The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 17
A HOLIDAY ON THE MIQUELON ISLANDS
CHAPTER_ XVII
A HOLIDAY ON THE MIQUELON ISLANDS
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Draw a line from Cape Cod to Newfoundland and it will cleave an island group where the three-barred pennant of France snaps from mast and pole, and hamlets are guarded by French gendarmes. Shrines at the angle of low-gabled streets, groups that play at Basque Ball on the square, dogs that strain at burdens denote the nationality of this archipelago, which lies only a little way off northern steamer lanes, but is less familiar to travellers than many isles in remote seas.
Here, cafés that smell of byrrh and good Bordeaux are served by damsels Gallic in tongue and gesture, and place and quay are cumbered by the tread of wooden-soled boots which, like smiting pink socks, broad caps and swaggering sashes call to mind the costumes of Brittany and its neighbour provinces.
Steamers from New York and Boston tie up at Halifax near the mail packet which leaves twice a month for St. Pierre. If arrival and departure are well-timed, a fair weather voyage of scarcely three 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 travellers are most interested is that of St. Peter.
When we had rounded the promontory which faces Newfoundland, 18 miles to the north, our altered course disclosed the capital of the Miquelons ascending from an oval harbour toward the heights which crown the island. Inside the basin's reefy gate the drying nets of over-sea trawlers bellowed like brown ensigns; in the misty wind, schooners' sails breathed to and fro as gulls lift waking wings. On the out-reaching cliff of Galantry Head the mighty pharos that flashes afar the menace of these shores, still did duty through the dawn. Here and there, lights glimmered from cottages that bossed the hillside above our prow, but for the most part the grey village of St. Pierre still stretched on its ledge asleep.
At the foot of the gang-plank the same uniform confronted us as confronts one at Villefranche or Boulogne. And we answered, as there, "Jai rien à declarer, Monsieur," and were chalked free with a negligent smile. A few men, broad-bodied, dressed in sea clothes, leaned against the walls of shuttered stores to watch the disembarking of passengers and the unloading of the cargo, mainly composed of food-stuffs from Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, hardware from Connecticut and brick and cement from Bangor. Below the quay dorymen busied themselves with spark plug and petrol. But in the silence of early morning the wide embankment was blank and still except for a whistling baker-boy who halted before doorways set deep in white stucco to deliver little breads from his ample head-basket. The round-skirted women who answered his call, the roofs that sloped toward the lintels of the opened doors were as veritably French as though the mother country were not an ocean apart from this colonial child.
We inquired for a hotel. A lusty idler replied in surprising pure accent that there were boarding-houses only, and but three of those. The coiffeur's behind the magasin of Monsieur Frecker might suit, only—Madame would perhaps find it not to her taste having to pass always through the hair-dressing shop to reach the family rooms. So that left two. . . . And both were on corners of the same streets, and the cuisine was as reputed at one as at the other.
Thus with no prejudices to guide us we sought a cinder road which left the quay near an archaic and water-less fountain and took its up-hill way past windows wherein watches and demijohns, tinted saints and merchandise would later in the day induce custom. Houses and shops were nearly all of dun-painted wood. Door-steps rose immediately from the roadway as in other French villages. And upper casements gazed directly upon the heads of the two strangers who paused to tap discreetly, for it was not yet seven o'clock, upon a certain green panel.
If we had known that Madame C had but recently announced herself heir to a legacy and indifferent to trade, we should better have comprehended the stir of draperies, the whispered peering of heads at neighbouring panes. Better have understood, also, the reluctant flap and shuffle of slippered feet which preceded the narrow gaping of the door, and the curt "Eh Bien?" which was our greeting.
"We seek breakfast, Madame," with caution, noting the chill of the appraising eye.
"Seulement déjeuner?" from lips that were keen as the glance.
One could not be sure . . . if the terms were right—
Whereat the green door snapped shut.
No more decisively, however, than another that had been waiting flew open. "Over here if you please," summoned a voice so compelling that over there we went to engage a chamber which resembled the best room in any French cottage from its gold wedding clock to its wedding four-poster. The furnishings, so it was volubly disclosed, had to the very image of Saint Mary been brought across the sea in a Brittany sailboat. In the same way is still conveyed much that the good people of Miquelon wear, eat and use.
