The bateau prefers to arrive at the moment when the tide either lifts it far above or leaves it far below the level of the quay; the gang-plank is always at a sharp angle, and in consequence the cargo, put on or off,--barrels, bales, bundles, trunks--slides down or is rushed up with bumps, bangs, and loud shouts of “Prenez garde! Faites attention!” or less articulate expressions. For a time all is feverish excitement, joyous activity, perspiration, and hullabaloo. Then, as the gang-plank, at a whistle from the quarterdeck, is about to be lifted, shrieks from the quay indicate the belated arrival of a barrel, a pig, or some stout passenger waving breathlessly hand-bag and umbrella. At last the bateau glides on toward Murray Bay. The same bustle which characterized the arrival at Bay St. Paul, but tempered by a higher civilization, marks the arrival at Murray Bay. The custom-house is a mere amiable ceremony, and the traveler is at once confronted with his first exercise of choice: “Will monsieur have a _calèche_ or a _planche_?”
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ST. LAWRENCE FROM QUEBEC TO MURRAY BAY]
As soon as the traveler has climbed into the calèche (the luggage is left for the _charrette_), the charretier gives a warning cry and swings down the long causeway, and, turning to the right, goes up the hill that buttresses the Pic. Here you learn your first vehicular lesson. At a particular point going up the hill--it will not vary six feet on any hill, for the rule is _de rigueur_, and every native boy is born with the knowledge--the charretier leaps to the ground and drives on foot from alongside.
Once free of the dock and over the hill, the traveler drives down the long village street. Every French-Canadian village properly consists of one long street. This is partly in order to economize shoveling and plank-walk during the winter, and partly because Latin sociability and democracy hold that every house has a right to front on the main street. Here the traveler sees the most charming touch of art in Murray Bay architecture, the curve of the gable-roof. In old times all the native houses, or most of them, had this curving roof; but of late years desire for space and lack of taste betray themselves in repeating the ugly roofs familiar to the south of the Canadian border. Nothing in architecture is more soothing than this curve in the gabled roof; it contains all the picturesqueness, all the poetry, that the patron saint of roofs--is it, perchance, St. Rufinus?--allows to them.