Windsor-upon-Avon--Ride to the Gasperau--The Basin of
Minas--Blomidon--This is the Acadian Land--Basil, the Blacksmith--A Yankee
Settlement--Useless Reflections.
Windsor lies upon the river Avon. It is not the Avon which runs by
Stratford's storied banks, but still it is the Avon. There is something in
a name. Witness it, O river of the Blue Noses!
I cannot recall a prettier village than this. If you doubt my word, come
and see it. Yonder we discern a portion of the Basin of Minas; around us
are the rich meadows of Nova Scotia. Intellect has here placed a crowning
college upon a hill; opulence has surrounded it with picturesque villas. A
ride into the country, a visit to a bachelor's lodge, studded with horns
of moose and cariboo, with woodland scenes and Landseer's pictures, and
then--over the bridge, and over the Avon, towards Grand-Pre and the
Gasperau! I suppose, by this time, my dear reader, you are tired of
sketches of lake scenery, mountain scenery, pines and spruces, strawberry
blossoms, and other natural features of the province? For my part, I rode
through a strawberry-bed three hundred miles long--from Sydney to
Halifax--diversified by just such patches of scenery, and was not tired of
it. But it is a different matter when you come to put it on paper. So I
forbear.
Up hill we go, soon to approach the tragic theatre. A crack of the whip, a
stretch of the leaders, and now, suddenly, the whole valley comes in view!
Before us are the great waters of Minas; yonder Blomidon bursts upon the
sight; and below, curving like a scimitar around the edge of the Basin,
and against the distant cliffs that shut out the stormy Bay of Fundy, is
the Acadian land--the idyllic meadows of Grand-Pre lie at our feet.
The Abbe Reynal's account of the colony, as it appeared one hundred years
ago, I take from the pages of Haliburton:
"Hunting and fishing, which had formerly been the delight of the colony,
and might have still supplied it with subsistence, had no further
attraction for a simple and quiet people, and gave way to agriculture,
which had been established in the marshes and low lands, by repelling with
dykes the sea and rivers which covered these plains. These grounds yielded
fifty for one at first, and afterwards fifteen or twenty for one at
least; wheat and oats succeeded best in them, but they likewise produced
rye, barley and maize. There were also potatoes in great plenty, the use
of which was become common. At the same time these immense meadows were
covered with numerous flocks. They computed as many as sixty thousand head
of horned cattle; and most families had several horses, though the tillage
was carried on by oxen. Their habitations, which were constructed of wood,
were extremely convenient, and furnished as neatly as substantial farmer's
houses in Europe. They reared a great deal of poultry of all kinds, which
made a variety in their food, at once wholesome and plentiful. Their
ordinary drink was beer and cider, to which they sometimes added rum.
Their usual clothing was in general the produce of their own flax, or the
fleeces of their own sheep; with these they made common linens and coarse
cloths. If any of them had a desire for articles of greater luxury, they
procured them from Annapolis or Louisburg, and gave in exchange corn,
cattle or furs. The neutral French had nothing else to give their
neighbors, and made still fewer exchanges among themselves; because each
separate family was able, and had been accustomed to provide for its own
wants. They therefore knew nothing of paper currency, which was so common
throughout the rest of North America. Even the small quantity of gold and
silver which had been introduced into the colony, did not inspire that
activity in which consists its real value. Their manners were of course
extremely simple. There was seldom a cause, either civil or criminal, of
importance enough to be carried before the Court of Judication,
established at Annapolis. Whatever little differences arose from time to
time among them, were amicably adjusted by their elders. All their public
acts were drawn by their pastors, who had likewise the keeping of their
wills; for which, and their religious services, the inhabitants paid a
twenty-seventh part of their harvest, which was always sufficient to
afford more means than there were objects of generosity.