During the fortnight we spent as guests of Madame Miller we slept, as in rural France, upon and beneath a ticking of down, and were wakened each morning by Albertine piping chansons as she dusted the stair. Appetizing odors drew us often to the dining-room where through an open door we could see the genie of the kitchen peering into kettles, sniffing under lids, mincing with fastidious, pottering hands herbs into a sputtering pan. At the table, we shared the concoctions of Madame, likewise tinned delicacies from France, good wine and puffy gateaux, with a monsieur lately arrived from Paris to install a new plant for the mogul called Thélot who dictates to St. Pierre how many watts it may have for its centimes. So potent is the name of this luminary that in his orbit it is synonymous with the light itself. "Où est Thélot?" mothers ask to invite their babes' reply, "Là est Thélot!" at the turning of the switch. If the evening current is belated, householders sigh in the dusk, "Thélot is late tonight," or if the light is poor, "Thélot is dim."
The broad world, its habits and terms mean little to St. Pierre. Many born on the island have never left it for so much as a day's excursion to Big or Little Miquelon. Their universe is this pinnacled isle bounded by the Atlantic.
A short way down a shabby street from our pension was the square about which the social and religious life of the village rotates, even as the quay is the hub of local commerce. Near-by is Government House. Facing the place is the café of the high world. But the most significant structure is the long, two-towered church deeded to the parish under exceptional circumstances by a bishop, member of the island's Basque aristocracy. This bishop made it his mission to preach the needs of St. Pierre from the north to the south of France. As the result of his campaign, half a million francs were given him to be used as he found best. Even the windows in the church he built bear the inscription, "A gift to Monsignor Légasse." The building, its altar ornaments and feast-day hangings became the property of the cleric, and he gave it outright to the parish, thus thwarting forever its forfeiture to the State. For the inhabitants of St. Pierre had felt the heavy hand of secularization, and like the ardent Churchmen they are had rebelled against it. In 1908 they made a demonstration before the Governor's house following the closing of the parochial schools, and threatened with vehemence to transfer their allegiance to the United States. Whereupon the home Ministry came tolerantly to terms.
Tolerantly, because these possessions, referred to by Voltaire in his Life of Louis XV as the Isles of Michelon, are no longer of value to France. Drastic conditions have affected the trade of St. Pierre, the capital-port. For years it has waned in population and prosperity, and those who stay on in its weather-worn houses wonder dully what is to become of them and their children. A fourth of the buildings are empty and only a score of schooners remain from the fleet of more than ten score which formerly bore "St. Pierre" at the stern.
Most of the inhabitants descend from those Norman, Basque and Breton companions of Champlain and de Razilly who were the forefathers of the exiles ruthlessly driven from New France by the English. Acadian outcasts found an asylum on these islands which had been known to Norse, French and Spanish voyagers in the Middle Centuries, and which Jacques Cartier is said to have visited before touching the mainland of America. In 1713 a troublous history began when they were granted with Newfoundland to Great Britain. Following Wolfe's victory on the Plains above Quebec, they were conferred upon vanquished France as a sop, with the stipulation that they be used henceforth only as an unfortified fishing-station. During the next fifty years, England and France were the alternate masters of Miquelon, but in 1815 the islands were definitely ceded to the French.
Recognising that Britain's prowess on the sea was first established by the ancient crews of Devon and Dorset who sailed a stormy tract to the Newfoundland feeding-grounds, France utilised the advantageous depôt of St. Pierre as an aid in training her naval recruits. The cod industry was encouraged for two reasons: it yielded boundless riches, and it afforded hardy practise for marine conscripts.
