first seigneur of Malbaie.--A new policy for settling Canada.--The
Sieur de Comporté, seigneur of Malbaie, sentenced to death in
France.--His career in Canada.--His plans for Malbaie.--Hazeur,
Seigneur of Malbaie.--Malbaie becomes a King's Post.--A Jesuit's
description of Malbaie in 1750.--The burning of Malbaie by the
British in 1759.


If one is not in too great a hurry it is wise to take the steamer--not
the train--at Quebec and travel by it the eighty miles down the St.
Lawrence to Malbaie, or Murray Bay, as the English call it, somewhat
arrogantly rejecting the old French name used since the pioneer days of
Champlain. This means an early morning start and six or seven hours--the
steamers are not swift--on that great river. Only less than a mile apart
are its rugged banks at Quebec but, even then, they seem to contract the
mighty torrent of water flowing between them. Once past Quebec the river
broadens into a great basin, across which we see the head of the
beautiful Island of Orleans. We skirt, on the south side, the twenty
miles of the island's well wooded shore, dotted with the cottages of
the habitants, stretched irregularly along the winding road. Church
spires rise at intervals; the people are Catholic to a man. Once past
this island we begin to note changes. Hardly any longer is the St.
Lawrence a river; rather is it now an inlet of the sea; the water has
become salt; the air is fresher. So wide apart are the river's shores
that the cottages far away to the south seem only white specks.

Hugging the north shore closely we draw in under towering Cap Tourmente,
fir-clad, rising nearly two thousand feet above us; a mighty obstacle it
has always been to communication by land on this side of the river. Soon
comes a great cleft in the mountains, and before us is Baie St. Paul,