The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
TOURS BY RAIL AND STEAMER
Conception Bay: Trinity Bay
Bonavista Bay. Notre Dame Bay.
∵
The railway to Brigus Junction (42 m.) skirts for more than half the distance the south shore of Conception Bay. From Topsail, Manuel's, Kelligrews and Holyrood, attractive vacation places, Bell Island is in plain sight. This is an expanse of iron-bearing rock 6 miles long whose mines are owned by the Nova Scotia Steel and the Dominion Iron and Steel Companies. The amount of ore in sight is estimated at 2500 million tons.
To refer to recurring coast views as extraordinary becomes monotonously repetitious. The larger eastern bays differ only in the degree of grandeur by which one excels the other. The least of their coves has an artistic appeal. Conception Bay, enthrallingly lovely in every aspect, is enclosed by precipices less sublimely tall than those of Trinity Bay, but is none the less satisfying for that. A peninsula 85 miles long divides these two immense arms of the Atlantic. The railway which traverses nearly half its length is to be extended to Grates Cove at the northern end.
Grotesque ridges of unclad rock close in the village of Brigus, which lies a mile from the railway station at the head of a walled blue harbour. In this stony lap were reared all the Arctic captains who navigated the ships of the Peary expeditions, and the men of this immediate coast composed Peary's crews. In a cottage house surrounded by trees and a neatly plotted garden lives Captain William Bartlett. He and his brothers, Captains Sam, John and Henry were all born to the ice. The first of the Bartletts to go with Peary was Captain Henry who later lost his life coming from Philadelphia with a cargo of coal. Captain John was skipper of the Hope when Peary's meteorite was brought south. Captain Sam who, if necessary "would ship for the Polar Seas in a bathtub," in the words of the regretted Borup, stayed during the winter of 1900–1901 at Cape Sabine with the wife and daughter of the explorer while the latter was afield. It was he who superintended the building of the Roosevelt at Bucksport, Maine.
The last of the Peary captains was the eldest of four sons and four daughters born to Captain William and his wife, Mrs. Mary Leamon Bartlett. The best ice-master of the North, the trail-maker of the final expedition, who more than any one else besides the Commander was responsible for the discovery of the Pole, had been three times a member of the Peary forces before his surpassing seamanship put the Roosevelt at Cape Sheridan. For all but the last five of the pole-ward marches he hewed the way on foot, exceeding by 13 miles a day all previous records for progress over the ice. At the eighty-eighth parallel Captain Bob planted the flag of his native colony. Peary and his companion went on 130 miles from there. When he returned to civilisation the Commander telegraphed Governor Williams at St. John's, "I congratulate Newfoundland on its part in the discovery."
The Roosevelt's navigator and, more recently, the hero of the Karluk adventure was born in this rock-belted cradle of vikings in 1875. At seventeen he skippered a cod steamer and when still a youth piloted sealing craft in the March gulf fishery. His examinations for second and chief mate were taken at the Navigation School in St. John's, but his mother, a charming lady of West County ancestry, declares his first schooling in ice seamanship was gained when with his companions he spent winter play-hours jumping from pan to pan in the harbour, "copying" the sealers. As a toddler he sailed the frigid waters in a borrowed tub with a broom as propeller. Brigus youngsters are like that. They skim the thinnest ice, swim the coldest seas, disport themselves on the slipperiest bergs, scale the straightest flanks of the raggedest cliffs. Little wonder that their deeds in later life excite no wonder among their townsfolk. Heroism is at a discount in this nook of the world where adventure is bred in the bone and danger is the sauce of life.
Brigus was originally the port of departure for the seal-killers. In the sixties, forty craft manned by fishermen from Placentia, Burin, Trepassey and other outports were accustomed to leave the ice-choked harbour. As the sailing vessels fell off and steamships took their place the sealing fleet made St. John's the assembling and outfitting port.
