County. This was another of the many locations chosen by Loyalist emigrants in 1784. Free land and free provisions for a year were granted by a grateful Crown.
After the fall of Quebec, capitalists came from the Island of Jersey to establish fishing stations in Cape Breton and on the coast of the Bay Chaleur. One of the first of such firms to traffic in cod on the Gaspé coast was the one founded by Charles Robin who came to Paspebiac in the brig Seaflower in the year 1767, following the final concession of Canada to the English. The Robin vessels were lost to American privateers who invaded this bay in 1788 when its shores were wild and unpeopled, but business was resumed a few years later. Robin, Jones and Whitman whose headquarters are in Halifax have succeeded to the trade and maintain the traditions of the original establishments. Each one of their thirty stations has a staff residence for the bachelor clerks of warehouse and store. The dried cod is exported to Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and the West Indies. In good seasons the fishermen may earn from $300 to $500 each. Le Boutillier Brothers, another firm of Jersey origin founded at Paspebiac in 1838, has important interests on the Gaspé shore, the initials "BB" denoting their ownership of docks and drying plants.
Herring so burden the nets of this richest fishery that like the caplin in Newfoundland and Miquelon they are used to fertilise the soil.
Beyond Sea Wolf Cape and Mackerel Point the coast leaves Chaleur and breaks into buttes and sharp forelands facing the open Gulf. The view from the water embraces the undulating summits of the Shikshock Mountains looming behind the cliffs and forming a great sheltering wall for the little harbours at their feet.
At Cape Cove (160 m.) Percé Mountain comes so close to the sea that the railway must tunnel it to reach Corner of the Beach (173 m.). At either of these stations, or at Caron's Crossing, 3 miles east of Cape Cove, arrivals for Percé will be met if the proprietor of the Percé Rock House is notified in advance.[1] The distance from the Crossing is 5 miles by way of Anse à Beau-fils—Son-in-law Cove—and down a hill road which keeps in view the Island of Bonaventure, the Pierced Rock and the brilliant cap of Mount St. Anne. The approach from Corner of the Beach is usually by launch across Mal Bay, an alternate route being the arduous but magnificent way over the mountain. From the bay the faces of the ragged Murailles are unbared like cross sections of the earth variegated in tint and structure. The Grand Coup is a 650-foot precipice of brick red whose flattened apex shows a shroud of green from the land side. The Little Cut adjoins it. Loveliest of all are the three turreted cliffs that form the corner flank of the amphitheatre which rises behind the village.
As a picture town Percé is without an equal on the Atlantic littoral and more to be admired than many places annually marked for pilgrimage by throngs of tourists. The composition of its background, the grouping of vivid cliffs and isolated domes declining in bright green slopes to the Gulf were spectacular enough. Add to the stagery sinuous roads that lace the velvet pall with buff, and bosk and coppice spread like dusk shadows across the sward; place low white houses and a towering steeple at the plinth of the smooth mountain-side and the implements of sea toilers along ribbon beaches whose coves are separated by a high estrade, and culminate the scene by mooring opposite the jutting plateau and within bow-shot of it a detached crag with upreared prow—a colossal block of bare limestone meshed with the tints of sunset, veined with white, gemmed with crystals, fringed by a grassy lambrequin and clouded 
SOUTH COVE, PERCÉ, SHOWING THE PIERCED ROCK
by the wings of flapping gulls and cormorants.
The Rock is more than 1400 feet in length. The prow-shaped or landward end measures 288 feet from tip to base, the broad sea end, 154 feet. Beyond is the outer column of a mighty arch which collapsed over seventy years ago. A French writer of 1675 said there were then three perforations. In 1815 the centre one had been so expanded by the force of the waves that boats in full sail could pass through. Forty years ago the present large opening, high enough to accommodate a thirty-foot mast, was only twelve inches across. Many incipient arches show on the sides. One has pierced the pillar that stands astern. Masses of rock fall each year. Imbedded in the flaming stone are millions of fossils so rare that weighty treatises have been inscribed upon them.
