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_Title:_ Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia
_Date of first publication:_ 1942
_Author:_ Dorothy Duncan (1903-1957)
_Date first posted:_ November 8, 2026
_Date last updated:_ November 8, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20261114

This eBook was produced by: John Routh & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net




                          [Cover Illustration]

                                BLUENOSE

                             A Portrait of
                              NOVA SCOTIA

                                   by
                             Dorothy Duncan
                               Author of
                            HERE’S TO CANADA

                              Illustrated


                      HARPER & BROTHERS Publishers
                          New York and London




                  BLUENOSE, A PORTRAIT OF NOVA SCOTIA

             _Copyright, 1942, by Dorothy Duncan MacLennan_
               _Printed in the United Stater of America_

                _All rights in this book are reserved._
             _No part of the book may be reproduced in any_
             _manner whatsoever without written permission_
           _except in the case of brief quotations embodied_
          _in critical articles and reviews. For information_
                      _address Harper & Brothers_

                             FIRST EDITION




    To my Nova Scotia family, who abhor publicity and yet will
    forgive me this book




                       _Table of Contents_

              PROLOGUE                                            1
           I. ATLANTIC PENINSULA                                  7
          II. ACADIA                                             17
         III. OUTPOST OF EMPIRE                                  47
          IV. EASTERN CANADIAN PORT                              75
           V. MANY HAVENS                                       125
          VI. FARMERS UNDER SAIL                                159
         VII. TIMBER, GOLD, AND FISH                            179
        VIII. LAND FOR A HERITAGE                               209
          IX. NEW SCOTLAND                                      231
              EPILOGUE                                          257
              BIBLIOGRAPHY                                      265
              INDEX                                             267




                             _Illustrations_

                   Officer’s Quarters, Annapolis Royal
                Evangeline Willows, Acadia National Park
                               Curing Cod
                       Haliburton’s Home, Windsor
                        Government House, Halifax
                         Northwest Arm, Halifax
                         Province House, Halifax
                       North Shore of Cape Breton
                           South Shore Harbor
                     Fishing village on South Shore
               Sandy Cove, on St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia
         Looking across Lunenburg Harbour, Nova Scotia, from the
          golf links to the town. Lunenburg is the home port of
                             the “Bluenose”
           Bringing salt from the Indies—the James E. Newsom,
                                Lunenburg
                      Margaree Valley, Cape Breton
            At Ingonish Ferry on the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton
                                 Island
                         Highlands of Bras d’Or
           A portion of the famous Cabot Trail in Cape Breton




                                BLUENOSE

                      _A Portrait of Nova Scotia_

[Illustration]




                               _PROLOGUE_


Bluenose is essentially the portrait of a province, but it must be
remembered that a portrait is not a photograph. In this book the author
is attempting to depict the personality of a place and a people in much
the same way that a novelist draws the personality of a character. So it
is only incidentally a travel book, though its intention is to enlarge
vision and understanding of a portion of the earth comprised in a
geographical unit.

In another sense _Bluenose_ is a self-portrait, whether it means to be
or not. Inevitably a place and the people who live in it—their customs,
manners, values, and relationships—can be interpreted only through the
personal reactions of the individual who studies them. Every novel and
every painting reveals to some degree the creator as well as the
subject, and it is often difficult to determine where the one revelation
begins and the other ends. How can you judge her conclusions unless
something of the writer is revealed through her subject, either
unwittingly or with deliberation? So this book becomes also the story of
how an American fell in love—not suddenly and irrevocably, but slowly
and sometimes painfully—with a land and a people as foreign to her
Yankee spirit as though they spoke a strange language and lived halfway
across the world, instead of next door.

Unless you know that she grew up in the Middle West, where the only
bodies of water with which she was familiar were mudholes called
summer-resort lakes, and the nerveless, odorless expanse of Lake
Michigan, how could you understand the devastating impact experienced
when she found herself living beside a cold and cruel sea that was never
still, never gentle, never willing to be ignored or loved? There are
times when Nova Scotia is not so much a land or a part of a country as
an exhausting state of war between water and earth, in which the
presence of human beings seems more often than not merely incidental. To
an individual who had always taken for granted the sight of orderly
cornfields and farmlands under the control of man, and solid earth to
the horizons and beyond for hundreds of miles in all directions, every
sight and sound and smell of Nova Scotia was strange and queer and
unrelated to past knowledge and experience. These things must be
stated—as well as an objective description of the place—if the
strength and the final beauty of Nova Scotia are to be understood
through the mind of this particular writer.

_Bluenose_ was never intended as a means of selling Nova Scotia to its
readers. To be sure, the author would like more individuals, both
Canadian and American, to share her interest and affection in the
province. But in no sense can this book be considered propaganda. For
too long the majority of books written about various parts of Canada has
assumed this form of half-information, catering to a dream place evoked
by tourist folders. The result has been so to confuse the efforts of
Canadians to understand themselves that anything now written about one
of their provinces which doesn’t stress the romantic and picturesque
qualities of the country causes an outburst of indignation.

The Dominion deserves better treatment. And, specifically, Nova Scotia
deserves better treatment. This writer believes that Nova Scotia is good
enough to stand on its own merits and allow all aspects of its character
to be delineated. There will be no further insistence here that all of
Canada is busy with little else than posing for the cameras of tourists.
Nothing has been so spurious or so harmful to a solid understanding
between Canadians and Americans as the insidious propaganda presented in
tourist so-called literature, and the author of _Bluenose_ will never
subscribe to a furtherance of this belittlement of Canadian virtues. In
fairness it must be repeated that the citizens of the Dominion of Canada
are well informed about the United States from movies, books, radio
programs, and magazines; if that information tends to make all Americans
assume the likeness of Charlie McCarthy, Abbott and Costello, the Joads,
and Senator Wheeler it is only because these are voices easy to hear
above the uproar of the crowd. Dorothy Thompson, the music of _Porgy and
Bess_, and Wendell Willkie’s smile are equally well known above the
forty-ninth parallel.

At last Canadians are becoming weary of having the same things said
about them in the same old way; and they are no longer willing to be the
victims of false chroniclers, either within or without. New voices are
rising among the young men and women in the Dominion and before long
they will be heard. But the greatest difficulty for Canadians who would
interpret their own country truly for other peoples remains the fact
that Canada and the United States are superficially similar, so that the
former is always faced with the necessity of competing for interest with
the latter—on American terms.

And that’s not fair, to either country. Canada and the United States
have much to give each other, much to learn from each other, much with
which to enrich each other. But the process of exchange can never be a
free-flowing thing until Americans gain a true perspective in their view
of Canada, and Canadians learn to see themselves even as they are seen.

There is no reason whatever why Americans who will accept books on
Mexico which depict its faults and weaknesses will not welcome a book on
Canada which seeks to show a whole portrait rather than a retouched
photograph. There is no reason on earth why we should continue to regard
a people or a place shown to be different from ourselves as inferior.
The very differences add meaning and depth and richness to our society,
and the world would grow dull indeed without them.

Some of the manners and customs of Nova Scotians, for example, may seem
stiltifying to Americans when they are first encountered, if judged by
Yankee standards. But why should they be so judged? Nova Scotians could
change if they chose; it happens that they like their own way of doing
things. Why should a Halifax fog be deemed ugly by most Americans who
read about it, simply because it is unfamiliar? Fogs have a haunting
quality of mystery and beauty far more acceptable to those who live in
them than the sun-baked plains of Kansas or Saskatchewan would be.

So if Nova Scotians, as they are depicted in this book, seem overly
cautious and sometimes reactionary, it is not to condemn them. Without
such characteristics they would not be as sturdy as they are, and the
golden worth of their natures would not be so pronounced. Without such
qualities they would not have been able to make Canada—the fourth
trading nation in the world—what it has become today.

Many units of space in this world can be recognized as sharp-edged and
unqualified, their physical aspects clearly related to their spiritual
import. But Nova Scotia is impalpable, an intricate mixture of
overtones, counterpoint, and minor variations. Essentially it can be
compared with no other place. It is a distilled moment of time and
space, a geographical unit bounded by throbbing seas and a thin neck of
land which may keep it from being an island but can never alleviate its
insular state of mind.

But there is nothing intangible about the Nova Scotian character; it is
vivid, positive, and virtuous. It derives directly from all the kinds of
people who comprise its heritage, and the individual traits of each
separate race may be clearly traced in its make-up. Love these Nova
Scotians or deplore them as the case may be, they cannot be ignored; for
if they are implacable they are also endlessly surprising. Sooner or
later, if one is subjected to them long enough, they are bound to leave
their indelible mark in an affection and an admiration that can be
compared with nothing else.

Anything which is easy to understand—a people, a place, a work of
art—releases the interest of the beholder in inverse ratio to the
onlooker’s perceptual abilities. Nova Scotia is never as simple to
comprehend as it first appears; but it will never let you go, once you
have encountered it. There are so many tantalizing aspects of its state
of mind, so many contradictions and blind alleys of speculation that
arise whenever it is under consideration. But always it is warm with
human compassion and good will, and—like all of us—cherishes a deep
longing to be truly understood.

The personal passages in this book might easily have been eliminated; to
hide behind a long procession of facts and maintain a third-person tone
of omniscience would have been possible, and certainly would have caused
less controversy. But the result would have been meaningless.
Throughout, the author has attempted to say in her own fashion—not
always clear-edged, but not meant to be—“This is a portrait of
something I have seen and felt and tried to understand. Everything here
written has previously passed through the lens of my own mind, colored
by my background and temperament. Inevitably it has emerged with
distortions. What the reader sees in the pages of the book will, in
turn, be distorted by his mind. But for me these words are true, and I
hope that my truth may help those who read to reach what may be a truth
even greater—a new concept of values, and a new appreciation of the
fact that human beings who differ from us are not of necessity less
worthy.”




                                   I
                          _ATLANTIC PENINSULA_


About halfway between the southern tip of Baffin Land and the island of
Cuba, or between the North Pole and the Equator if you prefer, the
Atlantic coast of the North American continent becomes involved and
tortuous, as though the big and little islands and near-islands to be
found there had been spewed out of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
These blobs vary in size, but only one has managed to hang onto the
mainland by a shred. Except for the convenience to transportation of
this seventeen-mile-wide isthmus, Nova Scotia is in every other sense an
island, with all the self-conscious unity and distinction that every
small inhabited bit of earth entirely surrounded by water seems to
possess.

Its outline is one of the most distinctive in the world; for no matter
what it happens to be colored on a map, it reminds almost everyone of a
lobster. There its geographical simplicity ends, however; for no place
is more difficult to fit into a single phrase.

There is a sense of movement and the hidden springs of incessant life in
this small, rocky peninsula that never diminish. Against its
southeastern shore the Atlantic pushes and pounds and strains, never
still, never kind, never warm. The great boulders and torn cliffs of
this coast seem to vibrate with the endless surge of a tireless sea, and
they take the full beat of its anger to survive tumultuous destructive
forces. If a day comes when the pounding is less vehement, there is
still no sense of rest; for the next burst of fury is never far away.