The Terra Nova, one of the Bowring fleet, carried the Scott Expedition to the Antarctic. On her return she was re-bought by the St. John's firm. During the seal fishery of 1914 she was commanded by Captain William Bartlett, who brought back a catch of 28,000 seals.
In June and July the men of this coast bark their nets, forge their trawl anchors and make ready their parbuckle for the Labrador cruise. The "merchant," usually the owner of the schooner, supplies a "planter" with provisions, the latter hires the crew, paying them $100 to $120 a season. If the men fish on shares they may earn more, but they risk earning much less. Those who live on the schooners during the summer are "floaters," the men who hire out to no one, but provision themselves and fish from the shore in dories are "landsmen."
The farm country behind Brigus, Clarke's Beach, Bay Roberts and Spaniard's Bay combines with the prospects of sparkling bays to make indescribable pictures. The wagon-roads are good if one prefers to drive north from Brigus (where there is an immaculate inn) to neighbour towns. Harbour Grace is second to St. John's in point of inhabitants, but "second by a long way," having only about an eighth of the capital's population of 32,000. The docks of Harbour Grace were in use over 300 years ago. A Marine Railway has been constructed within recent years which makes it possible to raise and repair ships without their cargo being unloaded.
Twice a week a Reid steamerlet leaves Carbonear for a tour of Conception and Trinity Bays. The course which lies north to Bay de Verde and the bird-haunted Bacalieu Islands, rounds into the magnificent bay to the west after a call at Catalina. The town of Trinity (76 m.) has a superb harbour. The outlook from Gun Hill comprehends weird and mighty cliffs that rise out of the waters of the rectangular firth with no beaches to break their ascent. Gorgeous contours strike up in the offing as the Ethie takes her diminutive way to the haven of Heart's Content which is of importance to the outer world as the converging point for trans-Atlantic cables. Further down the bay, out of the drift of travel or news is Heart's Delight. Near the entrance to Lady Cove, which gives narrow access to Clarenville, is Lake Heartsease.
Clarenville, about 150 miles from Carbonear by the alternating routes of the steamer, is on the main railway line, 131 miles northwest of St. John's. On Mondays and Fridays the Ethie starts back to Conception Bay. The total depth of Trinity Bay is 60 miles.
At Placentia Junction (62 miles southwest of St. John's), a branch diverges at right angles to Placentia (20 m.) on the wedge-shaped southern bay of the same name. Between the junction and Clarenville the main track runs on an isthmus less than two miles wide which acts as a dam between Placentia and Trinity Bays. At Come-by-Chance the trisected peninsula of Avalon is almost severed from the remainder of the island.
Placentia Bay is nearly 70 miles wide at the mouth and extends for the same distance into the land. Its upper area is thronged with islands which shield the course of the steamer Argyle as it makes its weekly rounds from Placentia to Rose au Rue, to Harbour Buffet, Haystack and Merasheen. The same craft has a sailing every week for Paradise, across the bay from Placentia town, and other ports down the east coast of Burin Peninsula, which are also served by the Glencoe, Placentia—Port-aux-Basques.
Placentia village covers a low spit of water-worn gravel beach, lapped on either side by long sea-arms whose tree-covered bluffs rise to a height of several hundred feet. Though it lies low on the water, no town in Newfoundland has a more gracious site. Students of nomenclature believe the bay was named by Portuguese voyagers who found it as fair as the situation of ancient Placentia on the Tagus. In 1662 Charles II sold to Louis XIV of France this portion of the southern shore. The French forthwith fortified it and on several occasions defended it against the English, who resented their sovereign's generosity. The French esteemed it "a post of the greatest importance and service . . . in regard that 'tis a place of refuge to the ships that are obliged to put into a harbour, when they go or come from Canada, and even to those which come from South America when they want to take in fresh water or provisions."
