Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing Part 6

Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we did not know to what to lay the quiet on Monday. But its peacefulness continued.

I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and the traders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt that he had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky the evening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was an inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material. In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of sluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck. Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place, which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there. If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too well what would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints, their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel, their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature; and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. And the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned. There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray twilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere?

I am not so sure. There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is lacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no person to go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lack occupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter, he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He may also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on the Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the salmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook in his nose. The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can be caught whenever he will bite. The day we went for him appeared to be an off-day, a sort of holiday with him.

There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail to visit.

That is St. Ann's Bay. He will go light of baggage, for he must hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch of St. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat. There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full of picturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around the indentations of St. Ann's harbor.

From the high promontory where rests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross to English Town. High bluffs, bold sh.o.r.es, exquisite sea-views, mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of the Dominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed at this place. In point of grandeur and beauty it surpa.s.ses Mt. Desert, and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of the Atlantic Cable. If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he will visit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant, who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native sh.o.r.e. A man of gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as big as a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul. While the visitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only as sledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by his neighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity. He was not spoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreign triumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he is almost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feel bigger than he was. He performed his duty in life without ostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by the flattery of constant public curiosity. He knew, having tried both, how much better it is to be good than to be great. I should like to have known him. I should like to know how the world looked to him from his alt.i.tude. I should like to know how much food it took at one time to make an impression on him; I should like to know what effect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head. I should like to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experienced in merely closing his hand over something. It is a pity that he could not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school, and ending in a university. There was a field for the multifarious new education! If we could have annexed him with his island, I should like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States. He would have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear his lightest remark like a declaration of war. And he would have been at home in that body of great men. Alas!

he has pa.s.sed away, leaving little influence except a good example of growth, and a grave which is a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of the untamed Atlantic.

I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, if it were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said to make the traveler wish to go there. I more unreservedly urge him to go there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibility for his liking or disliking. He will go upon the recommendation of two gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residents of Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinations of land and water in coast scenery. When a Maine man admits that there is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a note of.

On Monday we went a-fishing. Davie hitched to a rattling wagon something that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a great deal of "go"

in him, if he could be coaxed to show it. For the first half-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, moving indifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down the road, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of Middle River. Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks, and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses. Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,--he could start him after a while,--but he did n't like to have all the town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such an exhibition affected the market value of the horse. We sat in the wagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimes out of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused him with his tongue. It was a pleasant day, and the spectators increased.

There are two ways of managing a balky horse. My companion knew one of them and I the other. His method is to sit quietly in the wagon, and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse. The theory is that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse's mind, and he will try to escape them by going on. The spectators supplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measured gentleness. Probably the horse understood this method, for he did not notice the attack at all. My plan was to speak gently to the horse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by one sudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat the operation. The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word will start any horse. I tried this, and with a certain success. The horse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backed himself into the wagon, if I had continued. When the animal was at length ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side, coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed him into a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down.

Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only on the return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began to reflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before his father saw them.

Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over the sprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream, to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into a bayou with ragged sh.o.r.es, about which the Indians have encampments, and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs. Sat.u.r.day night we had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge. We followed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement of farmers. The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy, fertile, and sheltered by hills,--a green Eden, one of the few peaceful inhabited spots in the world. I could conceive of no news coming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender. Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook, we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at least as good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman and brother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse, and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely to be found at this season of the year.

It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor's residence, but truth is older than Scotchmen, and the reader looks to us for truth and not flattery. Though the McGregor seems to have a good farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rather cheerless place for the "woman" to slave away her uneventful life in, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock of children. And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,--there always is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough for them. A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small though he was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he had recently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself. The young Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks. We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in all remote regions where travelers are few. Mrs. McGregor had none of that reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agricultural regions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed us to partake freely of that simple drink. And he refused to take any pay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act of hospitality should have any commercial value. But travelers themselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we planted the notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life may be made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably the next travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small change there, if they use a little tact.

It was late in the season for trout. Perhaps the McGregor was aware of that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows, and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck. It was a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying in cool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content, indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod and reel. The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe, over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gently reposing in the broad bends of the gra.s.sy banks. It was in one of these bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies, that we tried our skill. We heroically waded the stream and threw our flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water nor in the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to the deceitful leaders. We enjoyed the distinction of being the only persons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and this was something. The meadows were sweet with the newly cut gra.s.s, the wind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed high overhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all these gentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their cool retreats. At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle River we found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, for I should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yet the public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without any fish in it. Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by a tree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens of them a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs relieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at first they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis and the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were alike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial taste and has to be cultivated.

