Ruth Kedzie Wood

“ Pierre's gloomy moods are not always so quickly dispelled. Often she sulks in a mist for days together, but through the late summer one may be reasonably sure of bright days.
A brusque wind makes sport of hats and petticoats as we cross the broad pavement. Café doors slam shut on drinking sailors; oxen, drawing carts which move on Roman wheels of wood, bend still lower their wool-padded heads; on the landing, an old dame in long cape and muslin bonnet waits shiveringly for the boat to Dog Island. But no one complains of the wind, for it rends the fog, bane of St. Pierre. ”

“ The road climbs the higher levels of a spreading plateau. Here above the steppes that in spring and fall are frequented by migrating caribou, "the Topsails" spring upward with strange and telling effect. Snow often rests on these pyramidal buttes until the summer is well advanced. The rough-fashioned landscape has its own charm, but from the railway few mellow scenes appear until the Humber is approached. On the way is Grand Lake, the largest of the myriad fresh-water seas that strew the island. ”

“ Lunenburg has a claim on the tourist's attention by reason of its ancestry, its situation, an its industry born of the sea. The town is fortunate in being placed upon a sloping peninsula that is broached on every side by the waters of the Atlantic. Below the crown of the hill lies the schooner fleet in the main harbour. The bankers, all rigged alike and all painted black, direct their spoon bows in unison as they shift with the tide. The "back harbour" view embraces multitudes of islands afloat on the great Bay of Mahone. ”

“ Vessels running in at the flood are left careening on the ground when the tide slips from their keels. One goes to sleep with the moon shining on the wave, and wakens to a terra cotta waste bared by truant waters to the glare of the sun. Little boys paddle about the glistening bed of bay or river digging for shell-fish; an hour or two later, perched on a pier, they are angling for trout newly arrived from the sea. . . .
A few years after the eviction of the Acadians, the village of Windsor was populated by British officers who had completed their term of service. ”

“ From this woodland shrine there is a wonderful view of the Gaspé Mountains on the north shore of Bay Chaleur. Caraquet has other visions less material. On nights preceding heavy wind and storm the horizon is blazoned with the shape of a flaming boat. This is the Fire Ship. Every one has seen it at some time, to many it has appeared more than once. And all whose eyes behold are fearful of the morrow. ”

“ The wagon-road from Annapolis to the Lake passes out the main street to open fields, where great boulders pour down the slopes as if out of a Titan's cornucopia. Grey monoliths mark turns of the highway as the automobile draws near the lakes drained by the Liverpool River. Canoes leaving the sportsmen's colony at Milford descend by a wonderful inter-linking water-way of lakes and rivers to the Atlantic coast, the trip consuming about three days. Long vistas of woodland extend on either side as the road to "Kedgee" rises little by little to the haunts of forest monarchs. ”

“ Even the village dogs know when the funnel shows off the harbour and race down the hills for the tidbits that a kind-hearted cook throws from the galley. Fed on scant doles of dried herring, regarded only for the services they perform and burdened with dreadful yokes to prevent their jumping the bars to rob sheep-pens, these mongrels of the south coast form a pitiable crew. By law, all dogs that run at large must wear suspended about the neck a seven-pound piece of wood eighteen inches long and three inches in diameter. ”

“ Annapolis is a convenient portal to a wild forest land that rivals Finland in the number and beauty of its lakes. Sportsmen seek them for their pools and tributary streams, for the furred and feathered game in adjacent woods, and for the paddle-ways that stray hither and yon through a virgin wilderness. Kedgemakoogee, or Fairy Lake, has already been referred to as a body of water especially prolific in natural charms. ”

“ Beyond the green-fringed lake of Quidi Vidi, where summer boating regattas are held, is as characteristic a fishing village as may be found on this crenated coast. A ring of dark-hued rocks girdles an irregular basin graced by drooping sails. In the rough shacks below the clean-swept houses of the Quidi Vidi fishermen the cod are headed, split and boned preparatory to the process of salt curing. The drying flakes are made of cross-laid hemlock boughs. Every one is busy, cheerful and well-mannered. ”

“ The entrance to the harbour from the Bay of Fundy is flanked by rocky arms which narrow toward the outlet of the great river discovered by Champlain and de Monts on the fête day of St. John the Baptist, June, 1604, following their voyage to the Annapolis Basin. Partridge Island frowned upon their intruding sails as it frowns still upon the labouring, steaming, drifting procession that constantly passes beneath its gloomy banks. ”

“ Nearly every cove of Newfoundland's 6000 miles of coast line shows a straggling group of huts and drying stages on the restricted beaches or clinging to the shelves of grim cliffs.
The first week of March sees the departure from St. John harbour of the seal-killers, nowadays on strong steam vessels. Their goal is the moving field of ice which jams about the northern shores of Newfoundland and carries on its surface herds of harp and hood hair-seals. The hood is a savage and unsociable native of Greenland. The male when attacked blows an inflated skin over his head. ”