Castle Hill, on the "Jersey side," had natural advantages for defence by which the French were quick to profit. Under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht the settlements and its forts reverted to the English. The ghost of a French officer still keeps watch on Castle Hill over the treasure his mates left at the surrender of Placentia. Imaginative villagers have seen his pacing form arrayed in full uniform and an old-style army cap. When the garrison evacuated the fortress it was decreed, according to a very old tale, that one should be shot so that a spirit might sentinel the buried gold until the owners should come again to possess it. Similar traditions are heard about the coves of Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy and in out-of-the-way ports of northern Newfoundland. One of those to whom the Castle Hill ghost has appeared is the Irish night-guard of the freight vans at the Placentia dock. Though not often lonely in the still watches (the spirits of dead "townies" keep him company) yet it is a bit melancholy to be alone in the caboose when the voices of the ship-wrecked are wafted on an in-shore wind. . . .
Placentia is a dog-less town. Not so much as the flirt of a tail will give you greeting as you ramble the sea-washed streets. Anti-canine legislation was deemed necessary to rid the country-side of the sheep-killers. Some of the people protested whose big woolly dogs helped to drag cod into the dories and hauled wood and deer-meat in the winter, but they were in the minority and were voted down. So all the dogs of the Placentia district were done away with. When you see those who survive at other outports you regret that in mercy to the brutes themselves the law has not been applied throughout the colony.
In the Church of England grave-yard are the broken head-stones of a Basque fisherman and the officer of a French frigate; the first-named bears the date 1676. The inscriptions,
loanes Sara
and
Nis
Dehir
Iart
have been deciphered by Monsignor Légasse, of whom we shall hear more in connection with the church at St. Pierre-Miquelon.
If the constable is not away somewhere on his forty-mile beat up and down the east shore of the bay, he will with good grace leave his ploughing and exhibit the relics of church and court house: the communion silver given by the Prince of Wales who became King William IV and who visited this southern village in 1787; the Hanoverian staff in the court-room; the service of Channel Island silver lustre owned by the widow of the jailer. Quite as proud is he to show the cells devoid of prisoners, but cluttered with broken chairs and paint cans and the jailer's widow's spinning-wheel.
The Glencoe's run across the bay to lovely Marystown on the eastern margin of Burin Peninsula is accomplished in six or seven hours. Great Burin is the second call on the way from Placentia to Port-aux-Basques. The force of the ocean is broken by natural breakwaters about the mouth of this matchless harbour"the best in Newfoundland." The steamer winds among hillocky islands to the town which perches wherever it can gain a foot-hold about the sides of rough knolls. Intersecting channels are spanned by walks laid on wooden piers. One of the highest hills is named for Captain Cook who made a complete survey of this coast in 1763. On the top is the cairn he erected. The inlets and "back arms" of Burin invited the establishment by Jerseymen and West-of-England firms of important fishing-rooms whose trade with foreign countries once made this harbour one of the most active of the southern out-ports. A "room" in Newfoundland parlance is the premises of a fishing firm or individual. "A family room" descends from father to son. Originally the term was applied only to the hall where the commercial transactions were consummated. Later it came to include warehouse, docks, stores and drying-stages.
One of many likely and unlikely tales which imbrue Burin with romance relates to the wife of a fishing magnate who belonged to the gay world of Paris and was obsessed by a love of gambling. By degrees she wagered and lost all the profits of her husband's business in far-away Burin. When at last she staked in one grand coup two whole cargoes of cod, and lost again, the firm was thrown into bankruptcy, the direst poverty fell upon la belle française, and she and her husband were reduced to receiving alms.
One of the oldest inhabitants of Burin is a physician of New England ancestry and a graduate of Harvard Medical School to whom fishermen from Lamaline to Isle Valen bring their sick and injured in sailing boats. Burin has no connection by road with any place except Fortune, 20 miles across the elongated boot of the peninsula. Construction has been commenced on a railway which, starting at Northern Bight, below Clarenville, will unite all the towns on the west side of Placentia Bay with the main highway of traffic, 100 miles to the northeast.