These at any rate were uncivilized-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor and baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in our day's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the worm before their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other, gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel, until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but it was not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregor contemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhaps learn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in Cape Breton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.

The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf; and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness of this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuous person on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height was made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his very short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a little difficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the back of his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at that stage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowing with information and good-nature.

With what might in strict art be called an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civil engineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a great traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humorous satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsec junction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as a joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light. From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, to the relief of the pa.s.sengers, he decided to go ash.o.r.e. When the boat drew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edge of the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail by a friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing us prosperity and the Fourth of July. His was the only effort in the nature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and we could not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."

Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of this hazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the most complete enjoyment of our voyage. Certainly, as we glided out upon the summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of the widening sh.o.r.es, it seemed as if we had taken pa.s.sage to the Fortunate Islands.

V

"One town, one country, is very like another;... there are indeed minute discriminations both of places and manners, which, perhaps, are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays long enough to investigate and compare."--DR. JOHNSON.

There was no prospect of any excitement or of any adventure on the steamboat from Baddeck to West Bay, the southern point of the Bras d'Or.

Judging from the appearance of the boat, the dinner might have been an experiment, but we ran no risks. It was enough to sit on deck forward of the wheel-house, and absorb, by all the senses, the delicious day. With such weather perpetual and such scenery always present, sin in this world would soon become an impossibility. Even towards the pa.s.sengers from Sydney, with their imitation English ways and little insular gossip, one could have only charity and the most kindly feeling.

The most electric American, heir of all the nervous diseases of all the ages, could not but find peace in this scene of tranquil beauty, and sail on into a great and deepening contentment. Would the voyage could last for an age, with the same sparkling but tranquil sea, and the same environment of hills, near and remote! The hills approached and fell away in lines of undulating grace, draped with a tender color which helped to carry the imagination beyond the earth. At this point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade did not feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gut of Canso. A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch of production, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him. But poetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profane language,--often without the least provocation.

Twelve miles from Baddeck we pa.s.sed through the Barra Strait, or the Grand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came into its widest expanse. At the Narrows is a small settlement with a flag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills. Here is a Catholic chapel; and on sh.o.r.e a fat padre was waiting in his wagon for the inevitable priest we always set ash.o.r.e at such a place.

The missionary we landed was the young father from Arichat, and in appearance the pleasing historical Jesuit. Slender is too corpulent a word to describe his thinness, and his stature was primeval. Enveloped in a black coat, the skirts of which reached his heels, and surmounted by a black hat with an enormous brim, he had the form of an elegant toadstool. The traveler is always grateful for such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith which preserves so much of the ugly picturesque. A peaceful farming country this, but an unremunerative field, one would say, for the colporteur and the book-agent; and winter must inclose it in a lonesome seclusion.

The only other thing of note the Bras d'Or offered us before we reached West Bay was the finest show of medusm or jelly-fish that could be produced. At first there were dozens of these disk-shaped, transparent creatures, and then hundreds, starring the water like marguerites sprinkled on a meadow, and of sizes from that of a teacup to a dinner-plate. We soon ran into a school of them, a convention, a herd as extensive as the vast buffalo droves on the plains, a collection as thick as clover-blossoms in a field in June, miles of them, apparently; and at length the boat had to push its way through a ma.s.s of them which covered the water like the leaves of the pondlily, and filled the deeps far down with their beautiful contracting and expanding forms. I did not suppose there were so many jelly-fishes in all the world. What a repast they would have made for the Atlantic whale we did not see, and what inward comfort it would have given him to have swum through them once or twice with open mouth! Our delight in this wondrous spectacle did not prevent this generous wish for the gratification of the whale. It is probably a natural human desire to see big corporations swallow up little ones.

At the West Bay landing, where there is nothing whatever attractive, we found a great concourse of country wagons and clamorous drivers, to transport the pa.s.sengers over the rough and uninteresting nine miles to Port Hawkesbury. Compet.i.tion makes the fare low, but nothing makes the ride entertaining. The only settlement pa.s.sed through has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could see little river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belong to that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extract nothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a great relief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon the straggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.

One cannot but feel a respect for this historical strait, on account of the protection it once gave our British ancestors. Smollett makes a certain Captain C----tell this anecdote of George II. and his enlightened minister, the Duke of Newcastle: "In the beginning of the war this poor, half-witted creature told me, in a great fright, that thirty thousand French had marched from Acadie to Cape Breton. 'Where did they find transports?' said I. 'Transports!' cried he; 'I tell you, they marched by land.' By land to the island of Cape Breton?' 'What! is Cape Breton an island?' 'Certainly.' 'Ha! are you sure of that?' When I pointed it out on the map, he examined it earnestly with his spectacles; then taking me in his arms, 'My dear C----!' cried he, you always bring us good news. I'll go directly and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.'"

Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house is one of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms, chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decay and untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has a low back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden, damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travel rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that this was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making and frolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt lovers sat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond of each other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon the traces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air of the hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maids at table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-made dishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hotel and lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make a little romance about its history.

While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. We hastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey. But haste was not called for. The steamboat would not sail on her return till morning.

No one could tell why. It was not on account of freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of more pa.s.sengers, for they were all on board. But if the boat had returned that night to Pictou, some of the pa.s.sengers might have left her and gone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days lounging through Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of Prince Edward Island. If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we could catch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the officials were aware of this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac. We mention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn to possess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not run for his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize him with the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientific reader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in these regions.

Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth moves through s.p.a.ce at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles an hour. This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of the most rapid express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotive in an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a line nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of the earth in the same time.

But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait without a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an express train. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincial steamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from Port Hawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters by him.

In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and by breakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, and making for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something in the nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but it had so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I thought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highly developed provincial lark. For a certain portion of the pa.s.sengers had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies' shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with each other's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the company health. It became painfully evident presently that it was an excursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kind that depresses the spirits of all except those who join in it. The excursion had a.s.sembled on the lee guards out of the wind, and was enjoying itself in an abandon of serious musical enthusiasm. We feared at first that there might be some levity in this performance, and that the unrestrained spirit of the excursion was working itself off in social and convivial songs. But it was not so. The singers were provided with hymn-and-tune books, and what they sang they rendered in long meter and with a most doleful earnestness. It is agreeable to the traveler to see that the provincials disport themselves within bounds, and that an hilarious spree here does not differ much in its exercises from a prayer-meeting elsewhere. But the excursion enjoyed its staid dissipation amazingly.

It is pleasant to sail into the long and broad harbor of Pictou on a sunny day. On the left is the Halifax railway terminus, and three rivers flow into the harbor from the south. On the right the town of Pictou, with its four thousand inhabitants, lies upon the side of the ridge that runs out towards the Sound. The most conspicuous building in it as we approach is the Roman Catholic church; advanced to the edge of the town and occupying the highest ground, it appears large, and its gilt cross is a beacon miles away. Its builders understood the value of a striking situation, a dominant position; it is a part of the universal policy of this church to secure the commanding places for its houses of worship.

We may have had no prejudices in favor of the Papal temporality when we landed at Pictou, but this church was the only one which impressed us, and the only one we took the trouble to visit. We had ample time, for the steamboat after its arduous trip needed rest, and remained some hours in the harbor. Pictou is said to be a thriving place, and its streets have a cindery appearance, betokening the nearness of coal mines and the presence of furnaces. But the town has rather a cheap and rusty look. Its streets rise one above another on the hillside, and, except a few comfortable cottages, we saw no evidences of wealth in the dwellings. The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure, with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings, so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoying the view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hot wharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat which lay at the railway terminus opposite. It is the most unfair thing in the world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in the development of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express any opinion whatever about such a town as Pictou. But we may say of it, without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may have an interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance can leave it without regret.

By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful. Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,--a coast indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but still slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such a position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his fellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may be p.r.o.nounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in the matter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worrying anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with the Rebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that the ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-shadows this part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said, "Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright, and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcome and Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of consolation to fail before; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it does in England.

New pa.s.sengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and not all could get seats for dinner at the first table. Notwithstanding the supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unable to dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, and consequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves at the second table. And we were rewarded by one of those pleasing sights that go to make up the entertainment of travel. There sat down opposite to us a fat man whose n.o.ble proportions occupied at the board the s.p.a.ce of three ordinary men. His great face beamed delight the moment he came near the table. He had a low forehead and a wide mouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy of famine to his fellow-men. But a more good-natured, pleased animal you may never see.

Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he looked at us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, that plainly said, "Now my time has come." Every part of his vast bulk said this. Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made us partners in his pleasure. With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation, he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragments towards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing into his cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudied and preliminary manner. When he had secured everything within his reach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents, using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency. The man's good-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amus.e.m.e.nt as different in kind from his enjoyment. The spectacle was worth a journey to see. Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame its grossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he could swallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrange matters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beaming smile that a pig would not take offense at it. The performance was not the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievement unique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once in a lifetime. It was only when the man left the table that his face became serious. We had seen him at his best.

Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, and nothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the map conveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, without fogs, we are informed. In the winter it has ice communication with Nova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,--the route of the submarine cable. The island is as flat from end to end as a floor. When it surrendered its independent government and joined the Dominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the government should build a railway the whole length of it. This is in process of construction, and the portion that is built affords great satisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessary adjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, or that it would pay, we were unable to learn.

