i ^^^^ ^^ss^^ ^S Wf Glass_ Book/ SKETCHES OE GASPE BY JOHN M. CLARKE ALBANY J. B. LVON COMPANV, STATE PRINTERS 1908 /3/^ 1 (■., CONTENTS PACR Introduction ," ■ ;;; " / ^"'- il' ^ The Scenery of the Mountains, I : The Ocean's Work ; at Perce ; on the Forillon — Destruction of the Forillon — The Forillon sinkmg — Ihe American Bank — Scenery of the Forillon — Mt St Alban — The King's Road — Origin of the word Forillon — Hognedo or Honguedo — View from the Forillon — Shiphcad — Origin of the word Gaspe — The End of the Appalachian System — Date of the Forillon — Little The Scpnery of the Mountains 11: The Cliffs of Perce— Perce Rock — Changes in Perce Rock — Descriptions by Champlain ; LeTac ; Denys ; LeClercq — Captain Smith's Engraving — Ferland — LeBoutilher — The Future of the Rock — Fossils of the Rock; their abundance — The Murailles — Mt Joli and Cape Canon — Relations of the limestone Cliffs , 15 The Scenery of the Mountains, III: The Sandstones — Gaspe Basm — Its Scenery — The "Admiral " — Gaspe Bay — Rocks in Art 25 The Scenery of the Mountains, IV: The Mountains of the St Lawrence — Cape Rosier to Grande Vallee — The Shickshocks 28 The Great Reck Folds and Troughs: Fold i. The Forillon — Fold 2, Gaspe Mountain — Fold 3. Tar Point — Fold 4- Point St Peter — Fold 5. Perce — The Bays and Rivers — Barachois, Bar and Tickle.. 29 Perce Mountain: Table-a-rolante — Mt Ste Anne — its red con- glomerates—Their extent to Bonaventure Island — Destruction by the sea — The Vision on Mt Ste Anne — The coast at Perce changing 33 The Rocks and the People: Geology and Settlement — The Mines — Their history — Petroleum, its promises and disappointments — The submarine mountains and the fishing • • • • 39 The Earlv Settlements: The French Fishermen — Jehan Denys — Car- tier ; stops at Perce ; lands in Gaspe Bay — Champlain — The RecoUets — Sir William Alexander — Kirk and De Rouquemont — The Jesuits — Nicholas Denvs — Return of the Recollets — Father LeClercq — St Peter's church at Perce — St Claire's at Bonaventure Island — Fathers Didace, Joseph Denvs and Jumeau at Perce — Burning of the churches bv the Bostonians — Father Jumeau's letter — Hovenden Walker and Jack Hill at Gaspe — Beauharnois — American loyalists 43 Historical Sketch of the Cod-lishery: Procedure in the time of Nicholas Denvs — Same methods followed todav — Present mode of packing for shipment — The arrival of Charles Robin — Early procedure of the Robin establishment — Robin's letters — Capture of the " Bee " and " Hope " — Business abandoned on account of American Revolution — Criticisms of the Robin administration — Incoming of the Loyalist settlers — Later fishing establishments 55 The Place Names • • ^ Bonaventure Island: Earlv Settlement — The old houses — Gannet Cliffs ■ 68 Gaspe Stories and Legends: Ogress of Bonaventure Island — Virtues of Alca — Little Prisoner of Perce — LeClerco's Expedition to the Indi- ans of the Cross — Mirage of Cape d'Espoir — Marguerite — Creation and Deluge Mvth — Myth of Recreation — The Gaspe Flea 7^ INTRODUCTION It is my hope that the kindly people of the Gasi)e Coast, to whom these sketches come and who will be first to detect their short- comings, may not be indisposed at this attempt to picture some aspects of their country. Where settlements are so venerable it may seem a somewhat intrusive enthusiasm that regards this ancient coast a theme for special discourse, but I have approached Gaspe less with a tourist's eye than with a mind absorbed by some of its scientific problems. The eft'ort to solve the latter has awakened a lively appreciation of its other attractions and a geologist's interest in the rocks and fossils of the country has served to sharpen my apperceptions of the rest. To other readers I may say that there may be some excuse for these untechnical sketches in the fact that very little has been written in English of this inviting country, save- in the way of statistical reports or unpoetical inducements to coloni- zation. In the presence of the ancient settlements of Gaspe, the sciojv of modern towns must feel a proper deference, the decent outcome of respect for a long, if uneventful, past. Life has gone slowly on this coast, not with the leaps and bounds of newer in- vasions, but nevertheless in obeisance to an all pervading law of nature. Upon the earth of today and of the long yesterday are everywhere types of animal and plant life wdiicli have rested com- placently without change through the ages while their associates have strode on leaving their early companions far aside in the forward or backward evolution of the race. In a world so solely- given over to competition, so abandoned to the purpose to arrive,, the conservative is unusual enough to be fascinating ; it is the anchor which enables the ship to ride out the onrush of the waves; the steamer's sail which serves to steady its progress ; it is the rotund and comfortable mother fortifying and ensuring all that is best in- the race. If amongst niy readers there are any unfamiliar with this coast let me give a proper location for these observations. Gaspe is that vast peninsula of Eastern Quebec which lies be- tween the broad mouth of the St Lawrence river and the Bay of PERCt: ROCK 6 Introduction Chalenr, facing the waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence. It is the Gaspe Peninsula, more trippingly termed in the French, Gas- pesie and in the English, Gaspesia, charmingly corrupted by the habitant to Gaspesy. Properly, Gaspe is Gaspe County, which, with Bonaventure County at the south, divides most of the great peninsula. It is Gaspe County which here concerns us most, which carries the most striking contrasts of coast and mountain, where the wilderness still prevails except along a narrow belt of shore, which is farthest from the world's thoroughfares and where the geologic features are most inviting. Gaspe County in size might be a king's realm. It is larger than "the State of Massachusetts or the Kingdom of Saxony, but it may never carry a greatly larger population than is now represented in the scattered villages along its coasts. It is no regret to the lover of its genuine attractions that official invitations to colonization have borne but little fruit, or that the tourist has hardly yet begun liis inroads. Geographically, it is a great headland projecting into the Gulf, deeply indented