Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/456

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THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

days separates the capital of New England from the chief town of the Miquelon Islands, last fragment of New France.

When not only the capital of New England but that of Scotland's namesake had been put behind us, the Adventurer and I, and Happy the terrier, betook ourselves from the cold mist which obscured receding Halifax to the packet's trim cabin. About the table where tall bottles stalked, the ship's company—buyers of oil, sellers of motors, visiting Pierrais from the States—made reference to crossings quite the opposite of fair, when a week of days and nights had been needed to make this passage alone. We were fortunate, so every one said, to find ourselves in these waters in mid-summer. At other seasons, buccaneer gales of the St. Lawrence Gulf and the Atlantic not infrequently exact toll from far prouder ships than the little craft on which we had somewhat fearfully embarked for a vague land of Fog, Fish and Frenchmen.

At break of a sullen morning, the port-holes framed, first, a long barren island which was Great Miquelon, then a grassy one which was Langlade, then another, steep and green—Colombier. On our right rose a lofty rock wall whose length of three or four miles was the length of the island called for the Great Fisherman. There were other islands, those of the Conquerors, the Massacre, the Pigeons and the Dogs. But the one in which