A hundred years ago several tons of hay were cut every summer from the slanting summit, the feat being accomplished by means of ropes and an ingenious scaffolding. But Peter the Eagle once ventured too daringly on a sheer point of rock and fell to his death. Those in charge of the community's well-being from that time forth forbade the ascent. Recently, complaints reached the Government that the cormorants which for untold decades have shared the top of the Rocher Percé with nesting gulls were destroying the salmon nets of Mai Bay fishermen. A youth from Bonaventure Island who inherits the temerity of a privateering ancestor vouchsafed to climb the almost vertical sides and destroy the marauders. Protests from the townsfolk spared the birds, for which all lovers of wild life will be grateful. One has only to observe the feathered colony through a telescope to refute the thread-bare fiction that the gulls and the cormorants inhabit separate ends of the rock and make war upon intruders from either band. In the meadow of tall herbage the slender sea-crows and grey herring-gulls mingle with indifference, maintaining their households, preening their coats, stalking awkwardly about their common domain, trying their wings at the edge of the cliff, chattering with such vehemence that the clamour sounds all day in the ears of the village. The gulls lay their eggs on the ground, their black neighbours build upright nests of twigs. The cormorant weighs about seven pounds, being larger and longer bodied than a wild goose. In England and also in China this diver is bred and trained to fetch fish for its owner, as spaniels retrieve birds. At the British Court there used to be an officer who bore the title. Master of the Cormorants. The gulls and the gannets fly in groups of five to fifteen, keeping always above the sea but as close to shore as possible when foraging. The cormorants fly singly. All the bird dwellers leave Percé Rock in the winter but in the spring come winging back to make their home on this chosen pinnacle.
At low tide the Rock is separated from Mount Joli by a narrow sand-bar. Denys believed they had once been united by an arch, and this is confirmed by savants who find geologic relation between the two. Structurally the Percé cliffs, gullies and mountain crests are of immemorial origin. Geologists come here to fathom principles of the earth's tissues, to learn from scarred surfaces by what processes this primordial coast attained its disparate forms. The beach facing the Rock is a source of limitless instruction and amusement. Here are stones mottled red and purple, tipped and barred with white, streaked with chocolate, ruled like a chessboard, spangled with lime crystals. The boulders heaped about the base of Mount Joli present profuse examples of rock texture and stratification. Occasionally a split stone is found bearing the imprint of a fossil or the fragment of a petrified vertebrate. Dr. Clarke, Curator of the New York State Museum at Albany and a scientist especially versed in the wonders of the Gaspé coastal formation,[2] was one day searching this beach when he casually tapped with his hammer a large cobble. What was his elation to disclose in its petrified bed an unblemished specimen, seventeen inches long, of a trilobite, " greatest grandfather of the lobster." The average length of specimens found in fossiliferous rock about Percé is from one to two inches. Mr. Briard, the agreeable and well-informed Jerseyman who keeps the store near the steamer landing in North Cove, frequently has small fossils and other geological curios in his show-case.
The grass-grown promontory of Mount Joli divides North from South Cove. On the brink at Cap à Canon is the villa of an American artist, the late Mr. Frederick James, who first came to Percé thirty years ago and returned each summer enticed by its lights, its colours and amazing outlines. Many individual tableaux were perpetuated by his master brush. Certain canvases have been excellently reproduced on post cards which are obtainable from Mr. Briard, or at the Percé Rock House of Mr. Bisson. A royalty of one cent a card is devoted by the widowed mistress of the villa, the beloved Lady of Percé, to a fund for the poor.
Immediately below Cannon Cape, whose name brings to mind Anglo-French and Anglo-American naval battles fought in sight of the Rock in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is South Cove where the Robin drying stage and houses are. The company store is elaborately stocked with commodities ranging from spices and spinning-wheels to hand-made laces. In this part of the world a wheel for twisting wool or linen thread is an every-day article of merchandise whose staple price is five dollars.
The crimson half-dome of Mount St. Anne crowns the emerald glacis that stands behind the village. Twelve hundred feet above surf is a shrine to which pilgrims climb on the name-day of the fishermen's patron. Visitors not infrequently make the ascent for the out-reaching view of the Gulf and Mai Bay, of the rich-hued landmark which legend has compared to a great ship forever sailing to a phantom goal, of the Forillon ridge beyond Gaspé Basin, of the tempest-riven coast to the south and the rolling chain in the interior.
The drive of five and a half miles "around the mountain" merits the term sensational for its array of canyons and naked heights that hold between them the precarious road. At the yawning of riven gorges segments of the Mai Bay appear, flecked by swelling sails. Climbing tortuously, the road emerges from a vale of sombre splendour to broad highlands patched with planted fields and forests. Again the stony highway runs on the flange of a hilly fastness and peers fearfully down an unguarded precipice. The White Mountain shows its chalky crest high above and behind the pate of St. Anne. Another breathless pitch, and the circuit is nearly complete. Below lies the Rock and the oval mound of Bonne Aventure.
A morning ride in the Alpha to the island whose rounded bulk the gnawing sea has cut away from the mainland shore reveals all the roseate ochres and lavenders of the Isle Percée in the brilliancy of the sun. The water off its outer flank is deep enough for a battleship to anchor. The current runs high here and heaves the launch to plunge it down again excitingly. The throb of the engine beating against the sea wall of Bonaventure Island startles from their ledges the hordes of gannets, puffins, kittiwakes and sea pigeons that range these sandstone shelves like china birds in a shop. Some fly off in such a storm of wings and gleaming breasts that the sky is blotted out and the ears stunned by the uproar. The puffins, allied to the auk in species, are small white diving-birds with a short beak. Through all the turmoil consequent upon the motor's passing they sit, rows upon rows of them, rolled like demure snowballs on their high red ridges. The gannet is larger and whiter than the herring-gull. The body is three feet in length. The pouch beneath the six-inch bill has space for half a dozen good-sized fish. The gannet drops like the osprey into schools of herring, mackerel and pilchard. In their nests of grass and weeds, which are always made on the highest, steepest cliffs above the sea, one egg is laid a year, or a second, or even a third if the first is stolen. The eggs and young birds are eatable, unlike the eggs and flesh of the cormorant, which even the Greenlanders omit from their ménu.