“ Bounteous pastures and well-planted farms rise from the water-edge and cover the breast of the upland. Along the lower reaches of the river are inviting colonies of villas and rustic cabins among groves that cling to the ledge of bluff and shelving beach. Beyond Gagetown the prospect subsides in breadth as in beauty. Above sedgy-looking shores is an occasional knoll with its dawdling village; steamer landings are stacked with the crated harvest of orchard and farm ”

“ Westport, the chief settlement, depends upon the sea for its livelihood in common with all the villages on the spit that bars St. Mary's from the Bay of Fundy, and affords a thoroughly unconventional environment for vacationists to whom rest, good air and a banquet of sea food spells summer enjoyment. The people of this remote shore from Rossway to Westport are silent, kind and uncurious, like folk the world over who have "kinship with the sea." ”

“ A pilgrimage to Jim Simms has its reward in wandering tales of the life aboriginal—tales of trappers' wiles and rugged hardship, tales of woods "clogged with moose, moose without all reason," of black foxes that bite their snares and leave mocking tufts of fur in the trap, of autumn trips into the wilds with only a gun and a loaf of bread to provision the woodsman for a week. ”

“ Beyond Woodstock and Newburgh Junction the journey along the St. John is diverted by characteristic New Brunswick scenery—steep hills running up to low mountain peaks, rough patches of trees with peaceful intervening pastures, the paraphernalia of lumbering and milling, logs hurtling through boisterous waters, brooks chattering down secretive glens, grey river rocks that serve as precarious pedestals for well-accoutred fishermen . . . In this country angling that is sport for well-dowered visitors is a vocation for men to the wilderness born. ”

“ From this outlook one may survey the city, brinking the wooded shores of the North West Arm, falling away down dingy terraces of unkempt streets to that other fair encircling inlet, Bedford Basin. Across the harbour, where often-times Britain's war-hounds tug at their anchor chains, rises the town of Dartmouth, with a history quite its own. ”

“ The gannet drops like the osprey into schools of herring, mackerel and pilchard. In their nests of grass and weeds, which are always made on the highest, steepest cliffs above the sea, one egg is laid a year, or a second, or even a third if the first is stolen. The eggs and young birds are eatable, unlike the eggs and flesh of the cormorant, which even the Greenlanders omit from their ménu.
As the launch rounds the lower end of the island, groups of gannets with ash-grey plumage are descried bathing at the water edge and strutting the beach promenade. ”

“ In the woods of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and on the water-edge fires are often grateful on mid-summer evenings, and by the ides of September the blazing log is welcomed on many a hearth at the close of a day that has been warm and sunny.
Winter is not so dry nor so cold in the provinces by the sea as in those which lie further west, and therefore not so inviting. In this part of the world spring gives way reluctantly to impatient summer. Even in June the atmosphere is often too raw for out-door pleasures. ”

“ The dogs of Miquelon merit an ode to their fortitude and docile sagacity. Most of them boast a strain of that Newfoundland breed of which even a trace seems to ennoble the most outlandish of mongrels. Nearly all fishing vessels carry dogs as retrievers of cod which fall from the deck in loading; as fog detectors—it is said they can scent approaching vapour as well as land—and as augurs of good luck. ”

“ As the weather had been favourable for fishing, the wharves on the channel beach presented a characteristic picture when we strolled one day to the little cove to watch the unloading of the dory fleet. The gleaming cod were tossed from the bottom of capacious motor-boats to platforms about the workers' benches. Women with white kerchiefs tied about their heads helped in the various processes and lightened the somewhat sombre scene with their banter. ”

“ Pierre-Miquelon, "sole débris of our important possessions in New France," is to-day on the point of vanishing completely. Said a shop-keeper as he gazed at impoverished shelves, "We are only poor relations now, hanging to the skirts of France. Our flakes are bare, the wharves where vessels once ranged in a treble row stern to stem are nearly deserted. If our patrie contrives no new industries for us, then we must find occupation elsewhere, as hundreds of us have already done—some in Canadian mines and factories, some in Gloucester and Lynn. ”

“ Beyond a ravine are other mounds and crosses enclosed by a fence—a "sad colony" that the grave-blaster will guide you about. He blasts because one cannot dig rock, and St. Pierre is an island whose ribs are stone beneath a veil of earth. He blasts in summer because the frost and the rock together defy his tools in winter-time. ”

“ At the cross-ways beyond, the motor swerves to avoid collision with a wagon-load of tackle and provisions, and chauffeur and oxman pull up for a moment's gossip as to the party going "in."
For nine miles the road runs through the deep woods without passing a habitation. Then rough farms appear amid fields of stumpage, succeeded by a little realm of cultivated orchards and flowering lawns, a transformation confusing enough after the wilderness just traversed, and the still denser woods waiting to engulf the car. To the left there are fleeting glints of blue where the lake chain uncoils. ”

