Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/477

Rh "On windy nights we mothers lie awake," she said "Did you hear the wind last night?" No, we answered, ashamed to have slept so calmly.

"Do the wives and mothers of fishermen never get used to the worry?" we asked, feeling very unlearned in sorrow in this woman's presence.

"Never used to it. But if there has been a storm and the boats are late in coming in, we don't give up so quickly as others might. 'Hopes from the sea, never from the grave,' we say, and keep heart till wreckage drifts ashore, or somehow we know."

In the American consulate there is a chart which displays in vivid manner the frequency with which the shores of these islands have witnessed the last hours of tortured ships. Langlade and Miquelon are joined by a bar where until a hundred years ago the tide swept through. The map designates by a series of dots the wrecks which have occurred on this shoal alone. There are double rows of such dots on either side the sand-bank. Vessels approached thinking to pass between the islands, and went to their fate. Over the dead hulks the sand has crept to form a heavy shroud, and one walks over them as over sunken graves in a cemetery.

The mail-boat makes the 30-mile trip to Miquelon on stated days, calling at Langlade on the way. The farms and lobster-pots of the latter supply produce for St. Pierre tables, and its streams being famous for their trout, officials and employés of