"Real misery was wholly unknown, and benevolence anticipated the demands
of poverty.[I] Every misfortune was relieved, as it were, before it could
be felt, without ostentation on the one hand, and without meanness on the
other. It was, in short, a society of brethren; every individual of which
was equally ready to give, and to receive, what he thought the common
right of mankind. So perfect a harmony naturally prevented all those
connections of gallantry which are so often fatal to the peace of
families. This evil was prevented by early marriages, for no one passed
his youth in a state of celibacy. As soon as a young man arrived to the
proper age, the community built him a house, broke up the lands about it,
and supplied him with all the necessaries of life for a twelvemonth. There
he received the partner whom he had chosen, and who brought him her
portion in flocks. This new family grew and prospered like the others. In
1755, all together made a population of eighteen thousand souls. Such is
the picture of these people, as drawn by the Abbe Reynal. By many, it is
thought to represent a state of social happiness totally inconsistent with
the frailties and passions of human nature, and that it is worthy rather
of the poet than the historian. In describing a scene of rural felicity
like this, it is not improbable that his narrative has partaken of the
warmth of feeling for which he was remarkable; but it comes much nearer
the truth than is generally imagined. Tradition is fresh and positive in
the various parts of the United States where they were located respecting
their guileless, peaceable, and scrupulous character; and the descendants
of those, whose long cherished and endearing local attachment induced them
to return to the land of their nativity, still deserve the name of a mild,
frugal, and pious people."
[I] At the present moment, the poor in the Township of Clare are
maintained by the inhabitants at large; and being members of one great
family, spend the remainder of their days in visits from house to house.
An illegitimate child is almost unknown in the settlements.
As we rest here upon the summit of the Gasperau Mountain, and look down on
yonder valley, we can readily imagine such a people. A pastoral people,
rich in meadow-lands, secured by laborious dykes, and secluded from the
struggling outside world. But we miss the thatch-roof cottages, by
hundreds, which should be the prominent feature in the picture, the vast
herds of cattle, the belfries of scattered village chapels, the murmur of
evening fields,
"Where peace was tinkling in the shepherd's bell,
And singing with the reapers."
These no longer exist:
"Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre."
I sank back in the stage as it rolled down the mountain-road, and fairly
covered my eyes with my hands, as I repeated Webster's boast: "Thank God!
I too am an American." "But," said I, recovering, "thank God, I belong to
a State that has never bragged much of its great moral antecedents!" and
in that reflection I felt comforted, and the load on my back a little
lightened.
A few weeping willows, the never-failing relics of an Acadian settlement,
yet remain on the roadside; these, with the dykes and Great Prairie
itself, are the only memorials of a once happy people. The sun was just
sinking behind the Gasperau mountain as we entered the ancient village.
There was a smithy beside the stage-house, and we could see the dusky glow
of the forge within, and the swart mechanic
"Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything,
Nailing the shoe in its place."
But it was not Basil the Blacksmith, nor one of his descendants, that held
the horse-hoof. The face of the smith was of the genuine New England type,
and just such faces as I saw everywhere in the village. In the shifting
panorama of the itinerary I suddenly found myself in a hundred-year-old
colony of genuine Yankees, the real true blues of Connecticut, quilted in
amidst the blue noses of Nova Scotia.
But of the poor Acadians not one remains now in the ancient village. It is
a solemn comment upon their peaceful and unrevengeful natures, that two
hundred settlers from Hew England remained unmolested upon their lands,
and that the descendants of those New England settlers now occupy them. A
solemn comment upon our history, and the touching epitaph of an
exterminated race.
Much as we may admire the various bays and lakes, the inlets,
promontories, and straits, the mountains and woodlands of this
rarely-visited corner of creation--and, compared with it, we can boast of
no coast scenery so beautiful--the valley of Grand-Pre transcends all the
rest in the Province. Only our valley of Wyoming, as an inland picture,
may match it, both in beauty and tradition. One has had its Gertrude, the
other its Evangeline. But Campbell never saw Wyoming, nor has Longfellow
yet visited the shores of the Basin of Minas. And I may venture to say,
neither poet has touched the key-note of divine anger which either story
might have awakened.
But let us be thankful for those simple and beautiful idyls. After all, it
is a question whether the greatest and noblest impulses of man are not
awakened rather by the sympathy we feel for the oppressed, than by the
hatred engendered by the acts of the oppressor?
I wish I could shake off these useless reflections of a bygone period. But
who can help it?
"This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe when it hears in the woodland the voice of the
huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roof village, the home of Acadian farmers--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!"