As the launch rounds the lower end of the island, groups of gannets with ash-grey plumage are descried bathing at the water edge and strutting the beach promenade. Perched on rocky minarets are lone birds that scan the sea like hired look-outs.
The Isle of Good Fortune was once inhabited by a certain Jerseyman, by name Captain Peter Duval, who during the Napoleonic war between France and England commanded a lugger-rigged privateer under license from the British king. The 100-ton Vulture with its four guns plundered the French coast from Normandy to the Pyrenees. It is related that Bayonne merchants fitted out a brig of 180 tons, armed it with four times four guns and went in pursuit. Her battery had been so well masked that the Vulture mistook the two-master for a merchantman and ran alongside. When suddenly the deck of the Bayonne vessel was cleared for action, the dashing captain perceived his error but drove in his craft so close that the shots of the Frenchmen went over, while he was able to deliver disastrous blows to the body of his antagonist. This manœuvre resulted in the slaying of half the French crew and the loss of but one on the Vulture. When still a young man the hero of this stratagem crossed the sea to Gaspé, forswore the ways of pirates and became a planter. In the cottage of his descendants is preserved the glass with which he was wont to scrutinise the horizon for unwary prey. Near the hotel on Mount Joli is his tomb-stone bearing this inscription couched by a mourning relict:
Sacred to the memory
of Peter John Duval
Native of the Island of Jersey
who after a short but painful illness
departed this life at the Island Bonaventure
on the 25 day of July, 1835.
Time and separation
may calm the sorrows of the soul but
never will they obliterate the regrets which
the loss of a kind and tender husband
has awakened in the breast of his
afflicted survivor.
A gracious epitaph for a buccaneer!
Percé was the landfall of the Royal squadron which in August, 1860, conveyed to Canada the Heir Apparent of the British throne and his suite, which included the Duke of Newcastle and officers of the imperial army and navy. A contributor to The Gleaner published at Chatham, Miramichi, under date of September 8, 1860, thus describes the passing of the Hero, the Ariadne and the Flying Fish under the very eaves of the Rock.
The Squadron first hove in sight, or rather was seen from the heights about 2 p. m., on Sunday the 12th inst., and the ships passed between the Island of Bonaventure and Percé Rock between 4 and 5 p. m. approaching the latter so near, that the seamen and Fishermen say they have never seen small schooners nearer. His Royal Highness and Suite must therefore have had an excellent view, not only of the rock, but of all that was passing on shore. Where Mr. Gibant as the representative there of Messrs. Chas. Robin & Co. was not unmindful of the ancient prestige of Jersey-men for loyalty. A salute of 21 guns was fired—all the employés of the Firm, Fishermen and other inhabitants were then mustered on the high fish flakes and gave three hearty British cheers. The ensign was dipped three times and the compliment duly returned on board of the Hero. Every yard of bunting or anything resembling a flag was floating aloft, in all directions, to welcome the first born of England's noble Queen.
The calling of the Royal Squadron off Perce was quite unexpected, consequently all who could possibly leave their business, or their homes, had wended their way to Gaspé Basin. Hence, no salute was fired either by Mr. Philip Le Boutillier or Messrs. Le Boutillier Bros, at Bonaventure Island. Had the managers of the Firms been on the spot, there is no doubt that each would have fired a Royal salute. All were animated by the one feeling—all were anxious to testify their loyalty. The progress of the Squadron from the time they rounded the Western end of Bonaventure Island was very slow, until they had passed the rock—thus affording His Royal Highness ample time to revel on the scenery, and His Royal Mother's liege subjects a good view of the ships in all their pride. Once to the Eastward of the rock the Squadron proceeded at full speed, passing close to Point St. Peters, where a large assemblage again greeted the Heir to England's throne, and a Royal Salute was fired by Messrs. J. & C. Collas.
The next point at which the Prince was greeted was Cove St. George and Grand Grève, where Mr. Perrée and Mr. Dolbel, as the representative of Messrs. Wm. Fruing & Co. were not sparing of their powder. The Squadron finally anchored at Douglas Town about 8 p. m., immediately in front of the residence of our worthy friend Chas. Veit, Esq., J. P., who, anxious to prove his loyalty and welcome the future King of England, illuminated his house. This we must observe was at the instigation of Mrs. Veit, who proudly told us that, "with all due reverence for the Sabbath, she could not refrain from paying some slight homage, however humble—to the Prince who represented Her of whom her sex had just reason to be proud."
