Thus it happened that the earliest annals of pleasure seeking at Murray Bay relate to fishing. It is at least possible that more than two hundred years ago the Sieur de Comporte tried his fortune as a fisherman in the lake that bears his name. A hundred and fifty years ago, as we have seen, Captain Nairne and his guest Gilchrist had such excellent salmon fishing that Gilchrist thought this sport alone worth a trip across the Atlantic. Many other fishing expeditions to Malbaie there must have been and, fortunately, a detailed narrative of one of them, made in 1830, has been preserved. The fishermen were Major Wingfield and Dr. Henry--attached to the 66th regiment at Montreal. They went by steamer from Montreal to Quebec and an American General on board jeered at them for travelling three hundred miles to catch fish which they could buy in the market at their door! When they reached Quebec they found no steamer for Murray Bay,--hardly strange as then the steamboat was comparatively new. Three days they waited at Quebec until at length they bargained with the captain of a coasting schooner bound for Kamouraska, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, to land them at Malbaie. The weather was stormy, the ship nearly foundered, and the eighty miles of the journey occupied no less than four days and nights. The fishermen had brought with them a quarter of cold lamb, a loaf, and a bottle of wine, but, before the journey was over, sheer hunger drove them to the ship's salt pork and to sausages stuffed with garlic. Rather than take refuge below among "thirty or forty dirty habitants from Kamouraska" they stuck to the deck and encamped under the great sail, but the rain fell so heavily that they could not even keep their cigars alight. At length "with beards like Jews," cold, wet, half-starved and miserable, they reached their destination. As they landed at Murray Bay they saw a salmon floundering in a net, bought it, and carried it with them to the house of a man named Chaperon where they had engaged lodgings. Here, says Dr. Henry, the sensation of being clean and comfortable in their host's "pleasant parlour" was delicious. The tea, the toast, the dainty prints of fresh butter were all exquisite "after rancid pork and garlic," and he declares that they ate for two hours and consumed "some half gallon of thick cream and half a bushel of new laid eggs." Under their window bloomed a rose bush in full flower. Murray Bay was at its best.