COACH RIDE AT NIGHT FROM HALIFAX TO WINDSOR.—THE PRINCE
EDWARD’S MAN, AND THE GENTLEMAN FROM NEWFOUNDLAND.
IMMERSED in fog, and shut up in a small coach, three of us, a Prince
Edward’s man and a gentleman from Newfoundland, rode at a round trot,
with but two or three brief intermissions, from ten o’clock in the
evening until six next morning. The country, I conclude—if a man may
have any conclusions, who rides with his eyes fast shut, and sleeps and
nods—is a succession of hills and dales. From the bridges, over which
we rumbled, and from the crowing of the cocks at midnight and at dawn, I
argue that there were farms and streams. My companions were agreeable.
Being partners in the enterprise, at the cost of twenty-two dollars and
a half for an eight hours’ drive, we had fellow-feelings on all things
in general, and upon the expensiveness of night travelling in Nova
Scotia in particular. The Prince Edward’s man, a tradesman, was on his
first visit to the States, in fact to the great world, and was a modest,
thoughtful person, who talked as men of merely home experience are apt
to talk, saying nothing to object to, nothing to startle, and some
little to remember concerning the climate, the society, and products of
his native isle. The gentleman from Newfoundland had seen the world to
his soul’s content, and now was a most passionate lover of wild nature.
He had dined with nobility and gentry, and could talk of them and of
cities, from the end of his tongue; but of the pleasures of the
sportsman in British America, out of his very heart. A more genial
companion the lonely traveller could not easily light upon. I had seen
him before, but forgot to mention it. It was at Murdoch’s, on the last
Sunday, which I was sorry to recollect of him. He drove up about noon,
in wood-man’s dress partly; washed, dined, and departed in great haste
for Pictou, in order to reach Halifax in time for the very steamer that
we were hoping to catch. With all his speed he missed it as well as we.
Hinc illæ lachrymæ. In his conversation you heard the crack of the
rifle, and the roar of the forest and the ocean. He was often reeling in
the largest salmon and the finest trout, and bringing down with a crash
in the brushwood the fattest of all bucks. The light of his nut-brown
pipe, a costly article, flashing faintly on his well-marked face,
reminded me of the red blaze of camp-fires in the woods, on the banks of
mountain brooks, and the shores of solitary lakes. From one of a nature
so companionable you part, on the road, after no longer than a day’s
acquaintance, with genuine regret. He was a character for the novelist,
with a head and countenance both for painter and sculptor.