In 1884, St. Pierre was the premier fishing-port of the world. A visitor of that period, contributing to the Century Magazine, said of it, "Only at the wharves of Liverpool or New York can crowds of shipping be seen gathered in such dense masses of masts interlocked by ropes and yards." The commerce in salt and fish alone then approximated 40,000,000 francs a year. Each spring, passenger ships left the French coast towns of St. Malo, Dieppe and St. Brieuc for the little island on the other side of the sea. There the local fleet of fishing vessels was outfitted and despatched to the Banks with its Breton and Norman crews. When holds were full, schooners returned to land the fares of fish and take on new stores. While the fleet was away, fisher-wives and beach-boys spent their days on the gravel-flakes "making the cod." On every quintal of 112 pounds of fish the Government granted, and still grants, a bounty of nine francs, or about one-third the value of the catch. But in those royal days of thirty years ago St. Pierre had twice its present resident population of three thousand, and in addition, from May to October, ten thousand "Frenchmen from France" swarmed thither at enriching intervals. Everything they consumed was brought to the island and sold at a profit by merchants and shipowners whose swollen purses provided expensive houses and living, whose children were sent abroad to be educated, and returned to adorn functions that reflected the lustre of Paris.
As St. Pierre's wealth had been drawn from finny depths, so it dwindled, not through lack of cod, but through want of small fish to bait them. For without herring upon the hook, what avail the hordes that swim the shallows of the Banks? Newfoundland was the traditional source of dependable bait supply, and Newfoundland, long resentful at having to compete in open market with French codders who benefited by a Government bonus, took her revenge. A law was enacted making it illegal for her fishermen to sell bait to any vessel of a foreign nation. Thus was accomplished the ruin of St. Pierre.
With the local run of bait uncertain, armateurs hesitated to engage and pay the transportation of the sailors from France. Gradually, new methods prevailed. Vessels outfitted in Brittany, secured periwinkle bait on the Banks, shipped their catch in brine direct to France by transports provided for the purpose, and called at St. Pierre only when in need of repairs or minor provisions.
A fleet of one hundred and fifty brigs, brigantines and barkentines now leaves France in normal years for the Banks. Besides, there are twenty trawlers or more which have no need for bait, but like their brothers of the North Sea, trail cornucopia nets behind them.
The village "journal of Social Democracy," La Vigie, in its issue of June sixth, 1914, comments editorially that the colony of St. Pierre-Miquelon, "sole débris of our important possessions in New France," is to-day on the point of vanishing completely. Said a shop-keeper as he gazed at impoverished shelves, "We are only poor relations now, hanging to the skirts of France. Our flakes are bare, the wharves where vessels once ranged in a treble row stern to stem are nearly deserted. If our patrie contrives no new industries for us, then we must find occupation elsewhere, as hundreds of us have already done—some in Canadian mines and factories, some in Gloucester and Lynn. We Miquelonais do not like Canada, the land from which our ancestors were expelled by British usurpers. Nor do we forget that we owe all our misfortune to the vengeance of a British colony. Most of us, like the Acadians, will find our refuge in America. Our island will be left alone with its staring houses."
Despite predictions justified by the present state of commerce, new projects are being discussed for the sustenance of the colony, and beach and wharves still show activities fostered by the presence of an ever-changing fleet. Each year, many English vessels as well as French are placed under the economical and expert hands of St. Pierre workmen. As we walked one morning along the harbour road, the air was lively with the tapping of riveters renewing the plates of a rusted prow. On the dock near-by was a group squatted about a heap of ruddy sails that ruddier hands struck the needle through. Other groups were sorting cod on the deck of Our Lady of Good News. In dusky sheds, bare-footed girls laughed and sang as they shovelled pyramids of Cadiz salt into barrows for other girls to wheel to outgoing ships. Constantly we marvelled at the speech of even these humble natives of St. Pierre who have no uncouth accent or patois but speak the pure tongue of Tours and Orléans.
On the road to Galantry there are shops fragrant with tar and oakum, where anchors and hard-tack are sold by the pound, squid-hooks by the card, and rope by the metre. In this direction are the premises of a corporation euphoniously known as The French Codfish, La Morue Française. Besides flocks of trawlers, goëlettes and cod transports, it owns a great drying-plant at Fécamp, near St. Malo on the Norman coast.