The steamer puts in at St. Lawrence at the heel of the peninsula before breasting the heavy seas which mark the passage between May Point and the Miquelon Islands. Unless fog obscures them the bare peaks of French St. Pierre will show black against the southwestern horizon. An occasional schooner or gasolene launch carries passengers from Grand Bank, on Fortune Bay, or the tourist may cable for a tug to come from St. Pierre at a cost of $20 to $30 for the three-hour passage back to the island. These considerations aside, the only alternative is to go on to North Sydney from Port-aux-Basques and catch the mail steamer which runs between Halifax, North Sydney and St. Pierre, and which with regular and intermediate summer sailings leaves the Cape Breton port about every seven days.
Once safely around Dantzic Head,—or Point Mal de Mer as under average sea conditions it might more fittingly be called,—the Glencoe makes Fortune and Grand Bank, staying long enough at each port to discharge and load cargo. Grand Bank prides itself on its Methodism and the prosperous appearance of its neat stores and white-faced, shutterless houses. Fortune Bay is nearly as long as Placentia Bay but only half as wide. The best scenery of this marvellous coast which turns broad-side to the Atlantic is found beyond Belleoram in the fjords of Harbour Breton, Hermitage, Pushthrough, Burgeo-of-the-many-isles and Rose Blanche (280 miles from Placentia). The disadvantages of the tour are the fogs and choppy seas which attend the journey except on favoured mid-summer days. If one is of a mind to leave the seaworthy little Glencoe and sojourn in a fascinating village that clutches the ledges above a cliff-bound haven he may find it difficult to secure lodgings. There are no hotels, but hospitable housewives sometimes surrender their spare chambers to the travelling salesman and to that much rarer avis, the summer tourist.
The habits, the speech, the folk and sea-lore of this remote fringe of a far-north island are of distinct and absorbing interest. The manners of the people are winning. Crime is almost unknown. If a constable dies in even so comparatively important a district as Burgeo, it may be months before one is appointed in his place. Occasionally a man who has signed for the Banks fails to appear at the hour of his schooner's sailing, or a master runs his vessel ashore to collect fraudulent insurance. The courts rarely have other offences to deal with. Sometimes the stranger comes upon a fact startling in its primitiveness. One may be cited, almost unbelievable and yet reasonable enough when local conditions are weighed: few of the inhabitants ever saw a horse. A frowsy little beast of the Newfoundland pony type being transported to Port-aux-Basques on the deck of the Glencoe drew wide-eyed groups at every port between its point of embarkation and its destination. At Rencontre beyond the whale factory at Balena, there were some older folk who remembered a blind horse that had died thirty years before, but those whose memories were more restricted found of the utmost interest the pony's tail, its rough brown coat and flexible ears. Once upon a time a south coast inhabitant received as a present a white horse.
"The animal strayed away. It was shot for a caribou, and the hunter called up the neighbours to see the white stag with iron shoes on his hoofs."
The bi-weekly arrival of the mail boat is of prime importance to the outport population. Even the village dogs know when the funnel shows off the harbour and race down the hills for the tidbits that a kind-hearted cook throws from the galley. Fed on scant doles of dried herring, regarded only for the services they perform and burdened with dreadful yokes to prevent their jumping the bars to rob sheep-pens, these mongrels of the south coast form a pitiable crew. By law, all dogs that run at large must wear suspended about the neck a seven-pound piece of wood eighteen inches long and three inches in diameter. The weight of the dragging rope causes unspeakable sores on the poor necks. The dogs attack the sheep because they are starved. They are starved by masters who will not humanely kill them but keep them alive because of their value as chiens de trait. Needless to say there is no society in Newfoundland for the protection of animals from cruelty.
A harrowing vision often seen by the folk of this shore before a storm is a white eight-oared gig manned by a headless crew. Another ghostly apparition is a headless Frenchman who haunts the fish-houses of one of the harbours. On one of the rare beaches that are good for landing, no boat 
HUMBERMOUTH, NEWFOUNDLAND
painter will stay tied. Spirit hands loosen the firmest knots.
