Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/54

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
32
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

will be supplied by the Tourist Association, St. John. The Intercolonial Railway issues an exhaustive list of sportsmen's hotels in out of the way districts.

The traveller who for the first time fares the length of the Peninsula to Gaspé Basin, a long day's journey from main roads of travel, does so with misgiving as to what sort of tavern will, in so remote a place, offer him hospitality. He arrives after dark and crosses by launch to the shore opposite the railway station. From the landing there is a heroic dash in a carry-all drawn by splendid horses up a breathless hill, and at the top—lights shining down a driveway on pavilion and grassy parterre, and gleaming from the windows of turreted chateau Baker, a way-farer's home unique among Canadian inns.

For years the house sat modestly enough by the road-side, overlooking the bay and the Gaspé hills. The few travellers who came this way by wagon and steamer found a rare good welcome, and rare good beds and meals to compensate the journey's tedium. John Baker's fame as a purveyor of comfort seeped by degrees to the edge of the outer world. Then the railroad crept part way down the coast and finally laid a path along the cliffs of Bay Chaleur to the Basin. As traffic increased, so did the size of Baker's House, and climbed and spread its wings and put forth new chambers and