On the west of the peninsula the tides of the Bay of Fundy maintain
another rhythm that is likewise constant and unbroken. But here it is up
and down, rather than back and forth, as the frigid water floods and
ebbs in enormous arcs twice each day, pulled and released, pulled and
released, by the moon. Depending upon the size of bays and river mouths,
these tides rise from heights of forty to seventy-five feet at certain
points.

Everywhere between the water boundaries of Nova Scotia the land is in
movement, too. As soon as one crosses the Chignecto Isthmus, where New
Brunswick ends, the topography of this province takes on an aspect of
its own. For miles and miles to the horizon the land rolls out ahead,
gently undulating, rising to sizable hills, dipping into small valleys
and dropping away to broader vales, but never maintaining either a plain
surface or a continuously jagged sky line within reach of a man’s sight.
The roads of Nova Scotia follow natural contours, twisting and turning
their way around and up and over, sometimes in long arcs, often in
broken curves and sudden turns, always presenting new vistas of a land
that scorns to repeat itself, and so is incapable of becoming a bore.

And over it all sweeps the wind. Sometimes it comes from the northeast
with a piercing cold; occasionally it turns about and arrives from the
southwest with sun and a warm clarity that changes the rocks from gray
to tawny amber; often—much too often—it blows from the southeast,
carrying rain that descends from a leaden sky in showers, gusts,
drizzles, sleetstorms, and downpours. But, no matter what its direction,
the wind over Nova Scotia is never-ceasing as it rushes from one body of
water to another. The evergreens are permanently bent by it; and when
southeasters come in from the sea, human beings move over the sodden
earth, or streaming pavements of the city, as though they were bent by
it, too. And, of course, they curse the weather, because that is the way
of all men; but they love this land passionately nonetheless, and with
good reason.

It has often occurred to me that four travelers could spend a summer in
Nova Scotia, each seeing a different part of it only, and be not
seventy-five miles apart. If they compared notes when they returned to
wherever they came from—each describing accurately what he had seen—it
could easily sound as though all four were talking of places thousands
of miles from one another that had nothing whatever in common.

One of them might claim that Nova Scotia was exactly like Finland in its
terrain. Another might remember it as a long valley of fruit trees
undulating gently between two sheltering walls of low mountains, bathed
in sunlight most of the time and rarely experiencing a high wind. A
third might liken the part of the province he knew to Denmark or old
Hampshire, where rolling fields of red earth merge with the red sand of
tidal estuaries. And the fourth would be convinced that Nova Scotia is
exactly like the Scottish Hebrides, gray and stark and fogbound most of
the time.

In a degree and according to what he had seen, each would be right; and
each would also doubtless be convinced that the others were possessed of
too-colorful imaginations brought into use for the amusement of friends.

Down the center of this lobster, or insect shape as I see it, runs a
spine of hills from the Strait of Canso to the tip of Yarmouth County at
the southwest, with a branch line of hills going off on the wing that
connects the main body to New Brunswick. So the entire province is
divided into four parts: southeast of the spine toward the Atlantic,
northwest of the spine toward the Fundy, the wing which hangs on by the
isthmus, and the head that is Cape Breton Island. In general, each of
these sections has a different geologic aspect and a different history,
even as all are now integral parts of the whole.

Roads practically circle the whole province, like lines traced by a
child whose motor development is not yet sufficient to enable him to
take account of the involutions and peculiarities of the exact shore
line. And these roads are a motorist’s dream of perfection, if his sleep
and dreams aren’t filled with nightmares like the Pulaski Skyway. If
occasionally, and only rarely indeed, this main encircling road reverts
to gravel, one may be grateful for the necessity of covering ground at
smaller speed; for compensations in the way of entrancing views are
plentiful.

There are a limited number of ways to enter Nova Scotia, three by sea
and one by road or railroad from New Brunswick. Yarmouth receives boats
from Boston, and Digby does the same for Saint John; but the largest and
most popular point of entry by sea, Halifax, receives no
travelers-for-pleasure except by land until the war is over.

Given a choice—and who isn’t presented with dozens every day of his
life?—pick Digby for your first sight of Nova Scotia. It forms a
logical introduction because it is the place where the first settlers
met this land, and it is still sufficiently _pianissimo_ to allow a
build-up to a later climax. Perhaps if Digby had been my introduction to
Nova Scotia I should have found the province less elusive and could have
thought of it whole, as most Americans do. But I knew a Nova Scotian
before I knew the place where he came from; and I was never able after
that to divorce the land from its people sufficiently to see it with the
eyes of a traveler, any more than one can see London for the first time
without feeling consciously the weight of literature and history in the
background of all one’s initial impressions.

I had been leaning over the rail on A deck of the old _Pennland_, that
unobtrusive ship beloved of all its passengers in the days when it
crossed the North Atlantic between Antwerp, Halifax, and New York for
the Red Star Line. We had been floating along over the English Channel
all day in a prodigious calm; and now we were tied up at a minor
Southampton pier while stevedores rushed back and forth from the wharf
to the bowels of the ship, pushing giant boxes and crates before them
like ants scurrying to some unseen cache to hide a find of food.

My memories of shipboard are largely made up of lying in the sun
watching other people play shuffleboard or deck tennis, of eating
kippers and damson jam—separately, to be sure—for breakfasts (by which
you may know the house flags I tended to sail under), and of hanging for
long hours over a deck rail watching the endlessly fascinating
proceedings that went on between ship and dock whenever we called at a
port. I loved the strange smells of things I couldn’t name—strong odors
with no delicacy about them, the same in every port and yet always mixed
with ingredients which were distinct to each place. I liked the growling
sounds of winches and chains and wood on wood; of whistles giving
signals that I couldn’t translate; and usually of voices in strange
tongues that I might have understood if my philological training had
been better, which it wasn’t.

This night in Southampton I leaned on the stout oak rail and thought
about how much I should never have known if I had stayed in the middle
of a continent where I had grown up, instead of taking my own brand of
postgraduate course by travel. No one can convey to another human being
merely by words what the sounds and smells of a seaport are like, any
more than one can explain the sensation of flying to one who has never
been off the ground.

Nearly always it had been daytime when my ships had docked to load cargo
or unload passengers. This time, for some reason which I don’t now
remember, we had left Antwerp behind schedule and now Southampton was
paying for it by this feverish night work. I watched the peculiar
patterns of light and shadow down below on the dock, foreshortened by
the night. Overhead fixtures in the pier roof threw yellow pools of
light along the wharf, like poor spotlights hung from a proscenium arch.
Beyond the sliding doors there were other islands of light, too; but
they were nearly absorbed in the dimness of the great shed, and clouds
of darkness encroached on them from unseen corners.

Stevedores with grappling hooks or gunny sacks slung over their
shoulders disappeared into the gloom and emerged again pushing too-big
crates before them, and far down the pier there were shouts and oaths
and the creaking and grinding of iron on iron as a shiny car with an
Ohio license plate was lifted without dignity off the wharf and lowered
into the hold of the _Pennland_.

Directly below me, just outside the range of one of the pools of light,
stood two men who weren’t working and seemed to have no business
intruding their unconcern with time in this place. They could hardly be
fellow passengers because we had been led by the purser to understand
there would be no nonsense about enforcing the rule forbidding us to
disembark. And they certainly weren’t sight-seers from the town because
it was far past midnight. Besides, Southampton doesn’t sight-see on its
own docks.

One of these men wore a tight-fitting topcoat and a Homburg of gray felt
and he carried a sheaf of papers in his hand; but since he was paying no
attention to what took place around him, the papers could have no
business with the moment. The other man was younger and obviously as
intent on his own conversation as was his companion. His clothing was
nondescript—untidy gray slacks, a brown tweed jacket, a scarf knotted
about his throat, and no hat. Occasionally, as he moved aside to permit
passage of one of the ants trundling a loaf of sugar, he stepped within
range of a light. Only for a moment and then out again, but it was
enough to show a head of wavy, tousled brown hair and a mobile face that
even from a distance I could see broke into laughter as easily as it
receded into a frown.

After a fair amount of hopping about through countries of Europe, my
journeys spread over three summers, I had acquired a conceit about my
ability to distinguish between nationalities, and even occasionally to
detect which part of Germany or England a man or woman might call home.
So I watched these two, trying to determine their nationalities, while
they were no more aware of my proximity than if I had been a stanchion.
I could hear the undertone of their voices, though their words were, of
course, indistinguishable; but still I was close enough to have hit
either of them with the book I was holding, and I’m not a good shot.

The well-dressed one was the easier of the two to place: he had eaten
well for years; he was sure of himself; he was accustomed to giving
orders. His face was long rather than broad, but it carried all the
marks of a double whisky a day and twenty-five-cent cigars. He might
have come from Ireland originally; but he was undoubtedly an American,
no matter what his business was over here.

The younger man most certainly was not a fellow countryman. This was
1932, and not even Princeton had yet promoted the fashion of the
unmatched suit. I tried to decide how I could be so sure that he was not
an American, but the details pointing it up were more elusive than the
decision itself. It was the way he wore his scarf for one thing, and the
wearing of it at all without a topcoat; moreover, the movements of his
hands were quick in outlining the body of a phrase, with a tensed
nervousness that comes through breeding rather than worry. He was too
ready to laugh heartily at his companion’s sallies to be an Englishman;
he was far too good-natured and self-forgetful to be a German; there
wasn’t a trace of the Latin in his features, though the play of emotions
was strong, so I ruled out French and Italian. He might have been
Spanish, except that I was sure he wasn’t; for his head was not overly
large, and his features were too well integrated.

The _Pennland’s_ funnel let out three deep-throated growls; the two men
looked at their wrist watches in unison, and then they walked off down
the pier into the shadows. I realized suddenly that my elbows were numb
and my feet cold and that practically everyone else on board had long
ago gone to their cabins. He must have been a Scandinavian, I decided,
since the north countries were one part of Europe I’d never seen. Not a
Swede—for, after all, I’ve lived close to Wisconsin and Minnesota—but
a Dane most likely, or a Norwegian.

A sound and a vibration I could identify took precedence over my
musings. The anchor was coming up. By the time I was undressed and ready
to climb into my bunk we were moving out through the Solent and I would
have found it impossible to dream, awake or asleep, that the next time I
should be traversing this strip of water it would be in the suffocating
depths of a blackout. For, after all, I was an American, and in those
days Europe was a place where our money bought pleasures. Its politics
were of little interest and—so we thought—without any apparent
relation to ourselves.

It was the next evening after dinner, when I was reading in a far corner
of the lounge, that I looked up from my book to see the younger of the
two men from the Southampton dock standing in the doorway, surveying the
room and all its contents. He looked us over, one by one, as though
hunting for someone who might speak his language, unobserved by the
large and small groups who were playing bridge or telling tall tales. He
lingered perhaps a full minute while his eyes became accustomed to the
light, and then he turned to leave. With his hand on the doorframe he
looked over the room once more, quickly, and then I found my stare
caught . . . as though someone in a movie close-up had turned from his
preoccupation and looked straight at me. His eyes smiled though his lips
were still, and then he was gone.