The Glencoe has gone in and out of these granite orifices and beaten along the reefs and straight cliffs of this remarkable coast for nearly twenty years, through September gales and March hurricanes, and never lost a life. Before the advent of steam vessels so many fatal wrecks were recorded every year between Cape Race and Cape Ray that the inhabitants were able to construct and furnish houses and even apparel themselves from the flotsam scattered on the waves. Judge Prowse in The Newfoundland Quarterly relates the story of an Anglican clergyman who held service in an isolated south port. "Having been formerly an officer in the army, he was very particular about his clothes. His plain black coat was of the very best material. The old fisherman, his host, eyed him for some time; then laying his hand on the coat sleeve, smoothing it down, he said: 'That's a mighty fine piece of cloth, sir; never seed such a splendid bit of cloth in my life before. Get'ee out of a wrack, sir?'" In those days the best that any one had was reaped from the sea.
Four miles east of Port-aux-Basques are the Isles aux Morts, the Islands of the Dead, where a hundred years ago the immortal George Harvey rescued from ship-wrecks many scores of human beings. Cape Ray, the extreme southwesterly headland, is approximately the same distance on the other side of the Port of the Basques.
Bonavista Bay.
The rail journey from Shoal Harbour (133 miles northwest of St. John's) to the town of Bonavista is fraught with inconveniences. Three days in the week the "Accommodation" leaves at 1:22 in the morning, and on the remaining week-days, if the express is on time and the stars are propitious it departs five hours later. Six hours are consumed in making the journey of 88 miles. A less strenuous and more picturesque route is via the Dundee which leaves Port Blandford (18 miles beyond Shoal Harbour) on Mondays and Fridays for a three days' tour of twenty ports in the isle-fretted bay. At Bonavista, the chief town, connection can be made with the Reid and Bowring Labrador steamers.
Looking on the fearsome reefs of Cape Bonavista one wonders how Cabot and Cartier had courage to approach so inhospitable a land. The harbour of Catalina to the south is believed to be the one the Norman voyager named St. Katherine. There his ships remained ten days until the weather was favourable for a continuance of his first and most memorable journey in the New World.
Between Port Blandford and Notre Dame Junction (94 m.) the main line of the railway crosses the Terra Nova, Gander and Triton Rivers, all of which traverse an unsurpassed hunting and fishing country.
Notre Dame Bay.
A 10-mile rail journey from Notre Dame Junction terminates at Lewisporte at the bottom of Notre Dame Bay. Twice a week a steamer goes as far to the northeast as Fogo, calling at Exploits, Herring Neck, Twillingate and other harbours en route. Another steamer has bi-weekly sailings toward the west and north to Leading Tickles, Pilley's Island, Springdale, Green Bay ports, Nipper's Harbour, Snook's Arm and Tilt Cove. Either way there are inconceivably beautiful views of green heights and islands "numerous as glittering gems of morning dew," and of armlets that environ farm and fishing hamlets with placid deep-blue streams.
Exploits is due north of Lewisporte at the delta of Newfoundland's largest river. Twillingate, "the northern capital," is 14 miles beyond. One of the crowning vistas of the whole bay is disclosed at Herring Neck. Southward is Dildo Run with unusual rock formations. Fogo, situated on two islands, was formerly reputed for its purebred Newfoundland dogs. The species has now so far degenerated that when the King of England, then Prince of Wales, visited the island a few years back there was a great to-do to find one thoroughbred animal in the colony worthy to be presented to so illustrious a guest. At present England breeds the only Newfoundland dogs that emulate in type Landseer's "Distinguished Member of the Humane Society" painted in 1838, and later chosen as the model head for a now somewhat rare Newfoundland stamp. According to the best standards the coat should be liver and white, black and white, or all black. If all black, white hairs are permissible on chest, toes and tip of tail. A strong active male dog should stand 29 inches tall and weigh 120 to 140 pounds. Other distinguishing points of the thorough-bred are web-feet, a broad massive head, small ears and an expression intelligent, kindly and dignified. Robert Burns' poem "Twa Dogs," written in 1786, extolled the qualities of the Newfoundland. To a noble member of the same species Byron erected at Newstead Abbey a monument
To mark a friend's remains . . .
