Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/336

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THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

the Malecites, one of the five great salmon courses of New Brunswick, follows a rock-fretted channel to the ledge of a precipice where it casts the full breadth of its stream down a granite stair 30 to 40 feet wide, then crashes with tremendous effect into a ravine deep shadowed by upright cliffs. From a hill above the falls one gets an unobstructed view of the master leap and the tumultuous aftermath.

Four times a week passenger trains leave Bathurst by the Gulf Shore Railway for Caraquet, the harbour of Shippegan and Tracadie Mills (80 m.). Norman, Acadian and Jersey French compose the population of Caraquet (50 m.) which is distinguished as being the largest and oldest French settlement in New Brunswick, and one of the chief fishing centres of all the province. Here, off the tall cliffs of Chaleur Bay, are the most northerly oyster grounds on the Atlantic side of the continent. This thoroughly characteristic fishing-port was the site of a Robin entrepôt as early as 1837. That the mackerel fisheries are profitable may be judged from the experience of one fisherman who took 7000 of the largest possible size—"so big their tails had to be turned up in packing"—from a string of 35 nets in a single night.

Near Caraquet in Le Bocage, a grove of beech and birch, is a hallowed chapel to St, Anne. From this woodland shrine there is a wonderful