for a length of sixteen miles by Gaspe Bay, which divides it unfairly, leaving only the slender peninsula of Little Gaspe, or the Forillon, between it and the St Lawrence river and broadly incut by the Malba}% whence southward to the Bay of Chaleur the coast is undivided. Gaspe County, though today menaced by a railroad, has for its chief land thoroughfare the highway winding along the shore be- tween the mountains and the water, or over and along the mountain ■slopes. From these are short branches leading to back concessions- ■or up the larger rivers, but even the coast road is not very old and men hardly past their prime have told me of their part in the build- ing of it. I do not know how many, thousand people are living and trying to live in the great county, but not many. Census reports are always accessible, but they make no record pf the fact that though all told there are barely enough to make a small city yet these are imfailingly kind, courteous and hospitable. The population seems to increase, in spite of all governmental inducements, only by the time-honored method. Large families prevail and flourish on the scanty livings which sea and soil afiford to the oftenjnuch bested struggler for existence. The fish, the lumber and the chilly farms are the sources from which happiness and contentment are here derived. SKETCHES OF GASPE The Scenery of the Mountains I The Ocean's Work; at Perce; on the Forillon — Destruction of the Forillon — The Forillon Sinking — The American Bank — Scenery of the Forillon — Mt St Alban — The King's Road — Origin of the zvord Forillon — Hognedo or Hoiiguedo — View from the Forillon — Shiphead — Origin of the word Gaspe — The End of the Appalachian System — Date of the Forillon — Little Gaspe Through whatever eyes it be viewed, the happiest combination for the true appreciation of scenery is a mixture of the geologist and the artist. There must be something of each in every real devotee of nature. To the artist's eye, delicacy of coloring, refine- ments of light and shade, exactitude of perspective and boldness of contrast, all quickly apprehended, arouse an intellectual enthusiasm so long as the picture lasts. I am temerariously disposed to put the geologist's appreciation of scenery on a different and higher plane. His eye is not blinded, though it may be less keen to the passing contrasts in the unceasing play of refraction and reflection, but these transitory embellishments of the scene dawn upon him gradually, because, seeing first the topographic forms and seeking their causes, his appreciation begins only when these causes have fully revealed themselves. This will not be at the first glance at an unfamiliar landscape, but more often than not comes only after long and laborious research. At Perce, the most dramatic spot on the Gaspe Coast, where brush and pen both falter, where jagged cliffs, insulated rock, sombre headlands and grassy slopes encircle the consecrated moun- tain of Ste Anne, and almost every shade of the spectrum bends its rays to the eye, an artist' strolled in five and twenty years ago, schooled and practised. During all these years, the ever changing colors over the changeless forms so imbued his being that no other 8 Sketches of Gaspe can hope to appreciate as he the panorama there displayed, or to sound the depths of his spiritual delight in it.* But to the geologist the brilliant cliffs do not assault the sky in vain. The great Pierced Rock is not merely a glorious mass of soft reds and yellows and greens, nor Ste Anne, only an uplifted blood-red altar mantled with deathless verdure of spruce and fir. They are all these and more, for apart from their esthetic beauties and beneath their brilliant ex- teriors are the secrets of their origin and the keys which unlock many a serious problem in the making of the earth. The scenery of Gaspe rather than its history first invites us as it is the more insinuating, the more venerable and to the traveler the more immediate. Gaspesian scenery lends itself most readily to either scientific or sentimental treatment. I may be detected in indulging in the latter, but I trust not at the expense of fidelity to the former. The scenery of Gaspe County has a natural geological basis of diversity. The eye recognizes the profound differences at once, even though unconscious of their causes. The whole country is underlain by a series of great troughs and folds of the rocks run- ning almost parallel to each other and to the shores of Gaspe Bay, and these project at the shore line in the majestic and ragged cliffs which form the striking and brilliant features of the coast, White- head, the torn cliffs of Perce, the threatening reefs of St Peter, the bold walls of Shiphead, Bon Ami and St Alban. Beneath these folds, and forming the foundation on which they rest, are the vertical and distorted strata of much more ancient date, that make the low cliffs of Cape Rosier and extend thence eastward in majestic walls all along the shore of the lower St Lawrence. Lying almost flat on top of the crests of all the folds south of Gaspe Bay, and near the coast, is an enormous mantle of brilliant red conglomerate and sandstone, rising from the base to the highest summits of Perce Mountain. Speaking then with precision, these heights of Gaspe divide them- selves into the true mountains, wherein the rock strata have been folded, and the great dissected plateau of Perce Mountain, where there has been no crumpling of the strata. Singularly enough, this plateau is highest of all these heights as they now stand, save for * This is a reference to Mr. Frederick James whose greath- lamented death has occurred since this page was written. With attributes of artistic genius were combined in Mr. James attractive personality based on broad culture and large sympathy. The Scoicry of the Mountains g the greater mountains of the Shickshocks in the remoter inland south of the St Lawrence. The outhne of the Gaspe Coast expresses only the present phase of its history. The eternal ocean, unceasingly pounding at its €dges, has gnawed it into its present form. This great mill of the ^ods has slowly ground back to its primal mud an enormous body of rock which, not so long ago as time is reckoned in geology, was a part of the land. One will go far indeed to find such magnifi- cent demonstrations of the devouring power of the