Part 6 (2/2)
The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure, with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings, so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoying the view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hot wharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat which lay at the railway terminus opposite. It is the most unfair thing in the world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in the development of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express any opinion whatever about such a town as Pictou. But we may say of it, without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may have an interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance can leave it without regret.
By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.
Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,--a coast indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but still slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such a position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his fellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may be p.r.o.nounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in the matter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worrying anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with the Rebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that the ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of ”the States” over-shadows this part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said, ”Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright, and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcome and Pepys's Diary?” I never knew this sort of consolation to fail before; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it does in England.
New pa.s.sengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and not all could get seats for dinner at the first table. Notwithstanding the supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unable to dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, and consequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves at the second table. And we were rewarded by one of those pleasing sights that go to make up the entertainment of travel. There sat down opposite to us a fat man whose n.o.ble proportions occupied at the board the s.p.a.ce of three ordinary men. His great face beamed delight the moment he came near the table. He had a low forehead and a wide mouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy of famine to his fellow-men. But a more good-natured, pleased animal you may never see. Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he looked at us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, that plainly said, ”Now my time has come.” Every part of his vast bulk said this. Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made us partners in his pleasure. With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation, he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragments towards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing into his cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudied and preliminary manner. When he had secured everything within his reach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents, using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency. The man's good-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amus.e.m.e.nt as different in kind from his enjoyment. The spectacle was worth a journey to see. Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame its grossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he could swallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrange matters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beaming smile that a pig would not take offense at it. The performance was not the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievement unique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once in a lifetime. It was only when the man left the table that his face became serious. We had seen him at his best.
Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, and nothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the map conveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, without fogs, we are informed. In the winter it has ice communication with Nova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,--the route of the submarine cable. The island is as flat from end to end as a floor.
When it surrendered its independent government and joined the Dominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the government should build a railway the whole length of it. This is in process of construction, and the portion that is built affords great satisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessary adjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, or that it would pay, we were unable to learn.
We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait to Charlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of land between two rivers. Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in the afternoon and spent the night, giving the pa.s.sengers an opportunity to make thorough acquaintance with the town. It has the appearance of a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, with wide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something.
Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building, where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, and the colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty. The mansion of the governor--now vacant of pomp, because that official does not exist--is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded among trees by the water-side. It is dignified with a winding approach, but is itself only a cheap and decaying house. On our way to it we pa.s.sed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for a skating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whom we inquired. Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attention to flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest. Indeed, we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock in the dooryard is considered an ornament. A conspicuous building is a large market-house s.h.i.+ngled all over (as many of the public buildings are), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst of a large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the most part. The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to be regretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory of a governor and court and ministers of state, and all the paraphernalia of a royal parliament. That the productive island, with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperous career, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of great activity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and I think that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or two there; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements to tourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.
We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night of delightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secluded harbor. But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that we should improve our time by an interesting study of human nature.
Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms were supposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of the small cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making an excursion on the island railway. This family might remind an antiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in ”Evelina;”
they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine of that story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard to their family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, we felt as if we knew every one of them. There was a great squabble as to where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, the revelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits of sleep continued to pierce the thin deal part.i.tions of the adjoining state-rooms. When all the possible trivialities of vacant minds seemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of ”Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;” ”Goodnight, pet;” and ”Are you asleep, ma?” ”No.” ”Are you asleep, pa?” ”No; go to sleep, pet.”
”I'm going. Good-night, pa; good-night, ma.” ”Goodnight, pet.”
”This bed is too short.” ”Why don't you take the other?” ”I'm all fixed now.” ”Well, go to sleep; good-night.” ”Good-night, ma; goodnight, pa,”--no answer. ”Good-night,pa.” ”Goodnight, pet.”
”Ma, are you asleep?” ”Most.” ”This bed is all lumps; I wish I'd gone downstairs.” ”Well, pa will get up.” ”Pa, are you asleep?”
”Yes.” ”It's better now; good-night, pa.” ”Goodnight, pet.”
”Good-night, ma.” ”Good-night, pet.” And so on in an exasperating repet.i.tion, until every pa.s.senger on the boat must have been thoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting family habitually settled itself to repose.
Half an hour pa.s.ses with only a languid exchange of family feeling, and then: ”Pa?” ”Well, pet.” ”Don't call us in the morning; we don't want any breakfast; we want to sleep.” ”I won't.” ”Goodnight, pa; goodnight, ma. Ma?” ”What is it, dear?” ”Good-night, ma.”
”Good-night, pet.” Alas for youthful expectations! Pet shared her stateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on a private dialogue during this public performance. Did these young ladies, after keeping all the pa.s.sengers of the boat awake till near the summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma to insure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze?
The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domestic infliction, antic.i.p.ated the morning with grim satisfaction; for they had a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise and make their toilet without waking up every one in their part of the boat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stay awake. And so it turned out. The family grumbling at the unexpected disturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange of family affection during the night.
No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailing along the southern coast of Prince Edward Island. It was a sparkling morning. When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; the faint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and New Brunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us. On the still, sunny coasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there was no sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras to Cape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a few days later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to the ground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now inviting sh.o.r.es with wrecked s.h.i.+ps and drowning sailors,--a storm which has pa.s.sed into literature in ”The Lord's-Day Gale” of Mr Stedman.
Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, in order to discharge its pa.s.sengers into the sweeping unrest of continental travel? Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost melted away, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat lounged into Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside.
This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would give these travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at all remember how it looks. But it is a place that, like some faces, makes no sort of impression on the memory. We went ash.o.r.e there, and tried to take an interest in the s.h.i.+p-building, and in the little oysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interest or not has pa.s.sed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, wooden town, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend an interest in it which we did not feel? It did not disturb our reposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of the day.
On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a group reading and nodding in the suns.h.i.+ne, we found a pretty girl with a companion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the ”pa” of the pretty girl and of our night of anguish. The pa might have been a clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a female boarding-school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person to travel with, whose willingness to impart information made even the travelers long for a pa. It was no part of his plan of this family summer excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have any hour of it wasted in idleness. He held an open volume in his hand, and was questioning his daughter on its contents. He spoke in a loud voice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrank from this public examination, and begged her father not to continue it. The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter's acquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out of her ignorance. Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon the geography of the region we are pa.s.sing through, its early settlement, the romantic incidents of its history when French and English fought over it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure.
But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of the new education. Greece was his theme and he got his questions, and his answers too, from the ancient school history in his hand. The lesson went on:
”Who was Alcibiades?
”A Greek.”
”Yes. When did he flourish?”
”I can't think.”
”Can't think? What was he noted for?”
”I don't remember.”
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