It is a wild river flowing into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the
COTE NORD, far down towards Labrador.  There is a long, narrow,
swift pool between two parallel ridges of rock.  Over the ridge on
the right pours a cataract of pale yellow foam.  At the bottom of
the pool, the water slides down into a furious rapid, and dashes
straight through an impassable gorge half a mile to the sea.  The
pool is full of salmon, leaping merrily in their delight at coming
into their native stream.  The air is full of black-flies, rejoicing
in the warmth of the July sun.  On a slippery point of rock, below
the fall, are two anglers, tempting the fish and enduring the flies.
Behind them is an old HABITANT raising a mighty column of smoke.

Through the cloudy pillar which keeps back the Egyptian host, you
see the waving of a long rod.  A silver-gray fly with a barbed tail
darts out across the pool, swings around with the current, well
under water, and slowly works past the big rock in the centre, just
at the head of the rapid.  Almost past it, but not quite: for
suddenly the fly disappears; the line begins to run out; the reel
sings sharp and shrill; a salmon is hooked.

But how well is he hooked?  That is the question.  This is no easy
pool to play a fish in.  There is no chance to jump into a canoe and
drop below him, and get the current to help you in drowning him.
You cannot follow him along the shore.  You cannot even lead him
into quiet water, where the gaffer can creep near to him unseen and
drag him in with a quick stroke.  You must fight your fish to a
finish, and all the advantages are on his side.  The current is
terribly strong.  If he makes up his mind to go downstream to the
sea, the only thing you can do is to hold him by main force; and
then it is ten to one that the hook tears out or the leader breaks.

It is not in human nature for one man to watch another handling a
fish in such a place without giving advice.  "Keep the tip of your
rod up.  Don't let your reel overrun.  Stir him up a little, he 's
sulking.  Don't let him 'jig,' or you'll lose him.  You 're playing
him too hard.  There, he 's going to jump again.  Drop your tip.
Stop him, quick! he 's going down the rapid!"

Of course the man who is playing the salmon does not like this.  If
he is quick-tempered, sooner or later he tells his counsellor to
shut up.  But if he is a gentle, early-Christian kind of a man, wise
as a serpent and harmless as a dove, he follows the advice that is
given to him, promptly and exactly.  Then, when it is all ended, and
he has seen the big fish, with the line over his shoulder, poised
for an instant on the crest of the first billow of the rapid, and
has felt the leader stretch and give and SNAP!--then he can have the
satisfaction, while he reels in his slack line, of saying to his
friend, "Well, old man, I did everything just as you told me.  But I
think if I had pushed that fish a little harder at the beginning, AS
I WANTED TO, I might have saved him."

But really, of course, the chances were all against it.  In such a
pool, most of the larger fish get away.  Their weight gives them a
tremendous pull.  The fish that are stopped from going into the
rapid, and dragged back from the curling wave, are usually the
smaller ones.  Here they are,--twelve pounds, eight pounds, six
pounds, five pounds and a half, FOUR POUNDS!  Is not this the
smallest salmon that you ever saw?  Not a grilse, you understand,
but a real salmon, of brightest silver, hall-marked with St.
Andrew's cross.

Now let us sit down for a moment and watch the fish trying to leap
up the falls.  There is a clear jump of about ten feet, and above
that an apparently impossible climb of ten feet more up a ladder of
twisting foam.  A salmon darts from the boiling water at the bottom
of the fall like an arrow from a bow.  He rises in a beautiful
curve, fins laid close to his body and tail quivering; but he has
miscalculated his distance.  He is on the downward curve when the
water strikes him and tumbles him back.  A bold little fish, not
more than eighteen inches long, makes a jump at the side of the
fall, where the water is thin, and is rolled over and over in the
spray.  A larger salmon rises close beside us with a tremendous
rush, bumps his nose against a jutting rock, and flops back into the
pool.  Now comes a fish who has made his calculations exactly.  He
leaves the pool about eight feet from the foot of the fall, rises
swiftly, spreads his fins, and curves his tail as if he were flying,
strikes the water where it is thickest just below the brink, holds
on desperately, and drives himself, with one last wriggle, through
the bending stream, over the edge, and up the first step of the
foaming stairway.  He has obeyed the strongest instinct of his
nature, and gone up to make love in the highest fresh water that he
can reach.

The smoke of the smudge-fire is sharp and tearful, but a man can
learn to endure a good deal of it when he can look through its rings
at such scenes as these.