Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/346

290 launch across Mal Bay, an alternate route being the arduous but magnificent way over the mountain. From the bay the faces of the ragged Murailles are unbared like cross sections of the earth variegated in tint and structure. The Grand Coup is a 650-foot precipice of brick red whose flattened apex shows a shroud of green from the land side. The Little Cut adjoins it. Loveliest of all are the three turreted cliffs that form the corner flank of the amphitheatre which rises behind the village.

As a picture town Percé is without an equal on the Atlantic littoral and more to be admired than many places annually marked for pilgrimage by throngs of tourists. The composition of its background, the grouping of vivid cliffs and isolated domes declining in bright green slopes to the Gulf were spectacular enough. Add to the stagery sinuous roads that lace the velvet pall with buff, and bosk and coppice spread like dusk shadows across the sward; place low white houses and a towering steeple at the plinth of the smooth mountain-side and the implements of sea toilers along ribbon beaches whose coves are separated by a high estrade, and culminate the scene by mooring opposite the jutting plateau and within bow-shot of it a detached crag with upreared prow—a colossal block of bare limestone meshed with the tints of sunset, veined with white, gemmed with crystals, fringed by a grassy lambrequin and clouded