I went back to the pages of my book, but instead of reading I began to
curse my ineptness with languages. Even if a mastery of Danish was
hardly to have been expected of me, at least I might have tried harder
with German when I was in school; for most Scandinavians know that
language as well as their own. But German had been cut from the
curricula of practically every school in the United States in 1917, and
Spanish had replaced it as an elective. Not that I knew conversational
Spanish, either.

I saw the young Dane once or twice from a distance the next day, playing
deck tennis with two Germans and an English girl, and later walking the
deck with his own thoughts while he puffed at a pipe. Someone remarked
that he was one of two passengers who had come on board at Southampton
at the last minute when room had been found for them, and his name
wasn’t on the passenger lists we had been given.

Since I don’t like bridge and I was as tired of the company of the
friends with whom I had been traveling as they were of me, I went back
to my corner of the lounge to read each evening. The second night out
from Southampton I may have looked up rather more often than usual from
a book that should have been engrossing, but no one of interest appeared
in the doorway and the groups about me became noisier by the hour.

When an unfamiliar voice over my left shoulder said something obviously
directed to my attention alone, I was more startled than if one of the
stewards had said boo. At least I could have understood boo; but this
voice was speaking in a language I didn’t recognize, though the sound of
it was utterly charming and the smile that went with it more so. He was
wearing a dinner jacket, and from head to foot he looked what is called
impeccably dressed. But even if he had been clad in dungarees, and yet
had maintained that mixture of boyish shyness and determination in his
expression, I should still have been sad at my own reply: “I’m sorry,
but I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I said, ‘_Will_ you join me in a port?’” he repeated. Even as my ears
took in the meaning of the words, my mind recorded the fact that the
language used had been the same each time he had spoken.

Port requires time and conversation for its enjoyment, and a ship
provides opportunity for both. That night and the next and the next we
talked, walking the quiet decks after we tired of the lounge. How the
inmates of the cabins below must have hated us, when the hours after
midnight seemed to us even better for walking than the hours before.
They were the most effortless conversations I have ever taken part in,
perfectly adapted to the mood of an uncommunicative young woman; for one
question or remark on my part would elicit a half-hour’s reply, and
while it was being expanded I had ample opportunity to observe and
listen to the fullness of things not spoken.

A Dane? He laughed at me. Certainly not, though it would be a fine thing
to be.

“There’s Oxford in your accent,” I said.

“Probably German, too,” he answered. “I’ve spent most of my vacs in
Freiburg for three years.”

“Rhodes Scholar?” I asked.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“The blazer you were wearing this morning.”

“Most Americans don’t recognize the half-blue.”

“I read too many books. So you’re English after all,” I said.

“Good Lord, no. What a thought! Rhodes Scholarships aren’t given in
England. I’m a Nova Scotian.”

We were both silent then, leaning against the canvas enclosure of the
tennis court on the boat deck, watching the sky being torn by falling
stars. He was the first Nova Scotian I had ever met, and he was
certainly the first Nova Scotian I had ever thought about as a kind of
person differing to a distinguishable degree from the rest of us. He
hadn’t said “a Canadian” and he obviously didn’t think of himself as a
Canadian. What could Nova Scotia be like, that its people gave this name
to themselves with such pride in their voices that one felt they were
convinced of a superiority palpable to the rest of the world?

The falling stars had made him think of some lines of poetry; and as he
repeated them without the self-consciousness an American would have
shown, I found myself wondering if they were all as filled and running
over with vitality and joy and intensity as this one. His voice rounded
the cadences of classical verse as easily as it broke later into a
popular New York dance tune which he had lately heard played in the
Savoy. It was obvious that all the time he was loving it, tasting it,
drinking deeply of it, and learning its ways he was managing to see life
whole. Were all Nova Scotians as unlike both Englishmen and Americans
. . . and how exactly did he differ from us, except in the intensified
degree of his intellectual delights, his unfeigned emotions, and above
all his bottomless sense of wonder?

During the days and long evenings that followed I tried to determine how
much of this man was typically Nova Scotian, and how much an individual
set apart by the stars when he was born. His shyness was as real as his
charming manners and his ability on the tennis court, and yet . . . too
much of him at a stretch was apt to be exhausting, like trying to master
a new skill without allowing for the psychological pauses necessary when
the human mind adapts itself to something unfamiliar.

But the ship was filled with young Americans who liked his company quite
as well as I did, and his interest in human beings kept him in easy
circulation. By the time the _Pennland_ had pulled slowly into the outer
reaches of Halifax harbor, past Sambro Light and Meagher’s Beach, and
then quietly into a berth at the red-brick pier on a sunny Sunday
morning, I was only one among an extensive group who hung over the rail
to see him off. He had left us there on deck in the sun, with a strong
handclasp for each and a word of farewell, as soon as he saw his father
and his sister come on board with the port officials. Now they appeared
from the bowels of the ship and preceded him down the gangplank, and the
rest of us still on board bound for New York were of no importance to
them whatsoever. How could we be? But after they had disappeared into
the shed and he was about to follow them, he turned and raised his hand
high in salute to us all. Then he was gone.

Though we were unaware of it at the time, Nova Scotia could never again
seem merely an outpost of North America to any of us, a near-island
dropped at random on a map. We had met and come to know a Nova Scotian,
and through him we had encountered a people. And we were none of us
likely to forget.




                                   II
                                _ACADIA_


Between Beaver River and Belliveau Cove on the shore of St. Mary Bay, a
distance of some forty miles along the far eastern shore of the backside
of Nova Scotia below Digby, there is a district known as Clare. It is an
extended community of farms, where the fertile land hugs the shore of
the bay; and the road that runs beside it binds spruce scrub and
lichen-covered rocks to the interior like a girdle. Every farm in this
measured district is cut into strips of fifteen, thirty, or sixty acres,
each slice separated by fences made of weathered gray slats and poles.
Unpainted farmhouses, strung along the road within sight of each other
as though fearing encroachment by the forest, reflect the poverty of
this part of the province. They also indicate the frugal nature of the
people who live in them, for this is a settlement of onetime Acadians.

[Illustration: _Canadian Pacific Railway and Paul Yates_

Sandy Cove, on St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia]

Few Nova Scotians living in other parts of the province know anything
about these French Canadians, except by hearsay, and only tourists who
land at Yarmouth and drive hurriedly through these small
villages—disliking acutely the sense of loneliness and immense solitude
in the midst of so much natural beauty—think of them as part of the
Nova Scotian scene.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The girl at the wheel of the cornflower-blue cabriolet leaned forward
and pounded the face of the speedometer once more. Then she pulled to
the side of the highway and turned off the engine. She was studying a
road map intently when a rickety hay wagon, led by two bored oxen and an
equally bored man, came in sight some two hundred yards up the road. She
watched them move toward her at a philosopher’s pace. When the cloven
hoofs had finally reached a line with her wheels, she leaned toward the
door of her car and said “Hi” in the direction of the farmer. He made
clucking noises which the oxen seemed to understand, for they stopped
walking and went on staring ahead. Then he turned his attention to the
smiling girl.

“My speedometer’s broken,” she said. “I’ve lost track of where I am. How
much farther is it to Halifax?”

The man smiled too, deepening the dirt-creased lines of his leathery
skin. A shrug of the shoulders, turned only as a Frenchman can do it,
provided his only answer.

“Don’t you know how far it is, or don’t you understand me?” she asked.

“I speak English . . . good.”

“Fine. I wish I spoke French as well. Do you know how many miles it is
to Halifax?”

“No.”

“Haven’t you ever been there?”

“No.” Another shrug and down-drawn lines about his mouth suggested that
he knew a multitude of other things more important than going to Halifax
. . . ever.

“But it must be only about a hundred and eighty miles from here,” she
persisted. “Have you lived here all your life?”

“Sure . . . sure.” He pointed in the direction from which she had come,
indicating a gray house standing at angles to the road. Its doorstep
seemed to be littered with an assortment of children of all ages. “Mon
père . . . theese hees farm. Before . . . hees père, too. Good land
. . . annyhow pretty good.”

“And I’ll bet you’ve never even _wanted_ to go to Halifax,” she said.

“Eh?” He turned from admiring his farm to look again at the girl and the
inside of her car.

“Ever been to Yarmouth?”

“Maybe one . . . two times.”

“Never mind,” she said. “Got time to talk to me some more?” She offered
him a cigarette.

“Ah oui.” He grinned again, accepting the light she offered as well.

“Ever been to Digby?”

“Sure . . . Digby ees beeg place. Feefty mile, maybe.”

“And what’s here? What’s the name of this parish?”

“Theese Comeauville.” Pride held the words taut.

“Comeauville . . . I wish I could pronounce it the way you do. What’s
the next parish . . . toward Digby?”

“Grosses Coques.” This seemed a large joke to the man, and he began
laughing to himself.

“Doesn’t sound as good as Comeauville. What does it mean?” She studied
the man’s face as she asked the questions, obviously more interested in
his mannerisms than his answers.

“Beeg clams . . . beegest clams anywhere . . . whole Atlantic Ocean. I
theenk maybe peoples live there beeg clams, too.” He slapped his thigh
with pleasure over his own joke. The oxen gave a lurch and the hay wagon
shook its empty spars.

“What do you think about the war?” she said when his mirth had subsided.

The man turned his attention to the team and let another shrug serve as
answer.

“You’re right . . . that’s a fairly inclusive question. What do you
think about conscription?”

“Same as always.” He was obviously becoming bored with the turn of the
conversation.

“Have any of the boys around here gone into the army?”

“Some.”

“Navy?”

“Some.”

“Don’t you care who wins the war?”

Another shrug of the shoulders as he tightened the reins in his knotty
hands.

“Of course you do,” she said. “You just don’t like me to ask questions
about things that really matter to you.”

The man looked at her intently but gave no reply.

“Je ne parle pas Française . . . but you understand English
beautifully.”

The creases deepened around his mouth.

“And I think your oxen are beautiful, too. I wouldn’t have believed it
if I hadn’t seen them. Thanks for letting me talk to you. Someday I’m
going to learn enough French to exchange jokes with you. Because we’ll
never understand each other—our two races—until we can laugh together.
Good-by.”

With a flip of the key and the pressure of the toes of one foot, she
turned the engine and let it slide into gear.

“Bon jour,” said the man, returning her smile. And then, as though an
unimportant afterthought had better be added, “Two cheeldren . . . my
boys . . . beeg boys . . . building boats all day for governments. You
see on road . . . that way.” He pointed in the direction toward which
the car began to move.

“Fine!” she called back, and waved in response to his salute. “That’s
the way we’ll beat them . . . ships and more ships.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Centuries from now, when Nova Scotia is old and filled with people and
the evergreen forests along the slopes of the hills have yielded to
grazing land or terraced gardens, Digby may come to be known as the eye
of the Fundy. Nature has given it this enviable setting, even as it has
to Ragusa, the eye of the Adriatic, and to Yalta on the Black Sea. Each
of these towns has become a part of the world’s imagination, not merely
because of what they are, but of where they are. And so it may be with
Digby.

