Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/447

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TOURS BY RAIL AND STEAMER
379

miles long and 6 miles wide, is named on the map a pond. Spruce Brook and Harry's Brook thread a realm renowned for fish, big game and alluring canoe-ways. The Log Cabin at Spruce Brook Station is a pleasant inn at which even on the border of the wilderness the conventions are not disregarded. At Stephenville Crossing is another hotel for sportsmen and tourists, near the head of lovely Bay St. George. This is a famous lobster region. In season one may feast on the toothsome crustacean at an absurdly small outlay. They are offered by fishermen at 11 cents each. Salmon is 5 cents a pound. Trout cost 25 cents for a dozen weighing one and a half to two pounds each. Emptying into this bay are numerous other streams inhabited by the mystic salmo solar.

At South Branch the rails bridge the Grand Codroy on its way to the gulf. From this station and from Doyle's (25 miles above Port-aux-Basques) the pools are conveniently fished. From Doyle's store the river is a mile distant. Almost on its banks is a genial house on a five-hundred-acre farm frequented year after year by a loyal clan. "Doyle's" has an individuality that is not to be ascribed to the merit of near-by pools nor to the scenery, which here comprises a wide curving river, apple-green intervales and two rows of grim snow-flecked ranges. Though past three score and ten, the mother of the Doyle boys, "mother" also to all her hungry boarders, assumes the tasks of