Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/448

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380
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

housewife, cook and waitress—nimbly broiling new-caught trout, emerging with platters of fat salmon from the steam-misted kitchen where the guides are supping, piling plates with brown biscuits, surreptitiously filling half-emptied milk glasses from the quart cream pitcher, hovering with heaped ladles to replenish dwindling portions, beaming on the guests who take two helpings of everything, chiding those who for most excellent reasons cannot.

In the morning early the fishermen are off to the Cascade or the Overfall. Rubber-breeched and stoutly booted, their pockets bulge with fly-books, hooks and reels. The guides shoulder poles, gaffs and frying-pans and a Mother Doyle sack of provisions. They descend to the boats and pole two or three miles up river between fruitful meadows and knolls dotted with browsing sheep. Across the wide flats the Anguille Mountains make a wall to bar out the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Above tidewater good pools occur at short intervals. On these Newfoundland streams the first rod holds possession. In other words, a pool is a man's own until he deserts it. The price he pays is the $10 fishing-fee to the warden. The custom of leasing water rights obtains nowhere on the island.

At the close of the day catches are weighed and compared, adventures recounted, condolences exchanged over the gamey ones that got away after hours of sulks and rushes. Some of the salmon