In those future centuries, even as today, this little town will emerge
as a surprise to the man who beholds it for the first time. By then the
wooden buildings will have given place to homes of graceful lines, and
inland flowers will suddenly confront the traveler within five minutes
after his ship has left deep water. Today strangers see Digby almost as
it was in the beginning.

At one moment (if they came to it by way of Saint John) their ship is
bucking the Fundy tide, reaching in to what looks like a solid line of
tree-covered hills. Then the vessel runs right into these hills, and the
high bluffs are almost like mountain ranges leaping up from still water
on either side. The heave of the Fundy subsides, the Gut is navigated,
and a broad expanse like an inland lake spreads out in a curve for
twenty-five miles ahead, infinitely graceful, its edges shaped and
bending like an oyster shell up toward Annapolis.

In the bay curving off to the right lies Digby with the weather vanes of
its churches flashing in the early sun. There is a faint smell of raw
lumber, the clean odor of drying fish, a soft beat from a fisherman’s
engine. Here is the oldest settled region in the eastern part of the
continent, but there is no evidence of age or weariness. Rather has the
world suddenly shed its centuries in this spot, and grown young again.

Digby is a small, shy little town with a happy expression on its face
and an air of minding its own business. Its buildings lie half-concealed
on the slopes of the hills that form the northern extremity of Digby
Neck, their colors muted, their shapes unassuming, their outlines
blurred by trees. One senses that human beings must live and work here,
but the piers where the sturdy white boats from Saint John tie up twice
each day might be at the edge of nowhere for all the evidence Digby
gives of welcome or farewell.

If it gave the matter any thought, this would be a town with a complex;
for it is the Cinderella of the famous Annapolis Valley. True, it isn’t
actually in the valley; but it sits by the back door. Other towns in
this part of Nova Scotia have no doubt of their charms and attractions,
no lack of care for their history, and no dearth of ready information
for seekers of material to put into historical novels. They all wait
with confidence for the coming of the tourist and his promised
attentions, while Digby works in the kitchen, shrinking from the public
eye.

The hush that seems to lie over this little settlement as one approaches
on the steamer is only a cover-up for faithful work going on beyond the
sight of the traveler, who usually makes his way out of town in haste.
It could tell stories about itself that would attract anyone’s
attention, but it never does. For instance . . .

Cockleshells are scalloped because ridges radiate from their hinge, and
the animal that lives inside them has a muscular foot which he uses to
dig himself into the mud or sand below the surface of the sea. He also
has a muscle to draw the two halves of his beautiful shell together.
That muscle isn’t scalloped, but we call it scallops; and we think it is
good to eat, which is more than the people do who dig it up. They
doubtless think much more of the shell, which was once upon a time worn
on the hats of pilgrims in Europe who managed to show by this insignia
that they had visited the shrine of St. James in Spain.

For Digby is the base of the largest scallop fleet in the world, and you
won’t find any billboards around to tell you so. Last year this fleet
took in over two hundred thousand gallons of scallops from the floor of
the Bay of Fundy, which happened to be a major portion of all the
scallops that were cooked and served in a year in restaurants from
Longchamps to the Brown Derbys. Finnan haddie is sent out from here to
the world, too, and smoked herring; but there’s little of the smell of
fish curing about the place, considering the extent of the industry.

Sometimes you can get a whiff of raw lumber around the docks because
thousands of crates and boxes are put together in the vicinity, but
there is no sound of saws or pounding. The stillness that hovers over
Digby is worthy of a hospital ward, and the lack of self-advertising by
way of posters and signs fools practically everyone who encounters it
for the first time into believing that nothing of interest could ever
happen here.

It was back in June of the year 1604 that three excitable and
venturesome Frenchmen gave orders to turn their ship through the Gut in
order to see what lay beyond. So far as we know they were the first
white men to lay eyes on the place, and unquestionably they found it
good. They had heard about this continent, of course, before they
arrived, because John Cabot and his son Sebastian had both seen it, and
Columbus had established beyond a doubt that it was more than a dream.
Now these three had been instructed by their king, Henry IV, to
establish a colony in order that he might claim this new world in the
name of France.

Unless we are students of history who can always manage to see the
present as a moment in time, a unit in an endless process, it is an
effort to realize fully what it must have been like in Europe during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when it first became known that over
beyond what had been thought to be the edge of the world there lay a
strange, new, and wonderful continent—not the India and China that
explorers thought they were going to find when they chanced upon it, but
islands and mainlands and rivers and mountains and endless valleys
filled with strange animals and plants, and brown-skinned men who were
called Indians anyway. None of them could guess how much there was of
this new continent, but they did recognize that not only was it
promising of wealth and hidden riches and a livelihood for many people
but everything about it was on a large and expansive scale, and it was
newborn for civilization and adventure.

Think what it must have been like to be one of those discoverers and see
for the first time even a small portion of this strange part of a
suddenly enlarged world, to sail up one of its beautiful rivers in the
early summer and realize the possibilities here for escape and a new way
of life. Or did they think only of gold and silver and temporal power,
as our school texts would have us believe? Think, too, of the
difficulties these men faced when they returned to their countries in
Europe and tried to describe this new continent in terms that anyone
over there would believe. No daily press to hammer it home in headlines;
no _Life_ to tell it with final authority in pictures; no radio to smear
its charms over daily affairs like cake icing on porridge.

How this continent was regarded by the kings of Europe may seem stale
and unimportant history today because we do not wish to remember the
circumstances and decisions which affected the colonization of our
hemisphere before the American Revolution. In Canada racial memories of
the people go far back, and with good reason, for the struggles of those
long years have left the Dominion with two principal races and two main
traditions that are still in many important respects disunited. But in
the United States we are chiefly ignorant of the facts because we have
never even been introduced to them.

Not a single monarch of Europe, in the days of the great explorers, felt
safe. No peoples felt safe, for that matter. In the thirteenth century
the kingdom of the Khans had rolled into Europe’s back door, presenting
these old countries with a prospect of the same mass murders and
destruction that had turned the Garden of Eden into the desert of
Mesopotamia—presenting them, need it be added, with a prospect not too
unlike that facing the peoples of Europe today. Constantinople, the
pillar of Christendom and the last survivor of the classical states, had
been crushed by the Infidels.

Then in the latter half of the fifteenth century the tide had
turned—Christendom had rallied against the Infidel and driven him from
Spain. The power of Castile rose, Catholic and august but tainted with
much of the refined cruelty engendered by its long contest with the
Moors. And then Columbus made his first great voyage, and the face of
Europe was lifted. Spain and Portugal consciously regarded themselves as
emissaries of the Catholic faith and the Christian religion, and in
their domination of Europe they got a start of more than fifty years
over their rivals in the great surge of colonization of the new
continent. Like all pioneers they set the style and pattern of entry
into the new world, which took the form not merely of looting but also
of the conversion of human souls to the church militant on this earth.
It was accident only, not choice, which sent them south in the Western
hemisphere.

The part of this development most vitally to affect North America above
the Rio Grande, most vitally and permanently to affect Canada, was the
Reformation and Counterreformation. When the kings of Europe found their
civilizations shaken by the inroads of barbarians in the centuries just
past, their thrones compromised by a primitive form of communism which
broke out sporadically all over Europe after the pestilence which swept
it, they looked to the new world with one thought in mind. There might
be found gold and silver, and there certainly were valuable furs. If
these could be brought back in quantity, they would be tangible wealth
which would enable them to lessen taxes and stay the threat of
revolution.

So the discovery of the Western hemisphere served as a monkey gland to
the old feudal monarchies, perpetuating that of Spain even into the
twentieth century. It also shifted the battleground between Catholic and
Protestant to the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers. When
the monarchs of England, Spain, Holland, and France called on their best
explorers and most courageous warriors and sent them off to plant their
country’s flag in a prominent place in this new world, with orders to
claim everything in sight, it happened that each group hit a different
spot. Some were more successful than others; but from the beginning the
two strongest groups and greatest rivals were those of France and
England, though their first settlements were as far apart as Nova Scotia
and the James River in Virginia.

It was Sieur de Monts, a nobleman in the French court of Henry IV, who
was in command of the ship that sailed through Digby Gut that June day
in 1604. He had been given a monopoly of the fur trade to pay him for
establishing a fort; and his two lieutenants were another nobleman,
Baron Poutrincourt, and a French soldier named Samuel de Champlain, who
had already been exploring in this new country as far as the rapids in
the St. Lawrence beyond Montreal. Baron Poutrincourt wanted to settle
here on the shore of this quiet blue basin, but de Monts decided to go
on to an island in the mouth of the St. Croix River between what we know
as New Brunswick and Maine; and so they turned about and went out
through the Gut, and down the Bay of Fundy.

A year later they were back again, however, and this time Poutrincourt
had his way. A French habitation, which they called Granville, was built
on the north shore of the Basin at a spot approximately opposite where
Digby is today, and more boatloads of Frenchmen, and women too, came out
to help build a permanent colony. Champlain made it his headquarters
between frequent voyages of exploration down the coast as far as
Martha’s Vineyard, and everyone concerned seemed to think they had done
well; for the shores of this basin provided an abundance of game, wild
berries, and a plenitude of fish, and the weather was milder than anyone
had hoped to find it. No wonder Acadie, as they called it, still sounds
to us like a humbler name for paradise.

De Monts returned to France to report to his sovereign and discovered
when he reached Paris that the monopoly of the fur trade had been taken
from him. So that was the end of de Monts as far as the history texts
are concerned. The Baron stayed with the habitation in Acadie and moved
it a few miles to a better location, and he called the new settlement
Port Royal. Champlain was restless; so he took those members of the
group with itching soles on another trip of exploration, and they
founded a permanent settlement at Quebec.

Today all of us know the name of Champlain, and comparatively nobody has
ever heard the names of the other two-thirds of the original trio—which
raises the question as to what is most likely to insure historical
perpetuity. If fame rests upon a body of work, rather than upon a single
exploit, it would account for Champlain’s ability to perpetuate his
renown—not that he thought much about it at the time, I’m convinced,
for exploration was to him an end in itself as well as a lifework.
Perhaps personality, too, finds its way through the records of time,
disguised by an accumulation of facts and dates.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Charles de Saint-Etienne de La Tour was brought to Acadie by his
Huguenot father in 1610 when he was fourteen years old. Though he had
previously been nowhere else in his life but Evreux in Normandy, he
found this strange new place filled with everything a boy of the
seventeenth century could want and Normandy rapidly took a fade-out in
his memory. The queer brown men who lived in the forests of the new
world grunted and made signs with their hands and taught him eventually
to speak their language. They also taught him how to trap lynx and
beavers and mink, which were dutifully sent back to the King of France.

When he was seventeen his father left the settlement of Port Royal to go
on an errand for his friend the Baron, in an attempt to establish
another trading post at the mouth of the Penobscot River. And one
morning a few weeks later a British ship from Virginia sailed in through
the Gut and without warning turned her guns full on the fort and then
sailed away again. Her captain, Samuel Argall, was satisfied that no
building was left standing and no Frenchman left alive.

