opening up a wide vista to the interior. We are getting into the Malbaie
country for Isle aux Coudres, an island some six miles long, opposite
Baie St. Paul, was formerly linked with Malbaie under one missionary
priest. The north shore continues high and rugged. After passing Les
Eboulements, a picturesque village, far above us on the mountain side,
we round Cap aux Oies, in English, unromantically, Goose Cape, and, far
in front, lies a great headland, sloping down to the river in bold
curves. On this side of the headland we can see nestling in under the
cliff what, in the distance, seems only a tiny quay. It is the wharf of
Malbaie. The open water beyond it, stretching across to Cap à l'Aigle,
marks the mouth of the bay. The great river, now twelve miles broad,
with a surging tide, rising sometimes eighteen or twenty feet, has the
strength and majesty almost of Old Ocean himself.

As we land we see nothing striking. There is just a long wharf with some
cottages clustered at the foot of the cliff. But when we have ascended
the short stretch of winding road that leads over the barrier of cliff
we discover the real beauties of Malbaie. Before us lies the bay's
semi-circle--perhaps five miles in extent; stretching far inland is a
broad valley, with sides sloping up to rounded fir-clad mountain tops.
It is the break in the mountains and the views up the valley that give
the place its peculiar beauty. When the tide is out the bay itself is
only a great stretch of brown sand, with many scattered boulders, and
gleaming silver pools of water. Looking down upon it, one sees a small
river winding across the waste of sand and rocks. It has risen in the
far upland three thousand feet above this level and has made an arduous
downward way, now by narrow gorges, more rarely across open spaces,
where it crawls lazily in the summer sunlight:--_les eaux mortes_, the
French Canadians call such stretches. It bursts at length through the
last barrier of mountains, a stream forty or fifty yards wide, and flows