A stony hill behind the company's warehouses surveys the town, rising from its mast-fringed water-front to cheerless terraces. As a "symbol and work of faith" there stands above this village of fading hope a crucifix on a far-seen mound. Beyond a ravine are other mounds and crosses enclosed by a fence—a "sad colony" that the grave-blaster will guide you about. He blasts because one cannot dig rock, and St. Pierre is an island whose ribs are stone beneath a veil of earth. He blasts in summer because the frost and the rock together defy his tools in winter-time. So you find him in July preparing the sometime bed of one knows not who—his own perhaps, as he reminds you.
Catholic and Protestant lie in the common plot. One corner is reserved for sailors; the graves of the shipwrecked are marked by nameless crosses.
A fog winds in from the Atlantic, and we hasten down to the quay where yard-arms stretch dark and stiff in the mist and moisture stains the flagging. Before the despatch board of the French Cable office a group of black-shawled women is discussing the report that an Emperor's heir has been murdered. "A bad business," they murmur, knowing no more than the rest of the world, what a very bad business it should prove to be.
Some one taps on the window. "Entrez mes amis! There are fresh cables—a fine wedding for Madame, la boxe for Monsieur. . . ." It is forbidden, this "leaking" of small news, but if one has spent an amiable evening with the director who is one's landlady's brother-in-law, rules need not be too strictly kept.
In the grimy booth we hear that the French cabinet is in difficulties, that Carpentier has invaded Britain, and a submarine has gone down—to stay. Opinions are launched and disputed, argument runs high among the loungers in the office. Only a stalwart with his back to the winking stove says nothing. He is a grappler just in from a job at splicing, from the deck of a repair-ship, two finger-thick cables leagues down in the sea. Laws and athletics are tame talk to him.
When we go out again to the Quai de la Roncière the fog has passed and the sun is pushing through. St. Pierre's gloomy moods are not always so quickly dispelled. Often she sulks in a mist for days together, but through the late summer one may be reasonably sure of bright days.
A brusque wind makes sport of hats and petticoats as we cross the broad pavement. Café doors slam shut on drinking sailors; oxen, drawing carts which move on Roman wheels of wood, bend still lower their wool-padded heads; on the landing, an old dame in long cape and muslin bonnet waits shiveringly for the boat to Dog Island. But no one complains of the wind, for it rends the fog, bane of St. Pierre.
The Governor's Residence, a modest mansion flanked by offices of the island's bureaucracy, is on a parterre fronting the harbour. One called merely an Administrator has succeeded to the chief office, and even his powers are not infrequently confided now to a lesser official. Though the rank of the appointee from Paris has declined with St. Pierre's glory, France maintains an appearance of maternalism in suave cablegrams which deceive no one, but which explain with what care the Government is considering the choice of a new and worthy head for the neglected colony.
The Island of St. Pierre, the Isle aux Chiens and Miquelon Island have each a municipal council elected by the townsfolk. The mayor is chosen by the council and serves without compensation in the liberal way Latin mayors seem to do. The civic head to whom we paid our devoirs came by appointment from his clerk's desk at The French Codfish to receive in the municipal sanctum. Politics rage with fervour in St. Pierre. We knew that the gentleman who was at the moment occupying the official swivel chair had been the candidate of the family Légasse, who control La Morue Française, and have at least two fingers in every St. Pierre pie.
The wedding salon of the Mairie was arrayed in green dust sheets quite discouraging to sentiment. "November is the marriage month," explained the mayor, and cited the thrifty reason that in November the fishing season is ended and would-be grooms know better then the state of their finances.
In St. Pierre's heyday, this chamber witnessed many unions between Newfoundland girls of Irish descent and native lovers who made them a home on the island, or took them back to Brittany, there to bear a Franco-Celtic progeny which is represented now among crews of visiting fishermen. The maids of Burin and St. Lawrence emigrated as servants to the great houses of St. Pierre and had a share in the life of a generation ago. Now one finds them in the public wash-house, or spreading fish to dry for winter use, or stringing cod tongues for their French-speaking children to sell. The cartloads of tongues, cheeks and sounds which the little hucksters vend are drawn by dog-teams, harnessed with rope and gingham-bound collars and bitted with a straight twig of wood. The dogs of Miquelon merit an ode to their fortitude and docile sagacity. Most of them boast a strain of that Newfoundland breed of which even a trace seems to ennoble the most outlandish of mongrels. Nearly all fishing vessels carry dogs as retrievers of cod which fall from the deck in loading; as fog detectors—it is said they can scent approaching vapour as well as land—and as augurs of good luck. When the master puts out to his vessel, Jacko swims after, though the distance may be upwards of a mile and the water wintry cold.
