Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/433

Rh Burin with romance relates to the wife of a fishing magnate who belonged to the gay world of Paris and was obsessed by a love of gambling. By degrees she wagered and lost all the profits of her husband's business in far-away Burin. When at last she staked in one grand coup two whole cargoes of cod, and lost again, the firm was thrown into bankruptcy, the direst poverty fell upon la belle française, and she and her husband were reduced to receiving alms.

One of the oldest inhabitants of Burin is a physician of New England ancestry and a graduate of Harvard Medical School to whom fishermen from Lamaline to Isle Valen bring their sick and injured in sailing boats. Burin has no connection by road with any place except Fortune, 20 miles across the elongated boot of the peninsula. Construction has been commenced on a railway which, starting at Northern Bight, below Clarenville, will unite all the towns on the west side of Placentia Bay with the main highway of traffic, 100 miles to the northeast.

The steamer puts in at St. Lawrence at the heel of the peninsula before breasting the heavy seas which mark the passage between May Point and the Miquelon Islands. Unless fog obscures them the bare peaks of French St. Pierre will show black against the southwestern horizon. An occasional schooner or gasolene launch carries passengers from Grand Bank, on Fortune Bay, or the tourist