sea. At Perce it has cut away Bonaventure Island from along the flanks of Mt Ste Anne and the shores of the South Bay, by a channel three miles wide, from which remnants of the old rock still project above the water ; it has cut away the Pierced Rock from the headlands of Mt Joli and Cape Canon, with which it once formed a now lost moun- tain ; it has eaten away another and greater mountain above the North Beach, leaving to the present only the ragged ]\Iurailles, which formed its southern flanks. To observe the ocean's work about the peninsula of Little Gaspe, or the Forillon, let the eye follow on our hydrographic chart the line of thirty fathoms. The little spine of land that runs from Grande Greve to Cape Gaspe rises seven hundred feet along the sea clift's and falls sheer to the St Lawrence on the northern side. Yet on the north at the foot of this inaccessible escarpment the sea-bottom falls away very gradually, and it is full five miles from the present coast-line before it reaches a depth of one hundred and eighty feet. All this volume of rock, represented by the width of five miles bounding the coast and a height far greater than a thou- sand feet, has the ocean gnawed away from Cape Gaspe in compara- tively recent time. Now if the eye follow this thirty fathom line along the shore of Gaspe Bay .from Grande Greve and Indian Cove to the Cape it will be seen that off this coast the fall is abjectly downward from six and sixteen fathoms to thirty-eight, forty and fifty-two fathoms. Here the phenomena are the counterpart of those on the other shore. All the rock strata are regularly and deeply inclined toward the waters of the Bay, and the waves strike only along the smooth, dipping surfaces of the layers. On this side it is not the gnawing of the ocean that shows itself by the abrupt submarine descent, but a continuation of the dipping rocks carried on downward for full three hundred feet. The ocean is eating away on both sides of the little peninsula, but on the north at a tremendous advantage, pound- lo Sketches of Gaspe ing away, under the fierce impact of the northeast storms, against the edges of the rocks, while the south side is attacked only by the quieter waters of the Bay against its smooth sloping faces. There is little doubt this land is sinking with comparative rapidity. Oc- casionally along the flanks of this peninsula can be seen a trace of ancient sea beaches and from Indian Cove to the Cape is a- fine wave cut rock terrace high over the present water level and these indicate a former upward movement of the land. Mr A. W. Dol- bel, agent of the extensive and venerable fishing establishments of the William Fruing Company, who has been stationed on the Gaspe coast for nearly fifty years, tells me that twice in his experience it has been necessary to move further up the beach at the Grande Greve, the seaward panel of the drying racks for the herring nets, because of the encroachments of the sea. The beaches at Le Hu- quet's, St George's and Indian Coves, all along the south shore, are known to be narrower than in the earlier days of the settlement; so that today the southern margin of the Forillon is sinking. Let us look again at the map and follow the lines of forty and fifty fathoms. Fifty fathoms is less than half the height of the rocks rising straight above the water at Shiphead, and yet should the water fall away these three hundred feet the land would run out into the Gulf, following the direction of the mountain range, until it in- cluded all the rocky shoals called the " American Bank," once a part of the same range of mountains. Even an elevation of the sea bottom for one hundred feet would turn the American bank into a rocky island of no small dimensions. Such it once was. Now wasted by the waters, the home of the cod, it leaves only to the imagination the scenes of life played out on the grassy slopes during the ages before its destiny was accomplished. Like the Lyonesse, it may have had its Armorel in the unrecorded and unsubmerged days of its past. So the -little peninsula of the Forillon, survivor of a grander past, now barely a half mile across at the portage above the Grande Greve, is not only going down, but being devoured as it goes. But it is too soon to sing its requiem. Majestic stands its rib of moun- tains, the still mighty flank of a once mightier range. On its south- ward slopes are planted some of the serenest and most contented homes I have known; its farms, often pitched at angles of twenty degrees to the water, yield their increase, while the crest of spruce and fir adds softness and beauty to every contour. One may here start at the waters of Gaspe Bay and, climbing upward, a short < w K II The Scenery of the Moiiiitaiiis II half hour will bring him to the cliffs of Bon Ami, seven hundred feet straight over the waters of the St Lawrence. Off at his left, above the curve of Rosier Cove, towers bare St Alban, twelve hun- dred feet, the highest point reached by these rocks in their upward inclination. If he will take the King's Road, which traverses the pe- ninsula from Grande Greve to Cape Rosier, it will lead him at first gently through a waj- embowered in evergreens and bring him with startling abruptness almost to the height of the Bon Ami cliffs. Lying on his belly on the grass of the roadside, he may test his nerve by watching the waves break at the base of the concave cliff hundreds of feet below him. ^Mighty St Alban rises again at his left, a gray bare rock wall on its sea front, embrasured in a sloping talus of its own fragments and resting on the projecting point of rock called " the Quay " at the edge of the water. St Alban seems the very genius of the place, a stern, weather-beaten god, skirted irt his kirtle of fallen rocks, with foot planted forward on the strand,, bidding a vain defiance to the waves. I rather suspect that King Knut who is popularly known to have been guilty of some such impotent defiance to the onrushing waves, may have to take his place as a like imposing sea cliff among the geological myths, to- gether with Lot's wife. Niobe, and the Chimaera. The King's Road, which reaches the summit of the cliffs, from this point becomes quite impossible, pitching down at an indescrib- able angle, but it comes out at last, beyond the line of vision, to the broad flat triangle of Cape Rosier and to a wholly different