ADIEU TO DAVID AND CAPE BRETON.—THE STRAIT OF CANSO.—OUR NOVA
SCOTIA COACH.—ST. GEORGE’S BAY, AND THE RIDE INTO ANTIGONISH.
PLASTER COVE, a small village, and our dining-place, is at the main
point of departure for Nova Scotia on the Strait of Canso, a river to
all appearance, and not unlike the Niagara, pouring its deep, green
tides back and forth through its rocky channel, overlooked by cliffs and
highlands. Directly opposite, the hills rise into quite a mountain,
thickly wooded, down the sides of which is a broad clearing for the
telegraphic wire connecting with the Atlantic cable. At first a very
high tower of timber was erected on this, the Cape Breton side, in order
to carry the wire above the highest mast, but it was soon abandoned and
left to fall into ruin. The wire is now submerged, and enters the water
in the form of a substantial iron rope strong enough for the anchor of a
man-of-war.
Two o’clock, P. M., we crossed the strait in a small sail-boat, and
encountered quite a disagreeable sea, enough so to give us a few dashes
of salt water, and frighten the women that were in company. We have a
two-horse post-coach, of queer shape and uncomfortable dimensions, being
short and narrow in the body, but tall enough to serve for a canopy at
the head of a procession. One could easily spread his umbrella overhead,
and find some inconvenience in disposing of it closed down below. To
Antigonish, the town for which we start in this—I am at a loss to
determine whether antique, or an anticipation of the future—carriage,
it is thirty-six miles, and not greatly different from as many miles
lately passed over, if I may guess from what I can see for a mile ahead.
Our fellow-sufferers in this strait jacket of a carriage are Scotchmen,
and think in Gaelic before they speak, I imagine, as have many of them
that we have met. They are much amused at the humour of the painter, of
whose vocation and standing in the world they have not the remotest
notion.
“St. George, he was for England,
St. Denis was for France;
Sing, Honi soit qui mal y pense,”
is the refrain of Master John Grubb, of Christ Church, Oxford, his
ballad, rehearsed at the anniversary feast of St. George’s club, on St.
George’s Day, the 23d of April. And now for the reason that I have been
humming this classic nonsense, or rather that I should have thought of
it: To the north of us is a blue expanse, dotted and bordered by
inlands, headlands, and the warm blue heights of Cape Breton. It is a
kind of azure reticule, or pocket of the Gulf, and was early christened,
by whom I cannot tell, St. George’s Bay. This is the second Bay in honor
of the martyr of Nicomedia, the patron Saint of England, to repeat a
popish fancy, that we have encountered within a few days. And truly,
could the old religious hero revisit these earthly scenes, he would own
that they had given his name to a very fine extent of water, whose
purple hills to the northeast stand at the opening of the Strait of
Canso. Due north, a vessel would touch, in a few hours’ sail, the
eastern cape of Prince Edward’s Island, the garden of all the Gulf,
another region for the summer traveller.
These landscapes of island, sky, and water are softly beautiful in the
afternoon and sunset lights, but scarcely picturesque, and never grand.
The country is dull and wearisome, gently diversified with hill and
dale, woodlands and farms, in no very high state of culture, and thinly
populated. There is some advantage, however, resulting from this dulness
of scenery: it drives us to ourselves for entertainment. A merrier time
I do not remember than that lately passed on the driver’s seat. The
theme was scarecrows—a peculiar walk of art, in which the painter,
during a recent stay in a remote part of the country, became
sufficiently adept to frighten, not only the little creatures that
pulled up the corn, but even the larger ones that planted it. To such
perfection did he finally carry old clothes and straw, that, like the
statue of Pygmalion, his images became indued with life, and ended with
running after the astonished rustics of the neighborhood. We ride into
Antigonish, a thriving village, with pretty white houses and spreading
shade-trees, at dusk, and alight at a comfortable tavern, where we sup
on salmon, and rest until after midnight.