One comes to the beach where the dory fishermen land their daily catch by following the Street of the Army of Italy, which begins at the north end of the quay. On the way, one passes the three cannon which overlook the channel, and which comprise the last French armament in North America. The antiquated trio was formerly a quartette. But upon the occasion of a national fête a patriot thought to discharge a blast, and annihilated both the gun and himself in doing so. Thus he attained 
THE QUAY AT ST. PIERRE-MIQUELON, WITH DOG ISLAND BEYOND.
The Procession of the Virgin, August Fifteenth
the distinction of being recorded the sole victim of this historic battery.
As the weather had been favourable for fishing, the wharves on the channel beach presented a characteristic picture when we strolled one day to the little cove to watch the unloading of the dory fleet. The gleaming cod were tossed from the bottom of capacious motor-boats to platforms about the workers' benches. Women with white kerchiefs tied about their heads helped in the various processes and lightened the somewhat sombre scene with their banter. On adjacent wharves long tables were devoted to the dressing of the tiny caplin which "strike in" each June or July, burdening the breakers, and littering the shore with stranded fins so that buckets are filled by being merely dipped in the surf. Fried fresh they excel in tastiness the smelt or sardine. Salted and dried they are in demand in the delicate-eating shops of Paris at a sou apiece. Their preparation is mainly carried on by women, and by Breton beach-boys who come out to serve a year on shore before spending another two years on the Banks to complete their naval apprentice-ship.
Many of these boys speak the language of Brittany, which resembles English more than French. "Count for M'sieur and Madame," urged his employer of one who stood stockily in his sabots before a fish-laden table. When he complied, to the amusement of his nudging companions, we could understand nearly every number from one to twelve. The patron of the Breton boys was Basque. He courteously demonstrated the throaty difficulties of Eskuara, the rugged tongue of the mountain dwellers on the shores of Biscay Bay.
There was another Basque. We saw him first in the uniform of the "Suisse" at the ceremony of the First Communion in the white church on the square. Cocked hat and gold-braided coat were no grander than his stride. At proper moments he brought his sacristan's staff ringingly to the floor. When veiled little figures defiled beneath pended models of sailing-ships, which hang in this church of St. Peter as they hang in the fanes of Normandy and Brittany, Jean-Baptiste led off, significant in bearing and array of the dignity of Church and State. "I should like to see him on a week-day," said one, following with respect the departing figure. "Do you imagine he carries such pomp into every circumstance?"
The next day, a sunny Monday, we were on the hill road which runs below the ruin of the old barracks when we heard at some distance the heavy plod of oxen's feet and the chiding of a driver. The camera was hastily uncased. "Arretez, s'il vous plait . . . un moment—" as the attelage hove round the corner. The wheels paused. Readily the driver gave permission to make the photograph, which, so it appeared, he had long desired, for he loved his boeufs,—which were of course not his at all but his employer's, who sold coal to the villagers. However, when one walked all day beside the patient brutes, what would you? They became like one's own, was it not so?
We heard in a daze. Cap and baggy breeches, slothful gait, rough shoes, warming smile—to what had our "Suisse" descended? For him it was we had so peremptorily halted. Obligingly he drew the oxen toward the sun and posing his elbow on a glossy back, shouldered his goad. "C'est bien?" he inquired, and without being asked looked pleasant.
When the exposure was made we took his address. "Jean-Baptiste Barnèche, St. Pierre-Miquelon,—only it is unnecessary to write more than Baptiste," he added with a hint of the Sunday air. "Every one knows me, the sacristan." Gently he prodded a flank. "Bon jour, M'sieu, Bon jour, M'dame. I shall look for the picture you have promised."
"Bon jour. Monsieur Barnèche," we answered, recalling the ring of a staff and blare of gold.
"Hu dia!" he summoned the oxen. Then looking back, "In this way Basque drivers everywhere address their bêtes."