But Charles de La Tour and his best friend, Poutrincourt’s son
Biencourt, had been making the rounds of their trap lines in the forest
after spending the night as they usually did with Indian friends. When
an Indian runner brought them word of the invasion they had no way of
knowing why an Englishman felt that a colony of Frenchmen as far away as
a thousand miles from the James River in Virginia was inimical to his
welfare, but they did realize they had been left in Acadie in command of
their king’s trust.

For seven years they lived with the Indians, learning how to obtain food
no matter where they were in the forests, how to clothe themselves with
native furs and skins, how to use their hands with dexterity. Charles
sent word to his father by Indian grapevine, and after a year a message
came back telling him that his father would bring help as soon as he
could. When a fishing vessel called at their Indian encampment on the
Basin one day in 1621, Biencourt bargained with the fishermen to take
him back to France; but before he left he made a small ceremony in which
he bequeathed all his property and his rights in Acadie to La Tour, for
Charles refused to go with him.

Six years later Charles’ father reached France, told the King his story,
and enlisted help and arms for the refounding and defense of Acadie. But
on the way back his ship was captured by the English and he was taken to
London, where he seems to have shown that he was quite a man; for
records have it that he ingratiated himself at court and married one of
the French maids of honor in the service of the Queen.

It was in London that he heard how Sir William Alexander, a Scottish
favorite at the court, who thought it would be a fine thing to start a
New Scotland as well as a New France and a New England in North America,
had been granted the whole of Acadia out of which to fashion his Nova
Scotia. He had also been granted a royal coat of arms and a flag to go
with it by King James I of England and VI of Scotland, who based his
claim to this territory upon Cabot’s discoveries. Certain individuals
were being given the title of Baronet of Nova Scotia in conjunction with
grants of land on this far continent they had never seen and never would
see; and among these new Baronets was the elder La Tour, who also
managed to convince the King that his son in Acadie should be given a
title, too.

Finally a ship set off for Nova Scotia with seventy Scottish settlers
and La Tour among them, prepared to rebuild a fort on the ashes of Port
Royal. By now Charles was well established in his role of governor of
the territory left him by Biencourt. He had established himself in a
settlement across the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the Saint John River,
where he carried on an extensive trade with various tribes of Indians as
far south as the Massachusetts Colony.

When they met at last after many years, Charles’ father discovered to
his chagrin that his son had no intention either of accepting the
baronetcy or of changing his allegiance from France to England. And
while they argued, with the Scottish colony scarcely under way, King
James died, and his successor, King Charles, took so little interest in
his father’s plans that he relinquished any claim of England to Acadie
(or Nova Scotia) and turned it all back to France again. He forgot to
rescind the royal flag and coat of arms, though, and Nova Scotia has
kept them to this day.

The King of France, finding himself with a territory in Acadie again (he
had never relinquished command of the lands along the St. Lawrence
River), sent out a new governor, a man called Rasily, who took with him
his cousin, Charles de Charnisay, Seigneur d’Aulnay, a good Catholic.
When word sailed back to Louis XIII that one of his loyal subjects,
Charles de La Tour, had turned down an English title, and had not only
refused to transfer his allegiance to England to please his father but
had reconverted said father as a faithful servant of France, the King
rewarded him with the lieutenant-governorship of Acadie, to serve under
Rasily. He was also rewarded with a wife, a pretty young thing who had
been sent out to serve France in just such a way.

The governor, Rasily, lived at Port Royal on the Basin, and his
lieutenant, La Tour, remained at his fort on the Saint John River across
the Bay of Fundy until Rasily died. Then a long and bitter feud began.
De Charnisay claimed that he had the right to succeed his cousin,
because Rasily had so appointed him. La Tour replied that he represented
the King by direct appointment. And all the while the King seems to have
said nothing, doubtless having lost interest in New France for the time
being.

De Charnisay came of an old family of Touraine, and his wife was the
daughter of the Seigneur de Courcelles. They lived at Port Royal in a
fashion which suited their idea of governorship, so far as the
wilderness allowed them comfort and luxury, and in time they acquired a
degree of wealth, as well as seven children. De Charnisay was highhanded
and autocratic to a degree in the use of his self-appointed power,
employing slave labor to build his forts and carry out a system of
dikes; but his people were grateful for the dikes because they held the
tides in check and turned the whole valley into fertile farmlands.

In 1645 de Charnisay took advantage of information he had received that
La Tour was off on a trading expedition. He had already made several
unsuccessful attacks on his rival, but he crossed the bay once more and
this time pillaged Fort Saint John. There were only fifty men in the
fort to defend it and they put up a fine fight, led by the heroic
resistance of Madame La Tour, whom they adored. But de Charnisay killed
every man of them, and Madame La Tour died within three weeks. Saint
John is still proud of her.

When Charles de La Tour heard what had happened he realized it would be
useless to return to Fort Saint John without sufficient strength to put
de Charnisay out; and since he didn’t have that much help he went to
Quebec instead, and then on to Hudson’s Bay, supporting himself by
trading with the Indians. And that left de Charnisay with unlimited
power in Acadie. His triumph lasted only five years, however, for in
1650 the canoe in which he was paddling down the Annapolis River upset
and he was drowned.

You may be sure La Tour heard about it, though it remains a wonder to us
how messages reached so far and so much managed to be done in such a
short time, considering the limited means of communication and
transportation available in those days. As soon as the news reached La
Tour—probably up in the frozen wastes of northern Quebec—he dropped
whatever he was doing and set off for France. This time he intended to
get a signed and sealed appointment as Governor of Acadie from the King,
and no nonsense about it; for it was his country and no one understood
it so well or had a better right to govern it.

In 1653—he must have been nearly fifty-eight by then—La Tour was back
in Acadie in full control, and nobody disputed his word. I suppose he
paid his respects to the widow of the Seigneur de Charnisay, or maybe he
merely happened to run across her in Port Royal when he was making a
tour of inspection. But anyway he married her, with a duly authenticated
contract which can be found in the provincial archives, and took all her
minor children under his care. Eventually he gave her one more child.

Then in 1654, only a year after his return from France, the British took
Acadie. As though someone with a nose for news had broadcast his story,
Cromwell heard about La Tour and his deeds of merit. He was permitted to
retain his post as Governor of Acadie, and Cromwell gave him a grant of
land and an official pat on the shoulder.

In 1666 Charles de Saint-Etienne de La Tour died at Fort Saint John. No
one has thought to call him the first true Nova Scotian, but there is no
doubt about it—he was.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Within a hundred years Acadia changed hands and flags eight times. It
seems a silly business in retrospect, for the British kept on spending
ammunition and men to capture the peninsula, and no sooner was it done
than someone at a peace conference in one of the capitals of Europe
handed it back to France again. France wanted it to make Quebec and the
St. Lawrence safe, but no one in authority in Paris had sufficient
foresight to realize that they must also make Acadia safe if they were
to hold Quebec. Instead, all this territory, which included Maine, New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, was handed back and
forth for over a century as a pawn in peace treaties, or in exchange for
juicier bits of land elsewhere.

At no interval of its incumbency did the French government interest
itself in the welfare of this little settlement in the Annapolis Valley.
A succession of kings grew disgusted because the gentlemen-adventurers
sent out to the new world failed to find gold or silver, and thus small
official notice was given to the fights that took place for possession
of this lovely bit of land. The riches promised by Quebec were more
tangible, the opportunity for conversion of Indians to the Catholic
faith was greater among the inland tribes, and strong fortifications
could be built on Cap Diamond for the protection of the St. Lawrence.

Thus the seesaw continued. In 1632 Acadia was given by treaty to France,
in 1654 it was captured by England, in 1667 it was restored to France,
in 1690 Port Royal was captured by the English again, and in 1697 the
French were once more in control. By this time they had seen the wisdom
of guarding Acadia from all approaches, and a tremendous bastion had
been started at Louisburg in Cape Breton (then called Isle Royale) to
defend the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Fort Beauséjour was also built on
the Chignecto Isthmus to supplement Port Royal.

But in 1710 Port Royal was once more captured by the British and this
time it was renamed Annapolis Royal to honor the sovereign British
queen. At the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 France formally relinquished all
claim to Acadia but withheld Isle Royale, believing that the great
fortress of Louisburg, into which they eventually put the equivalent of
ten million dollars (in modern terms probably nearer a billion), would
make the St. Lawrence River safe for all time.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Officer’s Quarters, Annapolis Royal]

I find it difficult to believe that Annapolis Royal looked very
different in those days from the way we find it today. In detail there
were differences, of course. A garrison of British soldiers was
stationed at Fort Anne and their scarlet coats and tricorne hats must
have made even the Indians envious. There are no soldiers at Fort Anne
now, and haven’t been for a hundred years; but the old building in which
officers of the fort were quartered has been restored on its original
lines, and it remains one of the most satisfying examples of Georgian
architecture, adapted to a locality and a particular use, to be found
anywhere in North America. Remnants of the powder magazines, ramparts,
and bastions are all there, too, and it takes only a modicum of
imagination to hear regimental bands playing for the changing of the
guard and to see how military boots wore grooves in the paths and walks
inside the walls of the fort.

For nearly a hundred miles the Annapolis Valley runs between old Fort
Anne and Windsor, broadening out to a width of ten miles between the
North and South Mountains. South Mountain is the provincial spine; North
Mountain, higher and sharper in outline of the two, begins at Digby Gut
and ranges northward to end in the splendid bluff of Cape Blomidon on
Minas Basin. The Annapolis River flows westward through the valley, and
four smaller streams—the Gaspereau, Cornwallis, Canard, and Habitant,
the first two giving their names to a pair of subsidiary
intervales—flow east to empty into Minas Basin. Except at the outlets
of these rivers there is no access from the sea, for North Mountain is
an impenetrable wall against the winds and the voracious Fundy tides.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this valley, as it is today,
was clearly defined and self-contained; and it was then, as now, one of
the richest valleys in game, pasturage, and growing possibilities east
of the American Middle West. At the time the English took final control
here they found about 2,500 Acadians living in two sections, one at Port
Royal and one at the other end of the valley in the group of
villages—located on the four small rivers—which the French called Les
Mines and the English promptly changed to Minas.

In less than a century this handful of Acadians had turned a wilderness
into a valley of beauty and fruitfulness; forests had been cut back to
the foot of the hills, devastating tides that swept up the rivers and
sucked down again had been diked and controlled to make rolling meadows
and farmlands, willows had been planted along the roads to look like
remembered Brittany and Normandy, and apple orchards had been nurtured
to full fruitage. Roots of a people as well as roots of fruit trees had
gone deep into the soil of this beneficent land.

After the English came, the valley was seldom free of raiding pirates,
moral scandals that recalled officers across the seas, and potential
heartbreak attendant upon the proximity of two clashing racial
temperaments; but it mattered little to the Acadians, for Frenchmen have
always loved the land they work better than abstract ideas. Their houses
were simple but adequate, with steep roofs and dormer windows and doors
generously spaced. Their fields ran in narrow strips from diked rivers
to the foot of wooded hills, and each farmer owned a sufficient number
of cows, pigs, horses, and fowl not only to meet his own needs but also
to help supply the garrison.

