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 Gaspe
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 Gaspe
Bay, at the head of which fine sheet of water, in a landlocked harbor,
stands the town of Gaspe, 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 Gaspe 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 Gaspe 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 Gaspe Bay we pass the mouths of the Bonaventure and the Grand
and Litt