Campobello: An Historical SketchWells, Kate Gannett
History
Campobello: An Historical Sketch
Wells, Kate Gannett
Campobello Island (N.B.)
=His Settlement at Campobello.= "The Quoddy Hermit,"--this was the name
he chose when, with the rank of admiral, he came back to Campobello to
live. He brought with him building material and the frame of a house
taken from Rice's Island, and erected his habitation where is now the
Owen. In the grove at the northern end of the present hotel he planted
two or three English oaks. He placed the sun dial of his vessel in the
garden fronting his house, and put a section of his beloved quarter deck
close to the shore, not far from the seedling oaks. There, pacing up and
down in uniform, he lived over again the days of his attack upon the
Spanish pirate. Proud as he was of the two cannon he then captured,
there is no one living to tell who bled or who swore, or whether the
Spanish galleon sank or paid ransom. He placed the cannon on the Point,
where they bid defiance to American fishing boats. In later years one
was taken to Flagstaff Hill whenever a salute was to be given in honor
of the Queen's birthday, or a fish fair, for such fairs were famous.
=Weddings.= The population of the Island increased, and the old man
married the boys and girls at church or at home, slowly or hastily, as
his humor bade him, always claiming the first kiss of the bride. A
certain sailor who had wooed a Campobello maiden was determined that
this privilege should not be allowed by her, and therefore tried to
salute his bride before the service was ended. "You are not married yet.
Back!" shouted the Admiral. Frightened, the sailor-groom turned his face
and his feet toward the minister-magistrate, who more and more slowly
repeated the words of the service, as he approached nearer to the lady,
till, with the last word, he snatched the first kiss. His most princely
gift as a wedding present is said to have been the Island of Pope's
Folly, a present conditioned on his performance of the marriage service,
which was gladly granted by the bride.
He widened the narrow roads along the bay, which David had broken out,
and in his heavy, lumbering coach of state went through snow and mud
from one tenant to another. The coach is still to be seen, and the
tenants' grandchildren bear the Owen surname as the universal Christian
cognomen. The Admiral would often stroll down to Whale-Boat Cove,--so
called from a large kind of row-boat used in the herring
fisheries,--which he persuaded the men to call Welsh Pool. Many a little
maiden counted her pennies by the Admiral's kisses, and many a poor
fisherman blessed him for allowing the house rent to run on from year to
year, though the Admiral invariably insisted on the rental from the
weirs; he well knew which was the more profitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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