"That explains the manners, the versatility, the honest smile," said my companion as we continued up-hill. "He is Basque."
On the way to the first height that tops the town, palings were decked with multi-coloured woollens hung there by women who busily paddled and rinsed, each in an individual pool which had been made by the damming of a juvenile stream. From the peak of the hill, the bare summits of the Sentinel and the Sugar Cone were in full view behind us. Below was the ocean, level to-day as a pavement of lasuli laid to the round rim of the sky. The vast interval between sky and ocean was filled with a blue lustre characteristic of these northern summer seas.
Wild flowers grew feebly in the scant earth about us. We were at pains not to crush them knowing with what effort they had bloomed at all. The few gardens of St. Pierre are enriched each spring by mould brought from Newfoundland in the holds of fishing-boats. On our way down hill we lingered to flatter a patch of zinnias inside a decrepit gate. The one who had planted them came out of the house. She looked as French as any Pierraise, but she was a Terra Novan who spoke English with a French accent. It was her boys we had photographed as they toiled up hill with a hand-barrow full of linen, aided by a dog tethered at the side. "What had the étrangers meant by 'Turn around' and 'Hold still'?" they had run to her to ask, so she related, untying her head mouchoir as if by so doing to fix more firmly her claim to British birth. As we talked she told us of the St. Pierre vessel that had foundered years before. Thirty-six fathers had been drowned, her husband among them. Her eldest son was now at sea.
"On windy nights we mothers lie awake," she said . . . "Did you hear the wind last night?" No, we answered, ashamed to have slept so calmly.
"Do the wives and mothers of fishermen never get used to the worry?" we asked, feeling very unlearned in sorrow in this woman's presence.
"Never used to it. But if there has been a storm and the boats are late in coming in, we don't give up so quickly as others might. 'Hopes from the sea, never from the grave,' we say, and keep heart till wreckage drifts ashore, or somehow we know."
In the American consulate there is a chart which displays in vivid manner the frequency with which the shores of these islands have witnessed the last hours of tortured ships. Langlade and Miquelon are joined by a bar where until a hundred years ago the tide swept through. The map designates by a series of dots the wrecks which have occurred on this shoal alone. There are double rows of such dots on either side the sand-bank. Vessels approached thinking to pass between the islands, and went to their fate. Over the dead hulks the sand has crept to form a heavy shroud, and one walks over them as over sunken graves in a cemetery.
The mail-boat makes the 30-mile trip to Miquelon on stated days, calling at Langlade on the way. The farms and lobster-pots of the latter supply produce for St. Pierre tables, and its streams being famous for their trout, officials and employés of the Government and of the two cable stations—the French and the Anglo-American—come here to spend their holidays.
The town of Miquelon is laid out along a single street and has a population of about five hundred. Most settlers chose St. Pierre as a residence because of the harbour.
Dog Island, a mile distant from St. Pierre, is a sprawling flat of land humped in the middle and strewn with rocks, drying-flakes, fisher huts and drowsy dogs, whose numbers give the island its name.
The village kindergarten had just been dismissed as we arrived opposite the shop of Madame Auguste Pinson, who for thirty-nine years has taught school behind the shop. Her pupils having been duly posed, with a few mothers hovering on the border, we were pressed to view the school-room where walls were ringed with four-inch benches, and adorned with the injunctions, "Never lie," and "Love your parents," together with other mottoes equally calculated to affect the morals of little Dog Islanders.
Returning across the harbour we hailed a boatload of fishermen rowing to the French vessel whose banner of smoke foretold early departure. They waved flat blue caps at our bobbing launch, happy deep-chested fellows who, though no one guessed it then, were soon to be ordered home to a sterner task than setting trawls and baiting hooks.
As their ship went to sea, we knew eyes would turn, as do the eyes of all who leave and approach St. Pierre, toward the niche in the cliff where the Virgin of the Waves stands serenely above the coast road to Cap à l'Aigle. It was among the crags of this point of land that there appeared to Chateaubriand the sailor-girl to whom he refers in d'Outre Tombe as his "Cap à l'Aigle sweetheart."