I never knew but one, and here he lies.
On Fogo Island was born toward the end of the eighteenth century a child whose beauty in later years fascinated all of France. As Pamela Sims the young Newfoundlander became a member of the household of the Due d'Orléans and was taken to wife by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Irish revolutionist. The poet Sheridan also fell under the spell of this "very Hebe, such as Thorwalsden might have wrought," whose portrait may be viewed in one of the galleries at Versailles.
Passengers on the Clyde can transfer at Exploits to the Home without returning to Lewisporte. The eccentric sculptured cliffs of Leading Tickles appear beyond Fortune Harbour. Springdale, at the mouth of Hall's Bay, is the starting point for noted trout and salmon streams. The Home continues across Green Bay to Nipper's Harbour where weird-looking rocks rising out of the sea remind one of scenes about Brigus. This coast is so pregnant with minerals that in places the ore may be seen glittering beneath the water. The Tilt Cove Mines have produced in the fifty years of their operation nearly $20,000,000 worth of copper.
Tunny-fish, often six feet in length, enter this northern bay in great numbers. In the summer, Green, Trinity and Bonavista Bays are visited by fleets of fishing-boats in quest of the tentacled oddity known locally as squid. When a few inches long they make tempting cod bait. Grown to maturity they become devil-fish. They are caught by hanging unbaited hooks over the side of the boats and "jigging" them up and down. In this economical manner many barrels of bait are annually secured.
The Bowring steamer Prospero, St. John's-Battle Harbour, a comfortable craft of a thousand tons, calls in Bonavista, Notre Dame and White Bays and proceeds up the exposed east shore of Newfoundland's uppermost arm to St. Anthony, and across the Strait of Belle Isle to Labrador. At St. Anthony Dr. Grenfell has successfully bred large herds of Lapland reindeer.
A small Reid boat leaves Lewisporte every Wednesday for Tilt Cove, Coachman's Cove, St. Anthony, Battle Harbour and intermediate points.
Notre Dame Junction—Grand Falls—Grand Lake—Humbermouth—Spruce Brook—St. George's Bay—Doyle's—Little River—Port-aux-Basques.
Beyond Notre Dame Junction the main railway penetrates the forest lands of the Exploits River. At Grand Falls (276 m. from St. John's) the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company has created a new city, well built, well paved and lighted, as an adjunct to the mammoth pulp mills whose product feeds the presses of the Harmsworth publications in England. Bishop Falls is the seat of a similar industry. Grand Falls is situated a little way off the railway near the dam above the rocky plunge of the Exploits River. A tall sulphur tower marks the site of the mills. The bulk of the timber used is spruce. The forests of Newfoundland, which cover about a third of its total area, have until recent years been practically untouched by commerce. At the present rate of development, the island's timber tracts and its iron, copper and coal deposits bid fair to rival the fisheries in value. One of the most extensive lumber districts centres about Red Indian Lake, south from Millertown Junction. This region was one of the last strongholds of the now extinct tribe of Beothics, the aborigines of Newfoundland.
The road climbs the higher levels of a spreading plateau. Here above the steppes that in spring and fall are frequented by migrating caribou, "the Topsails" spring upward with strange and telling effect. Snow often rests on these pyramidal buttes until the summer is well advanced. The rough-fashioned landscape has its own charm, but from the railway few mellow scenes appear until the Humber is approached. On the way is Grand Lake, the largest of the myriad fresh-water seas that strew the island. Near the railroad the plain is bereft of trees due to forest fires, which to a large extent have been ignited by sparks from passing engines. Settlers who live near the iron way complain that they must now take a day's journey to secure fire-wood, whereas all the heights hereabouts and still further east were formerly cloaked in green. Away from the railroad, abutting the long-drawn shores of the lake, are deep plushy growths of spruce, juniper, fir and pine which are the chosen haunts of sportsmen. In this district the Reid Syndicate have profitable coal-fields.
