Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/469

Rh is considering the choice of a new and worthy head for the neglected colony.

The Island of St. Pierre, the Isle aux Chiens and Miquelon Island have each a municipal council elected by the townsfolk. The mayor is chosen by the council and serves without compensation in the liberal way Latin mayors seem to do. The civic head to whom we paid our devoirs came by appointment from his clerk's desk at The French Codfish to receive in the municipal sanctum. Politics rage with fervour in St. Pierre. We knew that the gentleman who was at the moment occupying the official swivel chair had been the candidate of the family Légasse, who control La Morue Française, and have at least two fingers in every St. Pierre pie.

The wedding salon of the Mairie was arrayed in green dust sheets quite discouraging to sentiment. "November is the marriage month," explained the mayor, and cited the thrifty reason that in November the fishing season is ended and would-be grooms know better then the state of their finances.

In St. Pierre's heyday, this chamber witnessed many unions between Newfoundland girls of Irish descent and native lovers who made them a home on the island, or took them back to Brittany, there to bear a Franco-Celtic progeny which is represented now among crews of visiting fishermen. The maids of Burin and St. Lawrence emigrated as servants to the great houses of St. Pierre and