Even the rainy days have their own pleasures. One is glad of its excuse to sit before a crackling fire of birch wood and read. When the rain has ceased and the sun comes out, looking across to Cap a l'Aigle and up the river valley one sees new beauties. The mist disperses slowly. First it leaves bare the rounded mountain tops; they stand out dark, massive, with bases shrouded still in fleecy white. When the sun grows strong, river and valley are soon clear again, though the outlines are still a little softened. Up over the sand and boulders of the bay comes the rising tide changing sombre brown to shining blue. It rushes noisily across the bar at the bay's mouth a few hundred yards away. The visitors to this beautiful scene gather year by year from places widely separated and form in this remote village a society singularly cosmopolitan. English, French, Americans, Canadians, all mingle here with leisure to meet and play together. For a time far away seems the hard world of competition. Rarely do newspapers arrive until at least the day after publication; the telegraph is used only under urgent necessity; as far as possible business is excluded. The cottages are spacious enough but quite simple, with rooms usually divided off only by boards of pine or spruce. Very little decoration makes them pretty. Gardening has a good many devotees; the long day of sunshine and in some seasons the abundant rain of this northern region help to make vegetation luxurious. If one drives he may take a _planche_--the convenient serviceable "buck-board,"--still unsurpassed for a country of hills and rough roads. But to me at least the _caleche_ is the more enjoyable. It comes here from old France, a two-wheeled vehicle, with the seat hung on stout leather straps reaching from front to back on each side of the wooden frame. It is not a vehicle for those sensitive to slight jars. The driver sits in a tiny seat in front and one is amazed at the agility with which even old men spring from this perch to walk up and down the steep hills. Their ponies are beautiful little animals, specially fitted by a long development for work in this hilly country. So well do they mount its heights that travellers repeat an unconfirmed tradition of their having been known to climb trees!