In the roadstead opposite Irish Douglastown, the Hero which had on board the Prince of Wales ran aground on its way into Gaspé Basin, "an untoward event" which vastly chagrined the Gaspesians. After an anxious delay of upwards of an hour and a half the flag-ship was floated. During this time, continues our scribe, "boats filled with ladies and gentlemen who could command the services of small craft of any kind—from the birch canoe, fishing boat and ships boat to Messrs. Charles Robin & Company's 16 oared cutter, hovered round the Hero—all anxious to catch a glimpse of the Hero of the day"—who no doubt, from the deck of his stranded ship, returned with characteristic good humour the salutations of his mother's eager subjects.
Three and a half centuries before the arrival of British Edward, the Discoverer of Canada had touched shore at the mouth of the River St. Jean during the first of his voyages. From July fourth to twelfth he had stayed in the harbour now known as Port Daniel. Failing to find the passage hoped for, he set sail again, anchored for a night between Bonaventure Island and Cape Whitehead, and proceeding northward lay for two days near the site of Douglastown. A storm arising in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he went "7 or 8 leagues farther up the stream in a good and safe harbour." Cartier's reception committee was a band of more than two hundred Indians of the Huron-Iroquois family. The men and their women and children had come to Gaspé Basin for the mackerel fishing. Cartier found them very poor. "These creatures are indeed savages. Besides their fishing boats and nets all that they had was not worth five sols." When they crowded about in canoes to traffic with the white men he gave combs and tin bells to the maidens and knives and glass paternosters to the males, who expressed their delight by singing and dancing in their boats. "Sur la pointe de l'entrée de ce port," probably at Sandy Beach, the Norman captain planted a cross thirty feet in height on which he hung a shield painted with three lilies. In large letters the legend, Vive le Roy de France was cut in the wood. When Cartier had thus dedicated a New France to his King he knelt on the ground and prayed with the Indians about him. The following day, July 25, 1534, he departed for Anticosti Island, 50 miles to the north, and from there passed through the gateway of the River St. Laurent which conducted him to Stadaconé and Hochelaga.
Gaspeg was the Indians' name for Land's End. At the tip of the crooked finger of the spindling Forillon[3] is Cape Gaspé. Facing it, on the other side of the St. John's estuary, is Point St. Peter. Between them the gulf flows inland for 20 miles and forms the winding Basin of Gaspé. The inlet's irregular shape protects it from outside storms. Its enveloping hills spread noble terraces for the repose of village and farm. The radiant air enhances the azure of the water and the motley tints of pasture and glade and billowy groves of evergreen, and brings into relief the ridge of the gulf range, whose silhouette makes a jagged blue mark against the eastern sky.
Gaspé Village is across the water from the railway station. A gasolene ferry plies between the two shores. Above the docks and the shops and warehouses that cluster on the low bank, a bluff rises steeply to the single street which passes the length of the hilly settlement. Gaspé has for many years been the chosen summer residence of discriminating Canadians and Americans. Some of them have built mansions and surrounded them with parks and gardens. Others are content to taste Gaspé delights as guests of Baker's Hotel, a house whose felicitous personality has been reflected in an earlier chapter. A more restful port is not to be imagined. Merely to sense remoteness from throngs and proximity to an utter wilderness is exhilarating. Fair prospects from bluffs and
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 room of the homestead with its spindle chairs and mahogany settees, his nimble mind will spin tales for you of days of his youth when hump-backs and sulphur-bottoms roving the gulf were hunted for their oil, and bow-heads were pursued in hand to hand conflict for their rich treasure of balleine.
People are loth to die in this benign Gaspesie. A venerable character of the district constructed years ago the chest which was to hold his bones and put it beneath his bed in anticipation of an approaching demise. The casket has fallen to decay, but its intended occupant is still hale as "the green-robed senators" of these mighty woods.
- ↑ Guests having heavy baggage should so advise the hotel management and should alight at Cape Cove or Corner of the Beach, as there is no depôt or baggage master at the Crossing. The train from Matapedia arrives at Cape Cove at 6:30 and at Corner of the Beach at 7 p. m. The journey from Percé to Gaspé may be continued by launch (3½ hours).
- ↑ The Gaspé region is geologically related to New York State. See The Heart of Gaspé, by J. M. Clarke, and the Memoir prepared by Dr. Clarke for the New York State Educational Department, Early Devonic History of New York and Eastern Canada.
- ↑ "This word is generically used by the French for a rock or island standing close to the mainland with a very narrow channel between, which is dug or bored out by the constant action of the waves."—Howley.