At the completion of the branch from a place beyond Grand Lake to Bonne Bay, this pictorial gem of the west coast will be accessible without recourse to steamer.
The game country of the Upper Humber is reached from Deer Lake station. Two days are usually needed to arrive at the salmon pools below the Grand Fall. The Humber rises in Birchy Lake, a few miles south of the lowest inlet of White Bay. Gliding downward between pale-coloured hills, twisting by the impasse of wooded spurs that seek to bar its course, the river flows through Deer Lake and sweeps with broad mien past Humbermouth. There are few river views more inspiring than the one which stretches to the west through Birchy Cove to Bay of Islands.
This intensely blue estuary of the Humber 13 miles distant from the railway, is crossed by the Reid steamer Meigle on its Wednesday trip from Humbermouth to Battle Harbour, via Bonne Bay and other points on the west coast. See last section of this chapter.
At Curling, 3 miles beyond Humbermouth, good accommodations are available in a new and attractive summer hotel. Excursions up and down the Humber and to Bay of Islands can be arranged by launch. This spot more nearly approaches a tourist resort than any place on the island.
Rivers and lakes are so commonplace in Newfoundland, a third of her surface is absorbed by inland waters, that fair-sized streams are as often called brooks as rivers, and even Grand Lake, 60 miles long and 6 miles wide, is named on the map a pond. Spruce Brook and Harry's Brook thread a realm renowned for fish, big game and alluring canoe-ways. The Log Cabin at Spruce Brook Station is a pleasant inn at which even on the border of the wilderness the conventions are not disregarded. At Stephenville Crossing is another hotel for sportsmen and tourists, near the head of lovely Bay St. George. This is a famous lobster region. In season one may feast on the toothsome crustacean at an absurdly small outlay. They are offered by fishermen at 11 cents each. Salmon is 5 cents a pound. Trout cost 25 cents for a dozen weighing one and a half to two pounds each. Emptying into this bay are numerous other streams inhabited by the mystic salmo solar.
At South Branch the rails bridge the Grand Codroy on its way to the gulf. From this station and from Doyle's (25 miles above Port-aux-Basques) the pools are conveniently fished. From Doyle's store the river is a mile distant. Almost on its banks is a genial house on a five-hundred-acre farm frequented year after year by a loyal clan. "Doyle's" has an individuality that is not to be ascribed to the merit of near-by pools nor to the scenery, which here comprises a wide curving river, apple-green intervales and two rows of grim snow-flecked ranges. Though past three score and ten, the mother of the Doyle boys, "mother" also to all her hungry boarders, assumes the tasks of housewife, cook and waitress—nimbly broiling new-caught trout, emerging with platters of fat salmon from the steam-misted kitchen where the guides are supping, piling plates with brown biscuits, surreptitiously filling half-emptied milk glasses from the quart cream pitcher, hovering with heaped ladles to replenish dwindling portions, beaming on the guests who take two helpings of everything, chiding those who for most excellent reasons cannot.
In the morning early the fishermen are off to the Cascade or the Overfall. Rubber-breeched and stoutly booted, their pockets bulge with fly-books, hooks and reels. The guides shoulder poles, gaffs and frying-pans and a Mother Doyle sack of provisions. They descend to the boats and pole two or three miles up river between fruitful meadows and knolls dotted with browsing sheep. Across the wide flats the Anguille Mountains make a wall to bar out the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Above tidewater good pools occur at short intervals. On these Newfoundland streams the first rod holds possession. In other words, a pool is a man's own until he deserts it. The price he pays is the $10 fishing-fee to the warden. The custom of leasing water rights obtains nowhere on the island.
At the close of the day catches are weighed and compared, adventures recounted, condolences exchanged over the gamey ones that got away after hours of sulks and rushes. Some of the salmon are consigned to the smoke-house. The biggest are ice-packed and shipped home to friends.
