Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline" — John Shaqi
Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
History
Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"
Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
There are in the town a number of inns, and summer guests are also made
welcome and comfortable in many of the private residences. In one of
the latter--a large old-fashioned house, with antique furniture--three
sisters reside, who possess the quiet dignity and manner of the old
school; and here one would feel as if visiting at one's grandfather's,
and be made pleasantly "at home".
We are surprised to find that this old town has generally such modern
and New Englandish aspect; and are told that it has twice been nearly
destroyed by fire, even in modern times; therefore but few of the quaint
buildings remain. Some of these are picturesque and interesting, the one
combining jail and court house being a feature of the main street. The
window of one of the cells faces the street; and the prisoner's friends
sit on the steps without, whiling away the tedium of incarceration with
their converse.
The oldest dwelling in the town stands on St. George's Street, nearly
opposite the old-fashioned inn known as the Foster House. Its walls were
originally made of mud from the flats, held together by the wiry marsh
grass, which, being dried, was mixed in the sticky substance as hair is
in plaster; but as these walls gave way from the effects of time the
seams and cracks were plastered up, and by degrees boarded over, until
now the original shows only in one part of the interior.
The houses throughout this region are almost invariably without blinds
or outside shutters, and consequently look oddly to us, who are inclined
to screen ourselves too much from "the blessed sunshine". Bay windows
are popular.
We saw one small house with four double and two single ones, giving it
an air of impertinent curiosity, as the dwellers therein could look out
from every possible direction. The ancient dormer windows on the roofs
have given place to these queer bulging ones, which, in Halifax
especially, are set three in a row on the gray shingles, and bear
ludicrous resemblance to gigantic bee-hives.
In some of the shops, at the post office and railroad station, our money
is taken at a small discount; but in many of the shops they allow us
full value for it. In one the proprietor tells us of the sensation
caused here once by the failure of a Canadian bank, and the surprise of
the town's-people--whose faith seemed shaken in all such institutions--
when he continued to take United States bank bills. He says: "I told 'em
the United States Government hadn't failed, that I believed in it yet,
would take all their money I could get, and be glad to have it, too!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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