“ The towns of the island are consistently charmless; they are neither picturesque, quaint, shady nor home-like. On hot days the sun blazes upon their dusty and defenceless streets, making them places to flee from. The principal gulf resorts, Tracadie, Stanhope, Brackley Beach, Rustico are all within 20 miles' drive of the capital over straight smooth roads.
The Government narrow gauge railway which ambles hither and yon, dodging inlets and linking isolated ports to the main track, has as its chief centres Charlottetown and Summerside, the termini of the two steamer services from the mainland. ”

“ The great headland whose beauty is a tradition in Cape Breton, forms the southern bulwark of Lower Ingonish Bay, whose shores, like those of the North Bay, are sundered by precipices and bulwarked by magnificent escarpments that attain a height of 1000 to 1400 feet. At Ingonish, about 70 miles from Baddeck and from Sydney, there is a comfortable hotel. This town so gloriously environed was for long a prosperous fishing-station. ”

“ The throb of the engine beating against the sea wall of Bonaventure Island startles from their ledges the hordes of gannets, puffins, kittiwakes and sea pigeons that range these sandstone shelves like china birds in a shop. Some fly off in such a storm of wings and gleaming breasts that the sky is blotted out and the ears stunned by the uproar. ”

“ The best scenery of this marvellous coast which turns broad-side to the Atlantic is found beyond Belleoram in the fjords of Harbour Breton, Hermitage, Pushthrough, Burgeo-of-the-many-isles and Rose Blanche (280 miles from Placentia) . The disadvantages of the tour are the fogs and choppy seas which attend the journey except on favoured mid-summer days. If one is of a mind to leave the seaworthy little Glencoe and sojourn in a fascinating village that clutches the ledges above a cliff-bound haven he may find it difficult to secure lodgings. ”

“ Near the Dunbar farm, 9 miles from Inverness, are the ruins of an old carding mill and a water wheel. The gate-posts leading to the house are the jaw-bones of a whale, the doorstep is an antiquated quern. At the foot of the hill is Lake Ainslie with a pebbled beach for bathing, and sea, lake and brook trout lurking in near-by pools. ”

“ He was born in New Jersey and had charges at Elizabethtown and New Brunswick. "A gentleman of very good life and conversation," he was the friend of all religions and nationalities in Nova Scotia. He preached in English, French, German and Micmac, and sometimes employed them all in one day.
This little grave-yard nestled against the bulwarks of Fort Anne gives sanctuary to the ashes of an unhappy lady whose story, as whispered in Annapolis, involves a great man's love, and a great man's inconstancy . . . a man so great that one need only hear his deeds to know his name. ”

“ The Halifax and Southwestern line leaves Yarmouth from a diminutive station near the lower end of the town. A coast shattered by legions of bights and inlets and showered by a rain of islands extends from Acadia to the Scotch Argyles. The area north and south of the railway is composed of more water than land—probably there is not such a mosaic of lakes and bays to be seen elsewhere in the world. ”

“ Above the docks and the shops and warehouses that cluster on the low bank, a bluff rises steeply to the single street which passes the length of the hilly settlement. Gaspé has for many years been the chosen summer residence of discriminating Canadians and Americans. Some of them have built mansions and surrounded them with parks and gardens. ”

“ Chester is to the Atlantic shore of Nova Scotia what Digby is to Fundy, though with more aspirations to fashion. For a number of years its ourating climate and environment have influenced the patronage of a summer colony from the States, whose cottages adorn advantageous situations on knoll and point. The Hackmatack Inn, intended to provide the resort with a modish hostelry, overlooks all that is typical of Chester—green-turfed islands, islands of rock and hackmatack, the fair reach of bay and twin harbours, inviting coves, safe beaches, wooded vantage-points. ”

“ In the meadow of tall herbage the slender sea-crows and grey herring-gulls mingle with indifference, maintaining their households, preening their coats, stalking awkwardly about their common domain, trying their wings at the edge of the cliff, chattering with such vehemence that the clamour sounds all day in the ears of the village. The gulls lay their eggs on the ground, their black neighbours build upright nests of twigs. ”

“ The least of their coves has an artistic appeal. Conception Bay, enthrallingly lovely in every aspect, is enclosed by precipices less sublimely tall than those of Trinity Bay, but is none the less satisfying for that. A peninsula 85 miles long divides these two immense arms of the Atlantic. The railway which traverses nearly half its length is to be extended to Grates Cove at the northern end.
Grotesque ridges of unclad rock close in the village of Brigus, which lies a mile from the railway station at the head of a walled blue harbour. ”