series of rocks which produce quite distinct scenic effects. Some of the earliest of the French explorers, perhaps Champlain, termed this narrow peninsula, this spine of land which we have been describing, the Forillon*. In some early maps and in the Jesuit Relations, the name, often spelled Fourillon, is attached only to the cape now called by the English, Shi])head. Out at the end of Shiphead until 1851 stood an obelisk of rock which the sea had separated from the cliff". To this the name Forillon was vi- cariously applied, the name of the whole being taken for the part. The obelisk was also and still is to the French, La Vieille, the Old Woman, which, says the Abbe Ferland, with its tufted cap of ver- * Describing the hills and headland on the south shore of Gaspe bay, Nicholas Dcnys in his " Description " ( 1672) says : " Cettc pointe se nomme le Forillon. il y a unc petite Isle devant on les pecheurs de Gaspe vicnnent faire leur degrad pour trouver la molue " (p. 234). This use of the name is quite at variance with that of earlier writers who applied it only to the northern peninsula. 12 Sketches of Gaspe dure, resembles some of the Canadian grandmothers. Admiral Bayfield put it down on his charts as the Floivcrpot, and so it stands today on English maps. It has been suggested that Forillon may be ■derived from the word forer, to drill or bore ; as one should say, a drill, and certainly this long narrow spine upon the charts might well suggest such a name. Others would have it that the term had reference to the piercing of the end of the cape by the parting of the obelisk, and so the word applied to that only. Be this as it may, the obelisk is gone. La Vieille has long since fallen, and nothing remains but the Flowerpot, and we very much need for constant use a term for this Gaspe spine. So I shall call it the Forillon, believing that in so doing we return to its original use. On Lescarbot's map of 1612 the little peninsula bears the name Hognedo, and it would seem that he himself was responsible for its application to the place. When Cartier returned to this coast, in 1535, on his second voyage, bringing back with him the two Indian boys whom he had carried away from Gaspe the year be- fore, as his ship hove in sight of the lofty headland the lads greeted the home ground with delighted cries of " Honguedo ! Honguedo ! " Later writers have construed this word either as the tribal name of the people, or their ec[uivalent to liomc. From the broad fist of Rosier Cape and Cove, this thin peninsula runs out into the sea like an index finger, as it might say to the traveler ilfl& Mark well her bulii'arks From the homes pitched high on the slopes of the Forillon the ^ye sweeps over a magnificent stretch of bay and sea and distant mountains, and never tires at the infinitude of variety in the scene. The Forillon itself and the hills of Little Gaspe are so foreshort- ened as to be almost lost. The observer seems to view the pano- rama spread before him as do the gulls wending their way from their roost on the Bon Ami cliffs to their feeding grounds in the barachois at Douglastown. The wdiole stretch of Gaspe Bay lies before the eye from the hillside galleries. Far away at the west are the rounded sandstone mountains of Gaspe Basin, besmudged by the smoke clouds from the lumber mills at the great sandbar. Here the panorama begins, and under the circling eye pass in due succes- sion the low cliffs of Douglastown with its sandbars, its tickle and barachois lying low to the waterline, tlie long gray rock face of The Scenery of the Mountains 15 Chien Blanc, the reddish timbered hills of iiois Brule, and the crimson sea-wall of sanslstone running on eastward to Point St Peter, the end of the south shore save for the little lighthouse-crowned Plateau Island at its tip. Above these lower heights of the fore- ground rise at the east the graceful curves of majestic Perce Moun- tain, twenty-four miles away as the cormorant flies, crowned at the summit with the shrine of Ste Anne. The good saint often draws her mantle of fog about her, but on a fair day from the Forillon her cross is an undisguised test of unweakened vision. Looking from the higher slopes of the p-Qrillon, the Perce Rock slips above the horizon, and from Shiphead light at the tip of the Cape one sees Ijonaventure Island stretched out for its full length. Beyond them all the great expanse of gulf waters. To the portrayal of the sublime and awe-inspiring in nature, the vehement which impinges on the vision and beats its way through the portals of the brain, our language, well-handled, lends itself wdth adequacy, but to paint in words these gentler aspects and her more insinuating moods wdien she addresses herself to the heart and permeates the being of the observer with a delicious sensuous- ness, here, I think, our common vehicle falters. The views from the Forillon are not at all as I have described them, the gentler embellishments, their brilliancy of color and freshness of life are lacking. Here on the rising slopes of the little farms fighting their way upward against the spruce and fir, on an August day are carpets of coral-red pigeon berries set in emerald nests, great clus- ters of heavy gold-tipped tansy and golden rod fill the fence corners, the fallow fields are blue with climbing vetch or gleam wdth rugs of crimson Monarda. Banks of white immortelles are at every hand, w'hile daisy and tall dandelion add color to the scheme. From such a bower the eye looks down the long slope to the water, dotted with the flats and barges of the fishermen, and across the water to the distant mountains. With every passing cloud the scene is changed. Shadows come and go upon the distant summits, deepening their azure with an approaching storm, blackening as the storm impends and blotting them out as it bursts. The oncoming autumn efifects little change in the aspect of the evergreen woodlands, but there are still patches of hardwood trees where autumnal tints are painted in extravagant brilliancy. We were speaking of the pernicious activity of the sea in the destruction of the Forillon. Aided by the northwest storms and frosts, the waters will continue to waste its mountains, pare down 14 Sketches of Gaspe St Peter, undermine Plateau Island, demolish the walls of Perce, dismember the Pierced Rock and efface Bonaventure. The Amer- ican Bank