Acadia Part 11

"But," said I, taking out the bottle of precious fluid, "here it is, corked up tight, and what is to be done for a cork-screw?"

"I've got one," said the saint.

"I thought it was likely," quoth Picton, drily; "look sharp, will you?"

And Robbut did look sharp, and produced the identical instrument before Picton and I had exchanged smiles. Then Robbut spread out three green tumblers on the table, and following Picton's lead, poured out a stout half-gla.s.s, at which I shouted out, "Hold up!" for I thought he was filling the tumbler for my benefit. It proved to be a mistake; Robbut stopped for a moment, but instantly recovering himself, covered the tumbler with his four fingers, and, to use a Western phrase, "got outside of the contents quicker than lightning." Then he brought from his bed-room a coa.r.s.e sort of worsted horse-blanket, and with a "Ye'll may-be like to sleep an hour or twa?" threw down his family-quilt and retired to the arms of Mrs. McG. Picton gave a great crunching blow with his boot-heel at the back-stick, and laid on a good supply of fuel. We were wet through and through, but we wrapped ourselves in our travelling-blankets like a brace of clansmen in their plaids, put our feet towards the n.i.g.g.ardly blaze, and were soon bound and clasped with sleep.

At two o'clock our host roused us from our hard bed, and after a stretch, to get the stiffness out of joints and muscles, we took leave of the Presbyterian quarters. The day was just dawning: at this early hour, lake and hill-side, tree and thicket, were barely visible in the grey twilight.

The wagon, with its pyramid of luggage, moved off in the rain, McGibbet walking beside Boab, and Picton and I following after, with all the gravity of chief mourners at a funeral. To give some idea of the road we were upon, let it be understood, it had once been an old _French_ military road, which, after the destruction of the fortress of Louisburgh, had been abandoned to the British Government and the elements. As a consequence, it was embroidered with the ruts and gullies of a century, the washing of rains, and the tracks of wagons; howbeit, the only traverse upon it in later years were the wagon of McGibbet and the saddle-horse of the post-rider. "Get-Along" had a population of seven hundred Scotch Presbyters, and therefore it will be easy to understand the condition of its turnpike.

Up hill and down hill, through slough and over rock, we trudged, for mile after mile. Sometimes beside Get-Along Lake, with its grey, spectral islands and woodlands; sometimes by rushing brooks and dreary farm-fields; now in paths close set with evergreens; now in more open grounds, skirted with hills and dotted with silent, two-penny cottages. Sometimes Picton mounted his pyramid of trunk-leather for a mile or so of nods; sometimes I essayed the high perch, and holding on by a cord, dropped off in a moment's forgetfulness, with the constant fear of waking up in a mud-hole, or under the wagon-wheels. But even these respites were brief. It is not easy to ride up hill and down by rock and rut, under such conditions. We were very soon convinced it was best to leave the wagon to its load of sole-leather, and walk through the mud to Sydney.

After mouldy Halifax, and war-worn Louisburgh, the little town of Sydney is a pleasant rural picture. Everybody has heard of the Sydney coal-mines: we expected to find the miner's finger-marks everywhere; but instead of the smoky, sulphurous atmosphere, and the black road, and the sulky, grimy, brick tenements, we were surprised with clean, white, picket-fences; and green lawns, and clever, little cottages, nestled in shrubbery and clover. The mines are over the bay, five miles from South Sydney. Slowly we dragged on, until we came to a sleepy little one-story inn, with supernatural dormer windows rising out of the roof, before which Boab stopped. We _paid_ McGibbet's kirk-fine, wagon-fare, and his unconscionable charge for his conscience, without parleying with him; we were too sleepy to indulge in the luxury of a monetary skirmish. A pretty, red-cheeked chambermaid, with lovely drooping eyes, showed us to our rooms; it was yet very early in the morning; we were almost ashamed to get into bed with such dazzling white sheets after the dark-brown accommodations of the "Balaklava;" but we did get in, and slept; oh! how sweetly! until breakfast at one!

"Twenty-four miles of such foot-travel will do pretty well for an invalid, eh, Picton?"

"All serene?" quoth the traveller, interrogatively.

"Feel as well as ever I did in my life," said I, with great satisfaction.

"Then let's have a bath," and, at Picton's summons, the chambermaid brought up in our rooms two little tubs of fair water, and a small pile of fat, white napkins. The bathing over, and the outer men new clad, "from top to toe," down we went to the cosy parlor to breakfast; and such a breakfast!

I tell you, my kind and gentle friend; _you_, who are now reading this paragraph, that here, as in all other parts of the world, there are a great many kinds of people; only that here, in Nova Scotia, the difference is in spots, not in individuals. And I will venture to say to those philanthropists who are eternally preaching "of the ma.s.ses," and "to the ma.s.ses," that here "ma.s.ses" can be found--concrete "ma.s.ses," not yet individualized: as ready to jump after a leader as a flock of sheep after a bell-wether; only that at every interval of five or ten miles between place and place in Nova Scotia, they are apt to jump in contrary directions. There are Scotch Nova Scotiaites even in Sydney. Otherwise the place is marvellously pleasant.

