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
At one point on our route, when we are passing through a lonely and
apparently uninhabited region, our jolly driver, "Manyul", remarks,
"Here's where Nobody lives."; and one replies, "Yes, evidently; and I
shouldn't think any one would wish to." But a turn of the road brings a
house in sight; and driver says, "That's his house, and his name is
actually Nobody" (Charles, I believe). We quote, "What's in a name!"
and conclude that if he is at all like the kindly people of this region
whom we have met he may be well content to be nobody, rather than
resemble many whom the world considers "somebodies", but who are not
models in any respect.
Our driver is quite a character in his way, and in the winter he "goes
a loggin'". On learning this we ply him with questions in such manner as
would surprise a lawyer, eliciting in return graphic pictures of camp
life in New Brunswick wildernesses, and the amusements with which they
while away the long evenings in their rough barracks. He describes
their primitive modes of cooking, their beds of fragrant spruce boughs
overlaid with straw,--"Better 'n any o' your spring mattresses, I tell
_you_!"--the queer box-like bunks along the wall where they "stow
themselves away", and where the most active and useful man is, for the
time at least, literally laid on the shelf.
Octavius, thinking how much he would enjoy "roughing it" thus, asks
what they would charge to take a young man to board in camp; and driver
indignantly replies, "_Nothin'_! Do you suppose we'd charge board? No,
_indeed_! Just let him come; and if we didn't give him a good time, and
if he didn't get strong and hearty, then we'd be ashamed of ourselves
and _sell out_."
Here we approach a cove which driver calls the Joggin (as it makes a cut
or jog-in, we presume); and beyond, a wide arm of the Basin is spanned
by a rickety old bridge, at least a quarter of a mile long, named in
honor of her Majesty,--hardly a compliment to that sovereign, we think.
The boards are apparently laid down without nails, and rattle like a
fusillade as our vehicle rolls over them. Here and there planks are
broken or gone entirely, showing the green swirling water beneath. Our
chaperone, having more faith in her own feet than those of the horses,
dismounts and walks across; while we, being naturally reckless and
romantic, are willing to risk our necks for the sake of the charming
views.
The village of Digby stretches along the shore, and from the hills
surrounding it the Basin with its islands, the Gap, and Annapolis
River, are charming.
Disciples of old "Izaak" would be likely to meet with greater success
here than at Annapolis; as the current of the river at the latter place
is so strong that, as a general thing, only the "old salts" are anglers;
and they being most of the time out in the Bay or off on cruises, it
follows that fish are scarce in the market.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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