is the handwriting on the wall, its fate is the forecast for all the coast. For the Forillon, however, the end that is to be concerns us less than the end that is, and the end of the Forillon is the end of the world, the Finistere, for this coast at least. The double row of sloping rock ridges which make the Forillon, terminates in a two- lobed point. The southern and higher is Shiphead, well named, for -US. one stands on the Hghthouse and looks down on the drum-mast and the outline of the cliff edge the resemblance to the foredeck and prow of a ship is most striking, and from outside the profile is even more effective. It is six hundred and ninety feet straight down from the grassy edges of the cliff to the water. Outside it is the severed rock, which, it is claimed by some of the early writers, gave its name to the whole Gaspe Country. I find a note in the Jesuit Relations which credits the Abbe Maurault as deriving the word Gaspe from the Abenaqui word Katsepiou, that which is cut off, and having reference to this detached rock mass. If this is the true origin of the name it seems in a grim .kind of harmony with the nature of the coast that the very feature ■which furnished its appellation has in its own turn been devoured by the sea. The northern lobe of the headland is Cape Gaspe, once called the Old Man by those who would find a companion for La Vieille. These ends of parallel declivities are separated by a low coulee, a hanging valley whose end lies far above the sea. In this coulee formerly the light and fog-bell stood and the ruins of this older structure have afforded many an interesting fossil. The road thither from the Grande Greve is a series of ups and downs, but the last grand ascent brings one to a point of view from which no other spot on the coast so profoundly impresses the observer with the destructive agency of the sea, as he notes the ragged sheer limestone walls stretching away toward Cape Bon Ami and Cape Rosier Cove, the barest remnant of what has once been a mighty mountain range, reaching toward Anticosti Island. As one stands on the summit of this weather-beaten promontory let him remember that he is at the very outermost supramarine tip of the great Appalachian Mountain system and on the remnant of one of its innermost folds which here gave birth to the St Lawrence river. Our chart of soundings bears us out in the conclusion that the American Bank is the easternmost submarine trace of this great The Scenery of the Mountains 15 mountain system, for beyond that point we can find no clew to its extension ; but Shiphead and Cape Gaspe are more positive and visible evidence. It is well to note from the map the singular curvature of the axis of this mountain fold, which carries into full effect the great S-form of the entire mountain system along the coast of North America. It is well known to geologists that the folding up of the Appalachian system did not take place all at once, at any one time in the history of the continent, but that it was built up gradually. Here in Gaspe some of these mountain ridges date back to the close of Silurian time, but the rock beds of the Forillon were crumpled up into mountains toward the close of Devonian time and further south the later rocks lie almost flat above them ; in Pennsyl- vania and southward, in the newer part of the mountain system, these later rocks too are upturned and folded into the mountains, thus showing that this part of the system is of later date. At Little Gaspe there is an accession to the mountain structure, and here we get the first glimpse of the great sandstone masses which cover all the area of Gaspe County save near the coast line of the Gulf. Here one may see, near the corner of the beach as the road turns toward the little English church, these sandstones lying on the sloping limestones, and from here on up the Bay to Peninsula and onward the sandstone masses make the first ridge of the series, the two limestone ridges falling into the background. Remnants of these sandstones which once overlay all the limestones of the l^'orillon arc still to be seen at Indian Cove, fallen down into a crevice of the rocks beneath. II The Cliffs of Perec — Perec Rock — Changes in Perec Rock — Descriptions by Champlain; Le Tac; Denys; Le Clercq — Captain Smith's Engraving — Ferland — Le Boutillier — The Future of the Rock — Fossils of the Rock; their Abundance — The Murailles — Mt Joli and Cape Canon — Relations of the Limestone Cliffs The ribs of the Forillon are stupendous, remarkable in uniform- ity of development and amazingly rich in their profusion of the life forms that peopled the ancient seas in which they were laid down, but the limestones of Perce surpass them in bold and start- ling picturcsqueness. If the traveler approaches this wonderful i(y Sketches of Gaspe spot by boat from the south, in the westering sun, guided by the towering red cross-crowned summit of Mt Ste Anne, hugging the shore chffs of Cape d'Espoir and Cape Blanc, he sees nothing of the spectacle which is in store for him, but as his boat beats round the head of Cape Blanc the stupendous Pierced Rock bursts upon his amazed view, towering in majesty and clothed in garb of many colors, while the torn limestones of the Murailles, stretching away to the north, turn to him their verdure clad slopes. Let him come upon the Perce harbor from the north and as he rounds Point St Peter and steams across the Malbay, the Perce Rock fixes his eye and in ever growing majesty subtends a larger and still larger angle of his sight. At his right are the higher and brilliant cliffs of the Murailles, leading their assault upon the sky in ragged lines. If the sun is his friend and lies to the east behind him, the vision grows to its climax as his boat swings to under the beam of the great Rock. Various chances have brought my approach to this spot from both directions, in glowing sun and in dripping fog, once with its outlines silhouetted against a moonlit sky and once beating behind it in a heavy sea at the crack of dawn when a tormented surf drove us from the desired haven and sent us scurrying down the coast. But perhaps none of these approaches by water is excelled for effectiveness by that which greets the traveler on the way leading over the high Perce Mountain from the Barachois of Malbay. Here as. through truly alpine scenery, one reaches the