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(From Scribner's Magazine, 1888. Courtesy of the Restigouche Regional Museum, Dalhousie.)

1 of 5

‘It seemed a picturesque way of traveling, although none too safe.’ An original illustration from the Scribner’s Magazine article.

Courtesy Patti Craig

These men were camping upriver early in the 20th century. They seem to have been content with a simple lean-to to keep the elements off them. Some campers just slept beneath their overturned canoes.

Courtesy Patti Craig

A later generation of salmon fishermen, fishing for salmon on the river.

Courtesy Patti Craig

Two men poling a canoe upriver. This was perhaps in 1908 but definitely prior to WWI, as the man standing, Robert Shives of Campbellton, was accidentally killed overseas in 1916 while serving overseas with the Royal Flying Corps.

Courtesy Patti Craig

Poling a canoe early in the 20th century.

Sunday was a very peaceful day in our camp. In the Dominion of Canada the question "to fish or not to fish" on the first day of the week is not left to the frailty of individual conscience. The law on the subject is quite explicit, and says that between six o'clock on Saturday evening and six o'clock on Monday morning all nets shall be taken up and no one shall wet a line. The Restigouche Salmon Club has its guardians stationed all along the river, and they are quite as inflexible in seeing that their employers keep this law as the famous sentinel was in refusing to let Napoleon pass without the countersign. But I do not think that any of these keen sportsmen regard it has a hardship; they are quite willing that the fish should have "an off day" in every week, and only grumble because some of the net-owners down at the mouth of the river have brought political influence to bear in their favour and obtained exemption from the rule. For our part, we were nothing loath to hang up our rods, and make the day different from other days. In the morning we had a service in the cabin of the boat, gathering a little congregation of guardians and boatmen and people from a solitary farmhouse up the river. They came in pirogues — long, narrow boats hollowed from the trunk of a tree; and as they pushed off on their homeward journey, the black-eyed, brown-faced girls sitting back to back in the middle of the boat, and the men standing up and bending to their poles, it seemed a picturesque way of travelling, although none too safe.

In the afternoon we sat on deck and looked at the water. What a charm there is in watching a swift stream! The eye never wearies of following its curls and eddies, the shadow of the waves dancing over the stones, the strange, crinkling lines of sunlight in the shallows. There is a sort of fascination in it, lulling and soothing the mind into a quietude which is even pleasanter than sleep, and making it almost possible to do that of which we so often speak, but which we never quite accomplish - "think about nothing." Out on the edge of the pool, we could see five or six huge salmon, moving slowly from side to side, or lying motionless like gray shadows. There was nothing to break the silence except the thin, clear whistle of the "sweet-wea-ther," and as the sun began to sink, the silver, bell-like notes of the "lost Kennedy" warbling to himself far back in the woods. These are almost the only bird-songs that one ever hears on the river, unless you count the metallic "chr-r-r-r" of the thievish kingfisher as a song. Every now and then one of the salmon in the pool would lazily roll out of water, or spring high into the air and fall back with a heavy splash. What is it that makes salmon leap? Is it pain or pleasure? Do they do it to escape the attack of another fish, or to shake off a parasite that clings to them, or to practice jumping so that they can ascend the falls when they reach them, or simply and solely out of exuberant gladness and joy of living? Any one of these reasons would be enough to account for it on week-days; but on Sunday I am quite sure they do it for the trial of the fisherman's faith.

But how should I tell all the little incidents which made that inland voyage so delightful? Favonius was the ideal host, for on water as well as on land, he knows how to provide for the liberty as well as for the wants of his guests. He understands also the fine art of conversation, which consists of silence as well as speech. And when it comes to angling, Izaak Walton* himself could not have been a more profitable teacher by precept or example. Indeed, it is a curious thought, and one full of sadness to a well-constituted mind, that on the Restigouche "I. W." would have been somewhat at sea, for the beloved father of all fishermen passed through this world without ever catching a salmon.

At last the days of idleness were ended. We could not

Fold our tents like the Arabs

And as silently steal away

But we took down the long rods, put away the heavy reels, made the canoes fast to the side of the house, embarked the three horses on the front deck, and then dropped down with the current, swinging along through the rapids, and drifting slowly through the still places, now grounding on a hidden rock, and now sweeping around a sharp curve, until at length we saw the roofs of Metapedia and the ugly bridge of the railway spanning the river. There we left our floating-house, uncouth and motionless, like some strange water-monster, stranded on the shore. And as we climbed the bank we looked back and wondered whether Noah was as sorry when he said good-bye to his ark.

(* "Izaak Walton" was the English author of The Compleat Angler, a famous fishing book. He shouldn't be confused with businessman Izaak Walton Killam, who rose from being a paper boy in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia to become one of Canada's wealthiest individuals. The latter was presumably named after the former, and owned a salmon lodge at Flatlands which is now a restaurant.)

The End