A fine road goes down the valley 7 miles to Searstown facing the gulf. Here one sees salmon by the dory-load taken from nets set. a specified distance off the river mouth. The cod brought in to Searstown is sold in pickle to a firm from Gloucester which buys from all the little rooms up and down this coast.
Tompkins', on Little River, is another resort in favour with American and Canadian anglers who are rewarded by big catches of salmon and lake and sea trout. Port-aux-Basques is 20 miles south of Little River station. The train runs alongside the steamer landing for the boats to Cape Breton. The main settlement is at Channel, a mile away.
Port-aux-Basques—Battle Harbour.
The tourist arriving from St. John's by rail or coasting steamer can make connection with the Portia (as already outlined under "Transportation," Chapter XIV) for Bay of Islands and Bonne Bay (250 m.). Rounding Cape Ray and Cape Anguille the first to be reached of the five main indentations of this west coast, known still as the French Shore,[4] is the broad-mouthed Bay of St. George, whose lower margin is overlooked from the railroad. At Port au Port on the other side of the bay one can walk a short distance and come to the lower arm of a second inlet which opens to the north, almost cutting away an immense section of land at whose point is Cape St. George. There is a reflex here of former French occupation in the names, Port au Port, Le Petit Jardin, Le Grand Jardin, Les Vaches. English names are less euphonious, Charlie Sheare's Cove, Black Duck Brook, Rope Cove, Bear Cove. Over-topping the latter is a mountain which bears the familiar name of Blomidon. This peak over 2000 feet high exceeds Blomidon of Minas in altitude and scope of vision if not in romantic association. To the west is the open gulf; to the north, the Bay of Islands (90 miles from Bay St. George) and the crest of Mount St. Gregory. The longest of the bay's three great arms is the one which receives the Humber. To do justice to this lovely sheet of water and its cleft shores one should tour by launch along the arms and among the sylvan islands which lie off the course of the Portia and the Reid steamer Meigle, down from Humbermouih. Both steamers go on to Bonne Bay (40 m.) where the most sophisticated tourist will experience new sensations. About the margin of this peerless fjord are arrayed the island's sublimest pinnacles. Above tiers of red headlands climb barren hills, and above the hills massive, deeply undulated summits whose crevices are inlaid with glittering snow.
Bonne Bay village makes a white line along the base of these wild sea mountains. At this point one may turn back with the Portia or continue on the Reid craft to the northern limits of the island—a journey of nearly 300 miles. The Long Range follows the coast from Bonne Bay to Hawke's Harbour and Ingornachoix Bay. Sportsmen leave the steamer at Port Saunders for salmon streams that lead up toward the mountains.
Isolated summits peer above Bay St. John whose uppermost promontory is New Ferrole, which lies on the fifty-first parallel north latitude. At Flower's Cove the Meigle crosses the Strait of Belle Isle to Salmon Bay on the coast of Canadian Labrador, and in doing so cuts the waters which in February are overlaid by the Arctic floes that form the breeding grounds of the seals of Greenland and Hudson's Bay. Blanc Sablon is on the boundary line between the Dominion of Canada and the in no wise related state, the Colony of Newfoundland.
The steamer loops in and out of desolate ports on the upper side of the strait, calls at Chateau Bay and then at Battle Harbour, due north of Cape Bauld, the topmost of Newfoundland's headlands.
From Battle Harbour, St. John's may be reached direct by the Kyle or the Prospero.
- ↑ The trans-insular express leaves St. John's every evening except Friday, and Port-aux-Basques every morning except Monday. See "Transportation," third paragraph, Chapter XIV.
- ↑ This trip may be made a day's excursion by leaving St. John's on the morning local train and returning from Carbonear by afternoon branch train to Brigus Junction where connection may be made for St. John's (2 hours), arriving 9:15 p. m.
- ↑ Before leaving to make steamer connections, it is advisable to inquire of the Reid-Newfoundland Company at St. John's as to the exact time of departure, as delays not infrequently occur which alter schedules.
- ↑ See "Chronology," Chapter XV.