height of grade, the isolated rock strikes the eye head on, like a gigantic liner rounding the point of Mt Joli and sailing into the port of the North Beach. Perce Rock may be prosaically described as an isolated mass of limestone in strata that are almost vertical, dipping a little to the south, about fifteen hundred feet long and two hundred and eighty- eight feet high at its peak or inner point. At its greatest width it is about three hundred feet through, its diameter varying greatly along the projections and recesses of its sides. At the seaward end stands a smaller mass entirely isolated and cut away from the parent rock, and the rear of the great rock itself is perforated by an arched tunnel about sixty feet high. The summit, which is now wholly inaccessible, has a gently undulating surface and shows all the features of a small section of a mountain side. The rock i& ?oparated from the shore and the low headland of gray limestone beginning with Mt Joli and continuing to Cape Canon, by about one hundred yards of sandbar which is covered at high tide. The Scenery of the Mountains i^ The singular beauty of this amazing scenic feature is partly due to its unusual symmetry but more to its brilliancy of color. Perce Rock is no such gray pile as one may find among the striking sea- ruins of the northern oceans, on the shores of Caithness at Thurso and Scrabster in Scotland, in Hoy and about Stromness in the Orkneys, and even the brighter shades in the rock piles of the Magdalen Islands farther out in the (lulf do not make a comparison adequate. Its walls are bathed in tints of ])urple-red, bright yellow and gray-blue, the natural shades of the limestone, and these are diversified by great streaks of white calcitc which vein the mass. On its top the green carpet of grass spreads downward as the slope permits, while over the jagged anfractuosities near the sum- mit, a deep orange-red lichen has added its color to the scheme. The top of the clift" is the home of countless gulls and cormorants ever moving about like a halo of fog scuds and screaming sempi- ternally in the same shrill notes that echoed on the sea cliffs of the lost mountain in the ages past. Seeking for some clew to the rate at which the sea has been devouring Perce Rock, I have looked for other evidence than can be found in the cliff itself. It is not strange that so marked a feature of the coast should have made a profound impression on the earliest explorers, and here and there are references to it in the writings of some of them who had found the Isle Percee a haven for wood and water, and occasionally a note in the relations of the Recollct and Jesuit fathers. In Champlain's Des Salvages of 1603,* I find this account of it, but there is nothing in it that does not fit the conditions of today. " The Isle of Percee," he says " is a very high rock sheer on- both sides; between these is an arch through wliich shallops and boats can pass at high water. At ebb tide one can walk from the mainland to the island, it being only four or five hundred steps." The great explorer and founder of Canada was not then seeing the rock as it stands today. This is evident on reading the later accounts. The single arch he describes may be that now repre- sented by the passage seaward between the rock and the obelisk, but it is clear tliat the single arch of today was not then in ex- istence. * Dcs Sauvages ou Voyage de Samuel Champlain de Brouage fait en la france Nouvelle I'an mil si.x cent trois. 1603. Chap. X. 1 8 Sketches of Gaspe In 1672 Nicholas Denys, seignieur of Perce, " Gouveneur Lieu- tenant General pour le Roy, et Proprietaire de toutes les Terres et Isles qui sont depuis le Cap de Campseaux, jusques au Cap des Roziers," wrote :* " The Isle is a great rock which may be fifty to sixty fathoms in sheer height straight up from the foot of the two fides and has a width of three or four fathoms ; at low water one can go from the mainland by foot all round it; it may have a length of three hundred and fifty or four hundred fathoms ; it has been much longer, reaching even to the Island of Bonneaventure ; but the sea has devoured it at the foot so that it has fallen, and I have seen it when it had only one passage in the form of an arcade, through which a barge can pass at full sail. It is this which has given it the name of the Isle Percee. There have two others formed since, which are not so large but are growing all the time. It has the appearance that these passages weaken its foundation and will be the cause of its eventual destruction after which the sailors will no longer be able to work here. All of them that come here to fish cast anchor on the lee of this island, at a length of two cables off; one has here three or four fathoms of water, further off is a constantly increasing depth." Pere Sixte LeTac, who had visited the coast probably on his way to and from his mission in Newfoundland in 1689, spoke of the Rock as having but a single arch. Faucher St Maurice, in his charming and cleverly padded sketches of a short trip along this coast (1877), records having seen in the possession of Admiral Inglefield on board H. M. S. Bellerophon a copy of an engraving made in 1760 which repre- sented the rock with three arches through it. It has been my good fortune to obtain a copy of this old copper plate. Its date was the year after the fall of Quebec, and curiosity was doubtless keen enough in England over so remarkable a feature of her new con- quest to justify the execution of this expensive plate. It was " drawn by Captain Her'y Smyth on the spot," and the same pride that led the skippers of the i7oo's' to have their shi^s painted on Sunderland and Liverpool jugs, led him to put his frigate in the foreground of the picture. The Rock is here viewed from the north with Mt Joli at the right and Bonaventure at the left. Its arches are two in number, not three ; and though the rear arch * Description geographique et historique de Costes de I'Amerique septen- trionale. Avec I'histoire naturelle du Pais. ^^^;. C3^.<'^.