I must confess that I had a romantic sort of idea in visiting Sydney; a desire to return by way of the _Bras d'Or_ lake, the "arm of gold," the inland sea of Cape Breton, that makes the island itself only a border for the water in its interior. And as the navigation is frequently performed by the Micmac Indians, in their birch-bark canoes, I determined to be a _voyageur_ for the nonce, and engage a couple of Micmacs to paddle me homewards, at least one day's journey. The wigwams of the tribe were pitched about a mile from the town, and I proposed a visit to their camp as an afternoon's amus.e.m.e.nt. Picton readily a.s.sented, and down we went to the wharf, where the landlady a.s.sured us we would find some of the tribe.

These Indians, often expert coopers, are employed to barrel up fish; the busy wharf was covered with laborers, hard at work, heading and hooping ship loads of salt mackerel; and among the workmen were some with the unmistakable lozenge eyes, high cheek-bones, and rhubarb complexion of the native American. Upon inquiry, we were introduced to one of the Rhubarbarians. He was a little fellow, not in leggings and quill-embroidered hunting-shirt, with belt of wampum and buckskin moccasins; armed with bow and arrow, tomahawk and scalping-knife; such as one would expect to navigate a wild, romantic lake with, in birch-bark canoe; but a pinched-up specimen of a man, in a seedy black suit, out of which rose a broad, flat face, like the orb of a sun-flower, bearing one side the aboriginal black eye, and on the other the civilized, surrounded with the blue and purple halo of battle. We had barely opened our business with the Indian, when a bonny Scotchman, a fellow-cooper of salt mackerel, introduced himself:

"Oh, ye visit the Micmacs the day?"

No answer.

"De'il a canoe has he to tak ye there" (the Indian slunk away), "but I'll tak ye tull 'em for one and saxpence, in a gude boat."

The fellow had such an honest face, and the offer was so fair and earnest, that Picton's and my own trifling prejudices were soon overcome, and we directed Malcolm, for that was his name, to bring his boat under the inn-windows after the dinner-hour. I regret to say that we found Malcolm tolerably drunk after dinner, with a leaky boat, under the inn-windows. And farther, I am pained to state the national characteristic was developed in Malcolm drunk, from which there was no appeal to Malcolm sober, for he insisted upon double fare, and time was pressing. To this we a.s.sented, after a brief review of former prejudices. We got in the boat and put off. We had barely floated away into the beautiful landscape when a fog swept over us, and Malcolm's nationality again woke up. He would have four times as much as he had charged in the first instance, or "he'd tak us over, and land us on the ither side of the bay."

Then Picton's nationality woke up, and he unb.u.t.toned his mackintosh. "Now, sir," said he to Malcolm, as he rose from his seat in the boat, his head gracefully inclined towards his starboard shirt-collar, and his two tolerably large fists arrayed in order of battle within a few brief inches of the delinquent's features, "did I understand you to say that you had some idea of taking this gentleman and myself _to the other side of the bay_?"

There was a boy in our boat--a fair-haired, blue-eyed representative of Nova Scotia; a sea-boy, with a dash of salt-water in his ruddy cheeks, who had modestly refrained from taking part in the dispute.

"Come, now," said he to Malcolm, "pull away, and let us get the gentlemen up to the camp," and he knit his boy brow with determination, as if he meant to have it settled according to contract.

"Yes," said Picton, nodding at the boy, "and if he don't"----

"I'm pullin' an't I?" quoth the descendant of King Duncan, a little frightened, and suiting the action to the word; "I'm a-pewlin," and here his oar missed the water, and over he tumbled with a great splash in the bottom of the boat. "I'm a-pewlin," he whined, as he regained his seat and the oar, "and all I want is to hae my honest airnins."

"Then pull away," said Picton, as he resumed his seat in the stern-sheets.

"Ay," quoth the Scotchman, "I know the Micmacs weel, and thae squaws too; deil a one o' 'em but knows Malcolm"----

"Pull away," said the boy.

"They are guid-lookin', thae squaws, and I'm a bachelter; and I tell ye when I tak ye tull em--for I know the hail o' em--if ye are gentlemen, ye'll pay me my honest airnins."

"And I tell you," answered Picton, his fist clenched, his eye flashing again, and his indignant nostrils expressing a degree of anger language could not express; "I tell you, if you do not carry us to the Micmac camp without further words, I'll pay you your honest earnings before you get there: I'll punch that Scotch head of yours till it looks like a photograph!"

CHAPTER IX.