“And now,” the Acadians were told by the English officer who took
command of Fort Anne in 1713, “you are at liberty to remove yourselves
and all your effects within one year, selling your lands and your
estates if you choose; or you may remain. But if you choose to stay, it
must be as subjects of Great Britain; and to that end you must swear
allegiance to our king.”

Being as stubborn, practical, and logical as all Frenchmen, these
Acadians saw no reason for choosing either alternative. Selling their
lands and estates was a patently absurd proposition. For who was there
to buy? Giving lip service to a British king was the last thing they
intended to do, even though it would have meant then—as it might have
done two hundred and twenty-seven years later—the hope of keeping
rather than losing everything they possessed, including their unity and
integrity.

They sent a deputation to Louisburg to sound out the possibilities of
removing themselves to Isle Royale; but when the deputation returned
with word that the soil up there was vastly inferior to their own farms,
they said no—and continued on their stolid way in the Annapolis Valley
as they had done for a hundred years, growing and multiplying and
supplying the garrison at Fort Anne with fresh food. And nothing more
was said about the matter. The English suddenly became very busy
establishing themselves firmly on this peninsula in order to undertake a
further broadening of their boundaries, and for the time being the
Acadians were necessary to them.

In 1745 the British sailed off to Isle Royale and took the bastion of
Louisburg. Three years later it was restored to France by the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in exchange for Madras, India. But in 1755 it was taken
once again by Amherst and Boscawen, and this time the British spent six
months leveling it to the ground. That was the year the Seven Years’ War
began in Europe (called the French and Indian Wars in North America),
and new commanding officers were sent to Fort Anne, and new policies
were put into effect. Then it was discovered that the number of Acadians
living in the Annapolis Valley had increased to 10,000 in less than
thirty years, and they had been supplying not only the garrison at Fort
Anne but also the French troops at Louisburg and Fort Beauséjour.
Moreover, they had been following the advice of a wandering priest who
seems to have been motivated chiefly by hatred of the English and a
desire to see his people make as much trouble as possible for their
conquerors. As new English governors succeeded old ones, bitterness
between the two races increased and grudges began to multiply on both
sides like rabbits in May.

It remains an unaccountable fact that a New England poet who never
visited Acadia, never knew how the winds blow sweetly over Grand Pré,
never saw the purple shadows of Blomidon against a Fundy sunset, was yet
able to make this “great meadow” a scene familiar to the world in his
story of the expulsion of the Acadians. _Evangeline_, with its strong
bias against the English, has come to be considered truth, and a history
text which disagrees with Longfellow’s version is scarcely given
credence.

Through the lines of this poem we know how families were deliberately
separated when six thousand of the Acadians were forced onto transports
in 1755 and shipped off to various of the American colonies, how in some
American ports the ships were not allowed to land, how thousands died on
the way, how one ship went off its course and was driven by a storm to
San Domingo, and how—when one more peace treaty was signed between
England and France in 1763—bands of these destitute Acadians started
back on foot for Nova Scotia.

It sounds a cruel and needless procedure to us today, especially in the
light of a fact which Longfellow either did not know or intentionally
omitted from his narrative. For decades the British government in London
had tried to exact just treatment for the Acadians from their local
governors; but the Atlantic was wider in those days than it is now, and
England was occupied at home with wars and uprisings which seemed more
serious than anything that could possibly happen in North America.

New Englanders were the chief motivating force behind the final decision
to expel the Acadians, for they wanted the French out before they
proceeded with their own plans for revolution. When British troops were
finally sent into the Annapolis Valley to round up the Acadians and put
them forcibly aboard the ships that waited for them, the action was
taken solely on the authority of the British governor in Nova Scotia,
backed strongly by the insistence of Governor Shirley of Massachusetts.
A few days after the boats had sailed at high tide from the mouth of the
Gaspereau River orders arrived at Fort Anne from London forbidding this
action, but no one seems to have considered it necessary to send the
boatloads back once they were under sail.

Today there is scarcely a descendant of the original French settlers to
be found in the whole Annapolis Valley. Thousands of the banished
Acadians (335 families, we are told) walked overland from Boston in the
summer of 1768 in order to return to their beloved Acadie. But when they
reached the Annapolis Valley, after months and years of hardship and
suffering, they found their houses had been burned to the ground and
their lands taken over by New Englanders who had been induced to come
here by British authorities because the soldiers in Fort Anne were in
need of food and someone to grow it for them.

The Acadians trudged on from village to village, finding all but one of
their churches destroyed, only one of their fine wells still in use,
their lands occupied, and their cattle and house pets dead long ago. It
was obvious there was no place for them here. So they began to look for
a part of the province not wanted by anyone else, and eventually they
found it on the hard shore of St. Mary Bay. Some of them went farther
south to Pubnico Harbour to join the thousand or so Acadians who had
managed to escape by hiding in the woods when the English soldiers came
for them. These districts are the only parts of Nova Scotia (with the
exception of Isle Madame and Cheticamp in Cape Breton, settled by the
French from Louisburg) where Evangeline’s people have managed to get a
meager living from the earth and build their bleak churches and maintain
their own customs and language. The dikes their forefathers built and
maintained with so much skill have never been entirely rebuilt, their
one remaining church stands a monument rather than a sanctuary, and
their storage-cellar excavations are open to the sky. Only the willows
they planted along the roads and some of their first apple trees are
still alive and growing, to bear witness to a way of life and a point of
view that have disappeared from the province as surely as though they
had never been.

The delicate pink and white foam of the valley orchards in bloom is like
a glorified natural bubble bath, evanescent and perfumed with a scent no
manufacturer has been able to imitate with accuracy. Once upon a May
morning I walked along a narrow road up the slope of South Mountain,
forgetting the moment for thinking of these things I have been relating.
When I reached a turn in the road I stopped to look back over the way I
had come. Below me the blossoming fruit trees billowed away in waves of
palest pink, like dawn-tinged clouds lying in a morning valley in
Switzerland. And across the wide floor of this valley, out beyond the
ridge of North Mountain, the blue waters of the restless Fundy lent
their color to complete the backdrop. It was one of those moments when
the presence of paints and brushes and canvas—and the skill to use
them—seems imperative. And yet had I been an artist I should have known
better than to try to capture the quality of that apple-blossom mood. A
reproduction of reality would have been too rich for the human mind to
credit.

Perhaps because of its very sufficiency and insulated peace, after those
hundred and fifty years of trouble, the Annapolis Valley is today less
an integral part of the province, less a force in its passions and
hopes, than any other section. It is old and tired and beautiful, and
the rest of Nova Scotia is still too young, too conscious of a challenge
yet to be met, to care.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The white balls arched back and forth across the court—ping, pung . . .
deuce, game, set—and a half-beat of applause broke under the
late-August sun. The annual Maritime Tennis Tournament was occupying the
courts at Wolfville, and the quiet old streets of the town were
corridors for the voices of tireless young players. Friendships held
over from tournaments of other years were being renewed and enlarged
between games, and the talk in changing rooms was interwoven with
comments on form, lobs, new strings, forehand drives, and where was
so-and-so this year.

The muffled thump of feet dressed in rubber-soled shoes without heels
passed back and forth over the wooden floor of the clubhouse. Whenever a
new step was heard, players in various degrees of undress called out
from behind half-open doors, “How’s the last match going . . . has
Oxford changed him?” And the answers came back, “He’s better than ever
. . . it’ll be the singles for him again this year.”

[Illustration: _Mary Van Nest_

Evangeline Willows, Acadia National Park]

Groups of players were making a pattern of white patches against the
brown walls of the porch when he came in with his opponent, both still
too much exhilarated to feel exhaustion. He accepted their “nice game
. . . see you in my room tonight for beer” with half-shy acknowledgment,
as Nova Scotians do; for they recognize that warmth in the greetings of
friends is not measured by gestures, tones of voice, or the number of
words used. These were mostly old friends, and they all liked one
another, so—also as a Nova Scotian—he saw no reason for taking their
congratulations as a personal honor.

Tennis was a game he had learned to play the way he had done everything
else so far in life, earnestly, intently, with a style that was the
stamp of his personality. It had taken hard work because there were no
young men of championship quality playing tennis in Nova Scotia when he
grew up—they had mostly been killed in France. He had learned from
books, and continued to remember, there was no time or place for
learning to end. Thus he seemed to himself no better than everyone else
who had also worked hard to acquire a skill.

It was good to hear the familiar quality of their eastern Canadian
voices again that evening after dinner when they crowded together in one
hotel room to talk over what had happened since the last time they had
met this way. Once he had been one of the very youngest at these
tournaments, respectful and eager and quiet. Now there were other
youngsters coming to take his place, but the old friends were here, too,
for whom the comradeship of this one week in each year meant quite as
much as the physical exercise involved.

“This is a hell of a hole,” broke in a new man from Toronto. “What ever
happens in Wolfville besides Acadia College? . . . And even that’s
closed now.”

“It’s a bit dull if you’re from the big cities,” said a lean Scotsman
from Sydney. “There’s a picture down the street, if you haven’t seen it
already. But not a night club east of Montreal.”

“Well, look . . .” said the man from Toronto. “You people have better
tournaments than anyone else in Canada. That’s why so many of us from
Quebec and Ontario always come to them. But why don’t you take the
trouble to have some entertainment at night, the way we do?”

“In Ontario?” The Scotsman’s smile was confined to his eyes. “What, for
instance, would you be thinking of? They’re mostly baptists here in the
valley, but we’ll accommodate you if we can.”

“Oh, hell . . . skip it. You couldn’t even work up a game of poker in
this crowd.”

Nobody else said anything as the Scotsman looked around the room. “Oh, I
don’t know. Baptists play cards sometimes,” he said. “Though it may not
be your kind of a game. We’ve got a couple of deacons around somewhere.
I think maybe we can fix a game, if that’s what you want.”

The young man from Oxford said no thanks to a group that had decided to
drive down the valley; and after they were gone he slipped out
unnoticed, while four men sat down with the Torontonian around a cleared
table.

The streets were still in the late summer twilight and he walked quickly
in the shadows of high old trees to reach the hills, meeting no one he
knew on the way. It was a rare evening for Nova Scotia, without a breeze
and without a drop in temperature after the disappearance of the sun. He
reached the summit of a knoll and dropped down on the sweet-smelling
grass, letting his muscles and his nerves relax slowly.

From this height the town was only a blur of dark roofs among the elms
and maples, hardly a smudge on the wider scene. The western sky was
still burning, and the waters of Minas Basin caught its excitement and
washed the same colors around the base of Cape Blomidon, dark and
angular as the amethysts quarried from its flanks. He thought of other
evenings he had spent alone like this during the past three years . . .
once on the Acropolis when the sunset proved that Athens really had a
violet crown, often at Lerici, and again along the coast of Dalmatia, in
Baden, on the Seine, north of the Tweed. More recently still, on the
Atlantic. Some of those places in the old world had been dramatic; all
of them had been exciting to a boy who had never been away from home
until he was twenty-two; but this was Nova Scotia . . . besides being
home, it was the loveliest of them all.