-y.y. alb* SPOTlyCaplHM/Suvrtli.EQgravcd IjrP.Ct The Scenery of the Mountains 19 has now fallen it is noteworthy that the chief projections on the side of the Rock are essentially the same today as they were one hundred and forty-eight years ago. The distant view beyond the Rock shows the busy fishing fleet off the lower beach. Father LeClercq, who was stationed at Perce for twelve years from 1675 and again for a number of years after, interrupting his mission by a voyage to France, gave this description of the Rock, upon the accuracy of which we may rely, for it had been for all this time the most conspicuous object within his vision: " It," he says, referring to Gaspe Bay, " is only Seven Leagues from the Isle Percee which is not, as some imagine, an island capable of lodging inhabitants; because it is only a rough Rock steep on all sides, of an extraordinary height and a surprising ab- ruptness. It is so pierced by three or four distinct passageways that the barges pass full manned and at full sail through the largest of these openings. It is from this fact that it derives the name of risle Percee, although it is really only a peninsula or a Presqu'isle, of which one can easily make tlie circuit afoot when the sea is low; and resembles an island only at high water. It is separated from terra firma by only two or three acres [arpeiii^^ one hundred and eighty feet] of ground. It would seem as if it had formerly been joined thereto and that it had been cut off by the storms and tempests of the ocean."''' . The discrepancy in these accounts may arise from some dis- agreement between the dates of observation and of publication, but they can be reconciled to this conclusion, that the arches during the period of Denys's observation had grown from one to three or four and probably one of these had soon thereafter fallen in. Reliance apparently can not be placed on LeTac's account. I find no other descriptive account of the Rock throughout the whole of the eighteenth century and up to the time when the Abbe Ferland wrote of his missionary visitation along this coast in 1836. Ferland 's stay at Perce was brief, not more than two or three days duration, and much of the material of his entertaining narrative was derived from other than original sources. Of the Rock he says :* " The Isle Percee appears to have been formerly joined to J\It Joli ; it is separated therefrom only by a straight channel which is dry at low water. The length of the plateau is about eight acres *Xouvclle Relation de la Gaspesie, 1691, pp. 4, 5. 20 Sketches of Gasps and its width is reckoned at only from sixty to eighty feet. In it.-> entire extent the rock is only a continuous cliff, the average height of which is two hundred and ninety feet. ■■' '^ -^^ The waves * * '^ have already cut out two arches remarkable for regu- larity. * =^ * The open passages in the rock are about twenty- five feet wide, twenty feet in height and thirty in length. Through the principal arch the barges can pass at all times either under sail or by oars ; through the other they can only float when the sea is high. The debris of the rock scattered all along bears witness that the sea is continuing its encroachments. Some day, perhaps, the arches will gradually fall in and the Isle Percee will form three immense columns which will rival in volume the pyramids of Egypt." Sir William Logan was at Perce in 1843 on his first field work as director of the Canadian Geological Survey. \Miile at the vil- lage he put up with a J\Ir Moriarty and in the fragments of his journal which have been published by the late Professor Har- rington* he says that his host fornierly cut hay on the top of the Rock, but had abandoned his farming there some six years before, as a foolhardy fellow by the name of Pierre L'Egle took it into his head to dance on a projecting piece of rock which gave way and he was dashed to death on the beach. It seems indeed to have been common practise in the early days when clearings were small to take the hay from the summit of the Rock and to gather the sea birds' eggs. Today the angles of the Rock are so changed that to climb it seems beyond human daring. On the 17th of June, 1845, the outer arch in the Rock fell. ]\Iy informant, Mr Phillip Le Boutillier, an engaging and vigorous man of more than eighty years and a companion of Logan in the forties, says that as he was on that day turning the key in the door of the Le Boutillier Co.'s store, he was startled by an ear- splitting and thunderous crash and turning toward the Rock saw that amid clouds of dust and spray and the terrified screams of the birds, the outer and greater arch had fallen. And thus it stands today with but one of the three or four arches on which the eyes of Denys and LeClercq so often looked, remaining, and a new one creeping at right angles to the rest, lengthwise through the base of the seaward obelisk. Here we behold, as under the eye, the ruin which the sea has wrought on this single isolated rock * Life of Sir William Logan, Montreal, 1883. I'hc Scenery of the Moniitaiiis 21 in the last two hundred and fifty years. I find on carefully com- paring my measurements with the dimensions which can be de- rived from the Crown Land maps of I'erctS the original draft of which is not far from fifty years old, that there is no apparent change of proportions in this interval except in a lessening diameter at certain points. It is not often that a geologist gets hold of a profxisition so ■concrete and uncomplicated as that which an isolated mass like Perce Rock presents. A simple combination of two causes has contributed to the destruction of this mass, the sea and the frost. The destruction has gone on by leaps and bounds in the falling of arches carrying down thousands of tons of rock at a time, though the times were at distant intervals. But the steady work of the less destructive agents never ceases. From Nicholas Denys's state- ment in 1672, that on his first trip to Perce there was only one arch in the Rock, as Champlain saw it in 1603, but when he re- turned some years later he observed two others, and that subse- quently in his day one of the latter broke down, it is evident that the progress of destruction then went on at a rapid pace compared with its advance during the last century. But these arches have all been at the thin outer edge of the clifif which easily became honeycombed. This thinner part of the Rock is now nearly gone and the waters have a more serious problem before them. A thing of singular beauty indeed the long rock with its three or four arches, in the days of the i6oo's, must have been. Today its pro- portions are more stable, for the single perforation lies