The Micmac Camp--Indian Church-warden and Broker--Interior of a Wigwam--A Madonna--A Digression--Malcolm discharged--An Indian Bargain--The Inn Parlor, and a Comfortable Night's Rest.

The threat had its effect: in a few minutes our boat ran bows-on up the clear pebbled beach before the Micmac camp.

It was a little cl.u.s.ter of birch-bark wigwams, pitched upon a carpet of greensward, just at the edge of one of the loveliest harbors in the world.

The fog rolled away like the whiff of vapor from a pipe, and melted out of sight. Before us were the blue and violet waters, tinged with the hues of sunset, the rounded, swelling, curving sh.o.r.es opposite, dotted with cottages; the long, sweeping, creamy beaches, the distant shipping, and, beyond, the great waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Nearer at hand were "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks," the tender green light seen in vistas of firs and spruces, the thin smoke curling up from the wigwams, the birch-bark canoes, the black, bright eyes of the children, the sallow faces of the men, and the pretty squaws, arrayed in blue broad-cloth frocks and leggings, and modesty, and moccasins.

"Now, here we are," said Malcolm, triumphantly, "and wha d'ye thenk o' the Micmacs? Deil a wan o' the yellow deevils but knows Malcolm, an I'll introjewce ye to the hail o' em."

"Stop, sir," said Picton, sternly, "we want none of your company. You can take your boat back," (here I nodded affirmatively), "and we'll walk home."

It was quite a picture, that of our oarsman, upon this summons to depart.

He had just laid his hand upon the shoulder of a fat, good-natured looking squaw, to commence the introjewcing; one foot rested on the bottom of an overturned canoe, in an att.i.tude of command; his old battered tarpaulin hat, his Guernsey shirt, and salt-mackerel trowsers, finely relieved against the violet-tinted water; but oh! how chop-fallen were those rugged features under that old tarpaulin!

The scene had its effect; I am sure Picton and myself would gladly have paid the quadruple sum on the spot--after all, it was but a trifle--for we both drew forth a sovereign at the same moment.

Unfortunately Malcolm had no change; not a "bawbee." "Then," said we, "go back to the inn, and we'll pay you on our return."

"And," said Malcolm, in an unearthly whine that might have been heard all over the camp, "d' ye get me here to take advantage o' me, and no pay me my honest airnins?"

"What the devil to do with this fellow, short, of giving him a drubbing, I do not know," said Picton. "Here, you, give us change for a sovereign, or take yourself off and wait at the hotel till we get back again."

"I canna change a sovereign, I tell ye"----

"Then be off with you, and wait."

"Wad ye send me away without my honest airnins?" he uttered, with a whine like the bleat of a bagpipe.

Picton drew a little closer to Malcolm, with one fist carefully doubled up and put in ambush behind his back. But the boy interposed--"Perhaps the Micmac chief could change the sovereign."

"Oh! ay," quoth Malcolm, who had given an uneasy look at Picton as he stepped towards him; "Oh! ay; I'se tak ye tull 'im;" and without further ado he stepped off briskly towards the centre of the camp, and we followed in his wake. When our file-leader reached the wigwam of the chief, he went down on hands and knees, lifted up a little curtain or blanket in front of the low door of the tent, crawled in head first, and we followed close upon his heels.

As soon as the eye became accustomed to the dim and uncertain light of the interior, we began to examine the curious and simple architecture of this human bee-hive. A circle of poles, say about ten feet in diameter at the base, and tied together to an apex at the top, covered with the thin bark of the birch-tree, except a s.p.a.ce above to let out the smoke, was all the protection these people had against the elements in summer or winter. The floor, of course, was the primitive soil of Cape Breton; in the centre of the tent a few sticks were smouldering away over a little pile of ashes: the thin smoke lifted itself up in folds of blue vapor until it stole forth into the evening air from the opening in the roof. Through this aperture the light--the only light of the tent--fell down upon the group below: the old chief with his great silver cross, and medal, and snow-white hair; the young and beautiful squaw with her pappoose at the breast, like a Madonna by Murillo; Malcolm's battered tarpaulin and Guernsey shirt; and the two unpicturesque objects of the party--Picton and myself. Around the central fire a broad, green border of fragrant hemlock twigs, extending to the skirts of the tent, was raised a few inches from the ground. Upon this couch we sat, and opened our business with the aged sagamore.

Old Indian was very courteous; he drew forth a bag of clinking dollars, for strange as it may seem, he was a churchwarden: the Micmacs being all Catholics, the chief holds the silver keys of St. Peter. But venerable and pious as he appeared, with his silver cross and silver hair, the old fellow was something too of a broker! He demanded a fair rate of commission--eight per cent. premium on every dollar! Even this would not answer our purpose; it was as difficult to make change with the old churchwarden as with Malcolm: there was no money in the camp except hard silver dollars.

No change for a sovereign!