He thought about the peculiarities and attributes of his own province,
seen now in new perspective. It was British by tradition without being
English at all; it was Scottish by nature but unobtrusively, for all its
inner-burning pride; it was Canadian by politics, though not by
economics. Perhaps it was so universally misunderstood because it fit no
easy categories. Physically it was unlike the rest of the eastern
seaboard of the continent; for it was glorified by thought-destroying
sunsets across water, facing westward as it did across the Bay of Fundy.
Even Italy could produce nothing better in the way of color . . . though
Italian architecture was unquestionably more in harmony with nature than
was Nova Scotia’s.

But it was idle to think of those tired old countries now. The
future—both his own and the world’s—lay here. Someone had asked him
this morning if he had wanted to stay in England. No, three years at
Oxford were enough; they had fostered a sense of direction; they had
taught him discipline and the strength of tempered freedom. But Nova
Scotia was where he belonged, even though he must leave it again, as so
many others had done, to find a more useful place for himself in the
wider affairs of men.

With economic depression talked and felt and realized by nearly every
human being in the universe, what now? He’d picked a fine time to come
down! Colleges and universities were still grinding out engineers,
scientists, and teachers; but those with jobs were holding on, and new
positions were not opening for untrained men. Should he change his
course, after going this far? A teaching post had been his aim, to give
ballast until his efforts at individual creation had reached fruition,
and two of the best universities in the United States had each offered
him a fellowship. Better make a choice soon, for there was still a
doctorate of philosophy to be won in order to put the accepted seal on
his work, one more step in the academic hierarchy, one more link in the
set pattern of higher education which bound the profession of teaching
as strictly as though it involved the taking of divine orders.

That would mean at least another two years in a graduate school. But how
else ride the depression? If he hoped to live and work in the United
States, better do graduate work there in preference to a Canadian
university. It seemed a country close and yet immeasurably far away. He
had traveled across Europe and back, but never once had he crossed even
into Maine. The thought of its promises, its vitality, and its
potentialities for a student of history fashioned his choice before his
reason agreed. One of the two universities had offered him an
opportunity to teach in conjunction with the fellowship. Let that settle
it then . . . to the States, and back to the academic cloisters, in
September.

The last shreds of color had faded into the night-blue sky, and still no
breath of air stirred. Bats began to make swooping dives out of the
forest behind him. Tomorrow there would be a match in the morning, and
then five sets of singles for the finals in the afternoon. He would be
alone on his half of the sunny court, unaware of the spectators, unaware
of the girls in their starched white skirts showing brown knees,
thinking only of the man across the net—an opponent who enjoyed this
game as much as he, but a mind nevertheless which he must measure,
estimate, and then try to beat.

Winning was better than losing, because it meant going forward instead
of back; but the game was always more than its decision, and trophies at
the end of the tournament seemed meaningless because of their inability
to hold what they were meant to represent. He got up and walked
noiselessly back through the darkened town.

When he reached the same hotel room he had left two hours before, the
game was still in progress and for a while he watched from the shadows
in the far end of the room. The only sounds were the clink of colored
chips, the shuffling of cards, and voices saying in muttered tones,
“Beat a pair of aces . . . double ante . . . jack-high straight . . .
count me out . . . spade flush . . . your pot.”

When it became evident that the Torontonian was well on his surprised
but inevitable way to the cleaners, he slipped out again unnoticed,
laughing to himself.


                                ROUTE 1

    _Yarmouth_ . . . see Chapter VI.

    _Hebron_ . . . this is a dairying and fishing district, noted
    for its pure-bred Guernsey and Jersey cattle.

    _Port Maitland_ . . . home of a fine shore fishing fleet and the
    center of large commercial dairy farms. _Meteghan_ . . . (see
    Chapter VII for pronunciation). Shipbuilding yards are operated
    here, and at the moment they are flourishing. There are also two
    woodworking factories and several lobster canneries.

    _Saulnierville_ . . . this is a dairying and poultry-raising
    district. Lobster fishing is also carried on extensively. Across
    St. Mary Bay can be seen the spear of Digby Neck and the two
    islands which elongate it.

    _Church Point_ . . . if it seems important, St. Mary’s Church is
    said to be the largest wooden church in Canada.

    _Grosses Coques_ . . . aside from dairying, cattle raising, and
    farming, lumbering and fox ranching are also carried on here.
    Oh, yes . . . and digging for clams.

    _Belliveau Cove_ . . . first settlement in the Clare district.
    An old Acadian cemetery, set apart as a burying ground in 1769,
    is in the vicinity.

    _St. Bernard_ . . . nothing here seems important in comparison
    with the enormity of the stone church still in process of
    completion. It makes the houses of the parishioners seem mean by
    comparison.

    _Digby_ . . . population 1,412. Canadian Pacific Steamship
    _Princess Helene_ makes daily trips (except Sunday) between this
    port and Saint John, New Brunswick, carrying cars at one-way
    rates from $8.00 to $12.00, according to size. Passengers $4.00
    round trip. Leaves Saint John 7:00 A.M., arrives Digby 10:00
    A.M.; leaves Digby 3:00 P.M., arrives Saint John 6:00 P.M. Cars
    must be delivered to wharf one hour before sailing.

    Thomas Alva Edison’s father was born here, grandson of a
    Loyalist refugee from New Jersey in 1783.

    _Pines Hotel._

    _Bear River_ . . . four miles off Route 1. Fishing and hunting
    parties are outfitted here. Cherry festival held during third
    week of July. Micmac Indian reservation in the vicinity, one of
    forty-seven in the province. Micmacs are of Algonquin stock.
    There are 2,157 left in Nova Scotia today.

    _River View Lodge._

    _Clementsport_ . . . sand beaches. Quantities of clams exported
    from here. A landmark of wide interest is the old Loyalist
    Church of St. Edward, consecrated in 1788. Its architecture is
    Norman and its doors have handmade hinges and nails. Plaster on
    the walls was made from burned clamshells and it remains too
    hard to pierce with a nail. Many local relics are housed in the
    church.

    _Annapolis Royal_ . . . population 900. Fort Anne Historic Park
    extends over twenty-eight acres and surrounds old Fort Anne. It
    changed hands eight times before 1709, and during that winter
    three privateers who had captured fifty-five vessels out of
    Boston the previous summer sheltered in the town. A force from
    New England captured the fort once more in 1710 and carried the
    key back to Boston, where it remained until 1922, when it was
    returned by the Massachusetts Historical Society and placed in
    the Fort Anne Museum.

    Since 1854 no garrison has been maintained here; but the
    bastions, ramparts, powder magazine, and revelins remain as they
    were, and the museum is housed in the officers’ quarters.

    _Hillsdale House._

    _Lower Granville_ . . . off Route 1, seven miles from Annapolis
    Royal. This is the oldest permanent white settlement north of
    the Gulf of Mexico. An exact replica of Champlain’s original
    habitation, built in 1605, stands on the site of the first
    buildings. Several old houses in the vicinity still have their
    original iron hinges brought from New England, made in L and H
    shapes to fend off the supposed powers of witchcraft. The first
    apple trees of Nova Scotia were said to have been planted here
    in 1633.

    _Bridgetown_ . . . population 1,126. Manufactured products
    include vinegar, cider, carbonated beverages, apple juice, and
    evaporated apples. You will probably see the name on some of
    your labels at home.

    _Wilmot_ . . . this is only a small, sleepy village now, but it
    was here that many Empire Loyalists settled first when they
    arrived from New York. At least two hundred were Harvard
    graduates and another two hundred were graduates of other
    colleges. The descendants of John Alden and his wife, Priscilla,
    were among them, as well as the Chief Justice of Massachusetts,
    three out of four lesser judges of the Superior Court, and the
    Reverend Charles Inglis, Assistant Rector of Trinity Church in
    New York, who became first Bishop of Nova Scotia. The property
    loss of the Empire Loyalists has been estimated at something
    more than eight million pounds sterling.

    Brigadier General Timothy Ruggles of Boston and Harvard built a
    fine home and a spacious orchard here on the slope of North
    Mountain. His walnut trees may still be seen in the form of
    furniture in use in the valley. In 1815 a large section of this
    country was invaded by mice which ruined field crops to such an
    extent that a famine was threatened. With the approach of winter
    the horde vanished as they had come, and were seen no more. The
    country abounds with tales of colorful individuals and
    never-to-be-forgotten scandals.

    _Aylesford_ . . . center of the apple industry, along with
    Berwick near by. Quantities of cranberries are also grown on the
    bogs in the neighborhood. St. Mary’s Church, built in 1790, has
    walls plastered with powdered musselshells. All the material
    that went into this building, including handmade nails, was
    brought from Halifax. The nails were carried in fifteen-pound
    boxes by soldiers on foot a distance of some ninety miles.

    _KENTVILLE_ . . . population 4,500. Named for the father of
    Queen Victoria, who commanded the military forces in Nova Scotia
    for six years before 1800. It is a railway center, a
    manufacturing town, and the scene of a yearly pageant—the Nova
    Scotia Apple Blossom Festival, held usually the first week in
    June. Three miles away is the former home of Charles Fuller,
    founder of the Fuller Brush Company.

    _Cornwallis Inn._

    _The Lookoff_ . . . ten miles off Route 1, after a turning about
    five miles beyond Kentville, is one of the most beautiful views
    in the whole of Canada. It is high on the edge of Cape Blomidon,
    with the valleys of six rivers spread out below like veins on
    the back of a hand, and Minas Basin a mud-rimmed bowl of blue.
    Far below, like bugs intent on insect business of their own, can
    be seen freighters loading twenty thousand barrels of apples
    apiece, if the season is right. And if the tide is low they seem
    to have been left high and dry at the wharf, with the water far
    beyond them looking as though it would never return.

    Canning, on the road to the Lookoff, was once called Apple Tree
    Landing, and later it was known as Habitant Corner. What a pity
    that a British Prime Minister had to supersede such felicitous
    names.

    _Wolfville_ . . . population 1,818. This is known as the center
    of the Evangeline country. It was named for a Judge DeWolfe who
    settled here from Connecticut, and his home, which is occupied
    by descendants, is noted chiefly because it still sports
    wallpaper presented by the Duke of Kent some hundred and forty
    years ago. Why, do you suppose, did he present wallpaper to this
    house? Elsie DeWolfe is said to be one illustrious member of the
    family.

    Acadia University was founded in 1838. It maintains an
    enrollment of some five hundred students, drawn from the
    Maritime Provinces.

    _Grand Pré_ . . . Longfellow described this “great meadow”
    adequately, though he never saw it. Accordingly, of all the
    onetime Acadian villages in the valley, this is the one best
    known and most often visited by Americans. In Evangeline
    Memorial Park a collection of Acadian relics has been
    established. Even the flowers in the park have their own
    history, including roses from the famous gardens of Orleans. The
    old Church of the Covenanters is worth a visit, to see the
    severity of its lines, its high pulpit, and its queer box pews.
    It was built in 1790 by the New Englanders who moved in here.