under one of the highest parts. Its rearward obelisk is giving way and is perforated at its base, but the s])lcndi(l mass itself is not percep- tibly thinning to destruction. Let us look a little to its future. Perce Rock is six hundred feet from Mt Joli along the sandbar •over which one still walks at low tide. There is a beach on both sides for a part of the distance at low tide but it is an uncertain thing, disappearing at high water except in retreats on the north shore, and at no time can one make the circuit of the rock by foot. It is two hundred and eighty-eight feet high at the prow, two hun- ut at length they became mischievous and did wickedly toward each other and their children, and even their children slew one another. When the Sun beheld this he was filled with grief and wept great Roods of tears upon the hearth till the waters covered all the lands even to the tips of the highest moun- tains and the whole surface of the Earth was drowned. The in- habitants endeavored to save themselves from the terrific outpour in their bark canoes, but the winds overwhelmed them and they all perished miserably save a few who had lived virtuous lives, whom the Sun permitted to float in their canoes till the waters subsided. To these, as a consolation for the death of their friends, the Deity gave renewed powers and long lives so that they might repeople the earth. This is the fabric as given by Father LeClercq, less detailed than the re-creation myth which follows, and freer of complications with theology, but singularly harmonious with the worldwide folk stories of these primitive conceptions in human development. The AIvth of the Re-creation When the Earth had been drowned by the universal flood and no life was left upon its surface INIichabou the Great Hare was (in the lore of the Gaspesians) the chief of the spirit world and the builder of the new earth. With the spirits of which he was master he floated over the boundless waters on a raft made of trees. Seek- ing to find a grain of sand out of which to build a new earth he commanded the Otter and the Beaver to dive deep into the water, if perchance they might find bottom and bring back this remnant of the drowned world, but it was in vain. The Musk-Rat, moved by a wish for the common good, then volunteered to make the trial and disappeared beneath the waters. Twenty-four hours afterward he reappeared on the surface of the water, dead. But on examining ^4 Sketches of Gasps his body closely a grain of sand was found clinging to one of his feet. The Musk-Rat had given his life to find the seed of the new earth. Seizing this sand grain the Great Hare let it fall on the raft of trees and immediately earth began to grow on the raft till it covered it all and still continued to grow. When it had grown to the size of a mountain the Great Hare made a tour of it and it still continued to grow. The Fox was charged to watch the progress of the increase and when the earth had become large enough to give life and shelter to all animals he was to inform his com- panions. Though the Fox labored earnestly the Great Hare was not satisfied with his report and desiring to know the exact truth made an inspection himself and found the earth too small. He then caused it to grow larger and continued to make his own inspection and to add to its size. After the formation of the land the animals retired to places which they judged most suitable. Some of them died and out of their bodies the Great Hare made men whom he taught to fish and hunt. To each of these he pre- sented a woman, saying "My son why fearest thou? I am the Great Hare. I have given thee life, today I give thee a companion. Man, thou shalt hunt, thou shalt carry the canoe and do everything that a man ought. ■ Woman thou shalt prepare the food for thy husband, thou shalt bear his snowshoes. Thou shalt cure the pelts and thou shalt weave. Acquit thyself in all things as a woman should." The Gaspb Flea I know no marks on his body by which he can be distinguished from others in the same line of industry, but I know by the marks on my body that he is there. I have never seen him and I have never felt it necessary to hunt 'him. It would ill beseem a visitor from mosquito laden latitudes to take exception to so ancient an accompaniment of Gaspe civilization. To spur a drowsy body to activity, or to drive a sluggish mind into diverting avenues, I know no more direct stimulus. Rome would be as little Rome without St. Peter's as without her fleas. Unaided by this prodding, the intellectual zeal of the Germans, the philosophies of the Scots would surely have languished. Indeed the world has wholly failed to recognize its debt to these reminders of our presence upon earth. Burns has apostrophized the louse in immortal lines ; that fell foe to slumber, the bed-bug, has descended to us along a most ancient and distinguished lineage through a series of adaptations that can- Stories and Legends 85 not fail to arouse the highest interest in the student of natural selection. None sings its praises, but no one who knows its history can cease to wonder at its performances. Ages gone its ancestors lived in the sea orderly and independent lives. In time it adapted itself to terrestial habits, to life in the virgin forest, and by gradual modification to an existence depending on the life of others. As man broke in upon the primitive forests it gradually attached itself to him and to his domicile, then to the cracks and crevices therein, more particularly to those of his wooden bedstead. Nature has rarely offered so brilliant an illustration of quick adaptiveness by change of habitat, and it will be an interesting problem of genera- tions to come to note the transformation through which this race will pass on the abolition from human habitations of attractive cran- nies for its lurking and breeding places. For the flea, however, if it has a distinguished ancestry and a variegated career we are still ignorant of it. The little beast, tire- some at times, seems to have for its mission to tone up the more venerable civilizations of the earth, to stimulate "to new endeavor or to lethal forgetfulness of the obsolete and useless. Our little Canadian friend, full of exuberant expression when the hay is being cut, constitutes one of the brilhant features of the invisible scenery of the coast. FEB o li^uy BREKTANO'S jm X.