We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait to Charlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of land between two rivers. Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in the afternoon and spent the night, giving the pa.s.sengers an opportunity to make thorough acquaintance with the town. It has the appearance of a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, with wide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something. Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building, where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, and the colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty. The mansion of the governor--now vacant of pomp, because that official does not exist--is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded among trees by the water-side. It is dignified with a winding approach, but is itself only a cheap and decaying house. On our way to it we pa.s.sed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for a skating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whom we inquired. Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attention to flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest. Indeed, we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock in the dooryard is considered an ornament. A conspicuous building is a large market-house shingled all over (as many of the public buildings are), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst of a large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the most part. The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to be regretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory of a governor and court and ministers of state, and all the paraphernalia of a royal parliament.

That the productive island, with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperous career, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of great activity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and I think that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or two there; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements to tourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.

We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night of delightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secluded harbor.

But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that we should improve our time by an interesting study of human nature. Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms were supposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of the small cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making an excursion on the island railway. This family might remind an antiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;" they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine of that story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard to their family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, we felt as if we knew every one of them.

There was a great squabble as to where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, the revelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits of sleep continued to pierce the thin deal part.i.tions of the adjoining state-rooms. When all the possible trivialities of vacant minds seemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of "Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;" "Goodnight, pet;" and "Are you asleep, ma?" "No." "Are you asleep, pa?" "No; go to sleep, pet." "I'm going. Good-night, pa; good-night, ma." "Goodnight, pet." "This bed is too short." "Why don't you take the other?" "I'm all fixed now." "Well, go to sleep; good-night." "Good-night, ma; goodnight, pa,"--no answer. "Good-night,pa." "Goodnight, pet." "Ma, are you asleep?" "Most." "This bed is all lumps; I wish I'd gone downstairs."

"Well, pa will get up." "Pa, are you asleep?" "Yes." "It's better now; good-night, pa." "Goodnight, pet." "Good-night, ma." "Good-night, pet."

And so on in an exasperating repet.i.tion, until every pa.s.senger on the boat must have been thoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting family habitually settled itself to repose.

Half an hour pa.s.ses with only a languid exchange of family feeling, and then: "Pa?" "Well, pet." "Don't call us in the morning; we don't want any breakfast; we want to sleep." "I won't." "Goodnight, pa; goodnight, ma. Ma?" "What is it, dear?" "Good-night, ma." "Good-night, pet."

Alas for youthful expectations! Pet shared her stateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on a private dialogue during this public performance. Did these young ladies, after keeping all the pa.s.sengers of the boat awake till near the summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma to insure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze? The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domestic infliction, antic.i.p.ated the morning with grim satisfaction; for they had a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise and make their toilet without waking up every one in their part of the boat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stay awake. And so it turned out. The family grumbling at the unexpected disturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange of family affection during the night.

No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailing along the southern coast of Prince Edward Island. It was a sparkling morning.

When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; the faint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and New Brunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us. On the still, sunny coasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there was no sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras to Cape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a few days later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to the ground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now inviting sh.o.r.es with wrecked ships and drowning sailors,--a storm which has pa.s.sed into literature in "The Lord's-Day Gale" of Mr Stedman.

Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, in order to discharge its pa.s.sengers into the sweeping unrest of continental travel? Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost melted away, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat lounged into Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside. This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would give these travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at all remember how it looks. But it is a place that, like some faces, makes no sort of impression on the memory. We went ash.o.r.e there, and tried to take an interest in the ship-building, and in the little oysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interest or not has pa.s.sed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, wooden town, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend an interest in it which we did not feel?

It did not disturb our reposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of the day.

On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a group reading and nodding in the sunshine, we found a pretty girl with a companion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the "pa" of the pretty girl and of our night of anguish. The pa might have been a clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a female boarding-school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person to travel with, whose willingness to impart information made even the travelers long for a pa. It was no part of his plan of this family summer excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have any hour of it wasted in idleness. He held an open volume in his hand, and was questioning his daughter on its contents. He spoke in a loud voice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrank from this public examination, and begged her father not to continue it. The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter's acquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out of her ignorance. Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon the geography of the region we are pa.s.sing through, its early settlement, the romantic incidents of its history when French and English fought over it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure. But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of the new education. Greece was his theme and he got his questions, and his answers too, from the ancient school history in his hand. The lesson went on:

"Who was Alcibiades?

"A Greek."

"Yes. When did he flourish?"

"I can't think."

"Can't think? What was he noted for?"