We sauntered the road to the Eagle's Cape; we drove behind one of the island's few horses to the hamlet of Savoyard, where the odour of curing cod betrays the vocation of its inhabitants; we climbed and descended steeps to the shelter where the Anglo-American cable rises out of the sea; we visited the cable quarters where messages are relayed from New York and Duxbury to Heart's Content on the Newfoundland coast, and thence to England.
One evening, above the toot and boom of the village band practising Sambre et Meuse for an approaching holiday, came the wailing alarm of the fire trumpet. In a moment, the road below our hinged windows was alive with running feet. "Feu! Feu!" the women cried, while husbands lent a hand with the water-cart and little boys raced up and down to point the way. An empty house had caught fire. The blaze was soon drowned. The town was apprised of the fact by the ringing of the church bell, and the desisting of the horn. But long after bed hour excited voices bore up to us the meagre details of the conflagration.
The holy days of the Church are observed with true French ardour. On Corpus Christi Day the route of the procession from one street altar to another is marked by a brave showing of damask and fine linen hung on outer walls in lieu of the silken draperies of more affluent communities. At the Feast of the Mother of God on August fifteenth banners are borne through the town in fulfillment of a vow made at the burning of the old church a decade ago. In March a service is held by the island fishermen to ask a blessing upon the coming season, and in November thanks are given for what the season has brought forth.
There is no theatre to furnish frivolous amusement; even the cinema impresario has deserted St. Pierre for a more lucrative field. The Fall of the Bastille is celebrated by parades of French marines and receptions to visiting officers. Dog Island is host on a Sunday in August at the blithest function of the year when the greased pole and sack race vie in hilarity with games of more essentially local invention.
The salons of the Cafés de Joinville, du Midi and Biarritz which were formerly bright with balls and sprightly cabarets are dull now except at the "green hour" when merchants and officials gather to discuss news dripped by the cables, or announced at street corners by the paid crier of auctions, sales, lost articles, rewards and municipal decrees.
Shopping in St. Pierre is a profitable pursuit provided one's wallet is filled with American coin or bank-notes. Though articles are priced in francs and centimes, the currency of the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, England and Switzerland is accepted, and change is made in any one or all of these. Strangely, very little French money is in circulation, and a bonus of two per cent, is demanded on French gold wherewith to pay customs fees. An American dollar, silver or paper, is worth 108 sous. Observe then: one enters the Bureau des Postes near the square and tenders an American quarter of a dollar in payment for stamps approximating in French money 1 franc, 25 centimes. Instead of taking a discount on the foreign coin, the uniformed representative of the Government returns with the stamps two copper sous. With these two sous another stamp may be purchased which has a carrying value of two American cents.
Again, one yearns for a certain chocolate bar, made in the States and sold there for five cents. St. Pierre shops offer the confection at five sous each. You buy two for ten sous, and receive in change for a fifty-cent piece, forty-four sous, instead of the forty expected. Four sous is the price of a siphon of soda which if desired will be sent to your door as a bonus on two bars of American candy, whose cost is less here than in the States.
For no apparent reason, French tobacco which sells for a franc the package in Paris may be had in St. Pierre for half the amount, unless the supply is low, when a bounty of ten or twenty centimes is asked until a ship comes in.
We found stores lacking certain stocks because of the loss of the Marie-Amélie, which had sailed from France with the spring orders of the island merchants and had disappeared with its crew—had never reached its haven. A favourite brand of cigarettes, the Elegantes Jaunes, were wanting—"Je regrette, Monsieur—la Marie Amélie, vous savez—" And the re-order had not yet arrived. So every one smoked something else until shelves could be replenished. There was a certain kind of silk. We searched for it in the tidy shops, but always came the answer, "Ah, yes—there should be bolts of it—mais, la Marie-Amélie . . ."
It was the same with French biscuits at Madame Littaye's whose establishment is a little Louvre from perfume to hats; and with Fourteenth of July lanterns at Monsieur Briand's, who makes photographs, besides selling butter and Algerian wine; and with the buttons needed for a coat. The loss of the Marie-Amélie affected rather keenly our shopping tours. But increased, also, the sense of romance and tragedy which pervades isolated St. Pierre.