L’Ile Percée; the Finial of the St. Lawrence; or Gaspé Flaneries, being a blend of reveries and realities, of history and science, of description and narrative; as also a signpost to the traveler by John M. Clarke (review)

352 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW L'Ile Perc•e; the Finial of theSt. Lawrence; or Gasp• Flaneries,beinga blendof reveriesand realities, oJ history and science,of description and narrative; asalsoa signpost tothetraveler. By JOHNM. CLARKE. New Haven: Yale University Press. [1923.] Pp. 203; illustrations . DR. JOHN M. CI.ARIr• is one of the best-known American palaeontologists ,and usuallyspendshis summersin GaspS,where he has made largecollections of fossils,and hasworkedout in detail the complicated geologyof the Perc6e region. One might expect from him a solid scientific work showing.the results of his studies, interesting to the geologistbut quite beyond the reach of the ordinary reader. Instead of this sobercontributionto scientificliterature, he hasprovidedoneof the most extraordinary medleysof fact and fancy it has been my good fortune to read. The elaboratetitle givenabove suggests the strange variety of materials in the book, includingcarefully observedfacts in geology,fragmentsof the picturesquehistoryof easternCanada,accounts of the Indians,detailsof the codfishery,hintsof the vast processes of the building of the mountains, studiesof the life and habits of sea-fowland of men, quotations from Theodore Roosevelt on the extinction of the passenger pigeon,and a dozenother topicsmore or lesscloselyconnected with Gasp6, the whole clothed in an exuberantly florid literary style. Dr. Clarke'sreadingmust includea wide rangeof subjectsremotefrom the ken of the ordinary scientificman. The book containsnot only a preface,but also an "overture", like an opera, and this is followed by a dozen chapters with titles suchas "The Cadenceof the Roads", "The St. Lawrence Pathway", "Gasp• chezlui", "The Daysof theSeigneury", "Her Majesty,Perc(•e", "The Cries of the Sea-fowl", etc., all pitched in a poetic and romantic key, decoratedwith figuresof speech,with reconditeallusionsto forgotten works, with words unfamiliar even to a cultivated reader, and with phrasesfrom the French and the Latin. In an accountof GaspS,fishingis naturally referredto many times. "It is worth all of nature's effort at the evolution of somethinginto a salmon,all of her arduousexperimentsand expedientsto attain a fishy ideal, to have produced . . . sucha fishset in the cool,darkling pools amid the spruce-coatedslopesof these rivers." The membersof the CascapediaClub, "grand p•cheursdevantDieu et devantles hommes", pay substantial sumsto the ownersof the salmon stands on the seafront for notfishing, "so that the natural courseof the fishon the way from the seainto the river and out again may not be interrupted"; and this isin additionto the heavyrentalpaidto the Quebec. government, which amountsto $12,000a year. When Dr. Clarke met Weir Mitchell coming REVIEWS OF BOOKS 353 downfrom hispoolsand askedhim what luck he had had, "he replied, 'Neverbetter. My fishthisyearhavecostmeonlyfifty dollarsapound'." An interestingaccountis given of the traditional methodsof taking and curingthe cod. "Secondonly to the massin the churchabovethe beachesis this venerableact of faith and works--the splitting of the cod. Every detail of the table, eachtool useduponit, eachmovement of the men about it, even the half barrels in which you will seethem standing to keep from being spattered overmuch, are actually the unaltered survival of the centuries and the very oldest remaining institutionswhichthewhitemanbroughtinto thiscountry." The history of the Jerseyfishingcompanies on the coastis given in somedetail, and the number of cod taken annually from Gasp• is estimated at not less than forty millions,a quite incrediblenumber. The days of the seigneurs in Gasp(•have a whole chapter devoted to them, and the early missionaries are praisedfor their devotion. Wolfe's destructionof the little settlementin 1758isgraphicallydescribed;and the strangemixture of racesin the Gasp.•peninsulais recalled,Micmac Indians, Basques and Bretons, Channel Islanders, United Empire Loyalists, Irish and Scotchsettlers,and the influx of French-Canadians. "The French speechis in them all, and in most the French blood flows freely. There are Irish to whom Englishis a foreigntongue---children of French mothersand grandmothersto whom 'home rule for Ireland' is an esotery that carries no thrill." There isa reference of interestto Canadiansin describing the harbour of Gasp6Basin,where"the fleetsof Phippsand Kirke, of Wolfe, and on that October'l, in 1914,the great fleetof Canadawith its first contingent for the world struggleagainstthe seedof Pyrrha". It is followedby a very graphicdescriptionof a fishingexpeditionfrom Grande-Gr•ve. Though the geologyof the region is made a backgroundfor the romanceand the crowding incidents of its human occupation,there is no detailed accountof it in...