Excellent sport continued from day to day.  Once Jean Gros lost his hold of the pole by which he controlled the canoe and it drifted helplessly towards a rapid, Henry all the time playing a salmon.  The man was alarmed and knelt to mumble prayers but Henry caught up a board thrown from the shore, gave him a whack with it on the back and shouted:  “Ramez!  Sacre!  Ramez!” The effect was electrical.  The old fellow seized the board, paddled with it like mad, steered down the rapid, and Henry finally landed his salmon.  Day after day the two fishermen drove up to the Chute to fish until, after a fortnight, the river fell and the salmon ceased to rise; then they went down in a large boat to Riviere Noire, said never yet to have been fished with a rod, slept at night on the sandy beach, but had no luck.  Henry tells of an annoyance at Malbaie that still continues; mongrel dogs ran after their caleche; sometimes one would try to seize the horse by the nose and nearly cause a run-away.  Each cur pursued the vehicle and barked himself hoarse, and then, when he retired, his neighbour would take up the task.  At length, after this experience had been frequently renewed, they decided to retaliate.  One black shaggy beast had made himself specially obnoxious; with his thick wooly fur he did not mind in the least being struck by the whip.  So one day Dr. Henry got ready the salmon gaff and, as the brute darted out at them, skilfully hooked him by the side.  The driver whipped up his horse, which seemed to enjoy the punishment of his enemy, and the vehicle went tearing along the road, the dog yelling hideously as he was dragged by the hook.  The people ran to the doors holding up their hands in astonishment.  The Doctor soon shook off the dog and he trotted home little the worse.  Next day when he saw the fisherman’s caleche coming he limped into the house “as mute as a fish” with his tail between his legs.

Dr. Henry thought Murray Bay an earthly paradise.  The people in this “secluded valley” were the most virtuous he had ever seen.  Flagrant crime was unknown,—­doors were never locked at night.  There was no need of temperance reform; “whole families pass their lives without any individual ever having tasted intoxicating fluids.”  The devout people, he says, had social family worship, morning and evening; the families were huge, fifteen to twenty children being not uncommon; when a young couple married the relations united to build a house for them; and so on.  Unfortunately we know from other sources that conditions were not as idyllic at Murray Bay as Dr. Henry describes; but it was, no doubt, a simple and virtuous community.