    _Grand Pré Inn._

    _Hantsport_ . . . population 704. The center of an extensive
    farming area. Ninety years ago famous clipper ships were built
    here; today there is little to be seen but fruit warehouses and
    factories that manufacture fruit boxes and baskets. It was at
    one time, however, the home of Buckman Pasha, who became a High
    Admiral of the Turkish fleet. It was also the home of one
    William Hall, V.C., the Negro son of a Virginian slave who
    entered the navies of both Great Britain and the United States.
    While serving with conspicuous gallantry at the relief of
    Lucknow in 1857 he earned and was awarded the Victoria Cross.

    _WINDSOR_ . . . population 3,032. At the confluence of the St.
    Croix and Avon rivers. The Fundy tide reaches here in a bore
    which sometimes rises to forty feet, and at high tide the
    wharves can accommodate oceangoing steamers. In his book, _To
    Nova Scotia_, Longstreth says: “At low tide the Avon looks like
    a basin of red mud in which a dirty giant had washed his bloody
    hands after killing an ichthyosaurus.” An average of 750,000
    tons of gypsum are shipped from here yearly.

    A golf course, overlooking the harbor, has been laid out on the
    site of old Fort Edward. It was from this point that final plans
    were laid for the expulsion of the Acadians.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Haliburton’s Home, Windsor]

    The Haliburton Memorial Museum has been opened in the home of
    Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author of _Sam Slick_; and the
    original furnishings and personal belongings of Haliburton may
    be seen there, representing Nova Scotian culture as it was in
    the middle of the nineteenth century.

    _Mt. Uniacke_ . . . this is approximately the summit of the
    central spine of hills in the province. It was named for the
    Solicitor General of Nova Scotia in 1782, an Irishman who built
    a magnificent country home here, resembling an Italian villa,
    and surrounded it with all the appurtenances of a
    five-thousand-acre estate. It is still in use, in its secluded
    property, but it is not open to the public.

    _Bedford_ . . . ten miles from Halifax and now virtually part of
    the city, this suburb is at the head of Bedford Basin, which is
    an extension of Halifax harbor. In peacetime it is a sleepy
    little community of summer cottages and homes; in time of war it
    is a military crossroads where hundreds of merchantmen, interned
    vessels of the enemy, cargo ships of neutral nations waiting to
    be examined for contraband, and men-of-war stand in readiness
    for a convoy to go out. So deep is the Basin that its waters are
    said to be as cold as the Arctic Sea, and several French
    warships lie on its bottom. A government rifle range, covering
    some thousand acres, is in the near vicinity. Route 2 joins
    Route 1 at this point.

    _Halifax_ . . . see Chapter IV.




                                  III
                          _OUTPOST OF EMPIRE_


Nova Scotia, says one of her admirers, is like a symphony, and then he
likens one small village on the coast to the andante passages. The
metaphor is rich in implication, but to me the andante part of Nova
Scotia is the unit which includes the three counties of Cumberland,
Colchester, and Pictou—the ones that form the wing which holds this
province to the mainland. For here the movement of days into time is
slow and sweetly flowing, without regard to a dramatic beginning or a
crashing end. The landscape sings in a melody of its own, having nothing
to do with fugues or passionate cadenzas. Sometimes its very richness of
tone and color would be dull if its relationship to the whole were not
apparent.

Between Sackville in New Brunswick and the Nova Scotian border—a
distance of some four miles—there is a level plain of marshland that is
unlike anything in the United States. I have crossed it innumerable
times, but I’ve yet to see it free of a blanket of clouds that sweat
mist and rain. The only visible road across it or through it is the
concrete runway of the main highway which has been raised some thirty
feet high above the ground. Fine cattle of several denominations graze
in the sage-colored pasturage and squat hay barns dot the marshes on
both sides of this road to the horizon, spaced like gray toadstools on a
lawn. I have never seen a single man in all this monotone, but obviously
the cows are milked. I rather think a human being would show up in this
expanse no more than an ant making its way through grass.

These are marshlands that were once diked for truck farming by the
Acadians. Their successors have never reclaimed them for anything but
pastures. They form a natural boundary line between New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia. When they are left behind, one rises to a height of land
with a bald circle on the summit like the shaved patch on a monk’s
crown; and spread out before and below lies the most eastern tip of land
on the North American continent, except Labrador—and nobody is
concerned with Labrador except missionaries.

There are no formalities at the border, beyond the necessity for making
a circuit of the bald patch. Nova Scotia maintains an information bureau
here as a branch of one of the finest tourist bureaus on the continent;
road guides, maps, and lists of places to stay in the province may be
had for the asking.

And then the road swings out ahead, black with white markings. If Nova
Scotia had poor roads, or halfheartedly paved ones, any of six or seven
valid reasons might be found to excuse them, and still we’d cover them
for the treasures they reveal. But the roads that are marked first-class
on the map of this province are first-class in fact, and they make U.S.
1, north of Portland, Maine, for instance, look like something left
behind in the Spanish Revolution. It took a long time for Nova Scotia to
finish these highways, and the years before were dust-laden and rickety.
But they were built to endure, with salt bases and I don’t know what new
kinds of road engineering, and there they are: something a driver can
cover unconsciously, with plenty of attention left free for the
surrounding country and the vistas ahead.

With every turn of the road, and with every slow climb over another
hill, the details change and underline the central theme; but always the
movement is slow in this part of the province and the colorful chords
are rich in tone, because the whole world seems pre-eminently beautiful
and at peace.

Through the center of these three counties rises an offshoot of the
central spine of the province, known here as the Cobequid Hills. The
woods on these slopes contain a larger percentage of hardwoods among the
evergreens than do the woods nearer the Atlantic. And though the hills
are high, many small rivers drain from them into Cobequid Bay—an
extension of the Bay of Fundy—and form arable lands at their mouths. So
we find villages and towns strung along the coast on both sides of this
wing of land along Cobequid Bay, Minas Basin, Chignecto Bay, and
Northumberland Strait, wherever there are rivers and soil along their
banks to till.

At Amherst the road branches in two directions, the one on the north
tying together the villages of the Northumberland shore, and the other
dropping directly southward across the wing to reach Parrsboro on Minas
Basis and then following the shore to the hub of Nova Scotia at Truro.
Only the Parrsboro road is paved, and so it is unquestionably the way to
take, even if one expects to turn north again beyond Truro. If the
first-class roads in Nova Scotia are excellent, the secondary roads run
them a poor third. Sometimes these side roads are more than worth the
discomfort they entail, but on the whole the long way around is the
shortest way there if the long way is paved.

No matter where one happens to be at any given moment in Nova Scotia,
the sea is less than fifty miles away. Yet always this sea takes on such
a variety of colors and forms as to appear a strange body of water each
time one mounts the crest of a hill, turns a corner, and then suddenly
finds it stretching its blue surface ahead. When you drop down into
Parrsboro, for instance, there is only a glimpse of aquamarine in the
distance and it is lost again until you have turned abruptly east out of
the town, climbed another hill, and then dropped again to sea level at
Five Islands. Here the view is neither coy nor amorphous.

Thin, delicate birch trees line the shore, standing apart from one
another like guests at a party who have not been introduced. (It would
be a party of Britishers, of course.) Beyond them stretches a sheet of
water that looks nerveless and immovable, rimmed with red clay the color
of wet Virginia loam. The lower slopes of the far shore pretend that the
white specks dotting its greenness are farmhouses, and Cape Blomidon
rises perpendicularly to show its varicolored strata studded with
amethyst quartz. Nothing on earth could be more tranquil or more
satisfying in color contrasts. For haven’t we learned in freshman
psychology that the most pleasing color combinations to the human eye
are such opposites on the color chart as orange with blue (water and
earth here) and green with violet (farms beside Blomidon)?

It is doubtful if the inhabitants of the little towns along this road
know why they never grow tired of looking out over Minas Basin; but the
quiet that pervades their streets and squares is the stillness of
contentment, not apathy. If any among them is of a nature to find the
best of views wearing, there are always the Fundy tides to vary the
scene by pouring into this triangular extension of the larger bay and
then sliding out again twice each day, leaving acres of red, liquid clay
behind that form bastionlike banks as wet and slick as oil. The rivers
that empty into this basin are channels of flowing mud for miles
upstream, and their consistency makes the Missouri or the Tiber seem
translucent in comparison.

Each of these little towns—Economy, Bass River, Great Village,
Glenholme—is cut from the same pattern, vaguely familiar to an
American, totally incomprehensible to a European. Who lives in them,
where did they come from, and what is their relation to the rest of the
province?

They are more like small villages in southern Ohio or central Indiana
than anything else I know, minus such modern intrusions as neon signs
outside the corner drugstore and juke boxes in the lunchroom. Each one
looks enough like the others to be unmistakably of the same family, and
the people one sees along the roads have the same rangy build and the
same lean faces, strong tough limbs, and unconcern with the passing
tourist. They could easily double for Vermonters, for they have been
bred with the same stem characters in a world where physical labor is
taken for granted, where nothing is done for them—by way of either
washing machines or supertractors—and where a queer illusion is
maintained that Halifax, of all places, is luxurious.

Men whose names are known in the far corners of the earth have gone out
into the world from these little towns: Sir Charles Tupper, one of the
founders of Confederation in the Dominion and an early Prime Minister;
Simon Newcomb, who went to teach in Maryland and became a noted
astronomer and professor of mathematics in the United States Naval
Academy, retired with the rank of Rear Admiral, and eventually was
buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery; William
Lawrence, who was a farmer as well as a sailor and a master shipbuilder;
Morris Robinson, who established the Mutual Life Insurance Company in
New York; and, currently, at least two members of Canada’s war cabinet.
And so a relationship with the United States and other parts of Canada
has taken form in Nova Scotia through such men and through such an
inheritance. Usually these notable sons never come back, once their
importance has been established elsewhere; but they are never forgotten,
and it is safe to say they never forget. For there are always families
left behind.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Whenever the Ocean Limited prepares to pull out of the station in
Halifax there is a tense air of leave-taking about the place. No one
travels lightly by train out of Nova Scotia. The Ocean Limited is a
solemn carrier; for it spends four days and five nights crossing a
top-heavy continent to Vancouver on the west coast, and the cities and
small towns it encounters on the way seem more faraway to Haligonians
than ports across the sea. This same morning train also disentangles
part of itself to carry Nova Scotians to Boston and New York; altogether
it is an important piece of work.

While he sat on the edge of the seat in his section of the Pullman, his
mother and sister sat across the aisle talking of commonplace matters.
It was their way of hiding family pride and affection from strangers. An
American would have considered them to be without emotion at the moment;
anyone with a name as Scottish as theirs would have known better, and
realized that no Highlander can be judged by surface appearances alone.

His mother sat very straight, her chin held high and her eyes catching
chance information which they conveyed to her mind for storage and
future use. Though she meant to keep her voice low, its clear contralto
tones reached to the farthest end of the car.

“Your father felt badly about being called to do that emergency
operation this morning,” she said. “He had counted on seeing you off,
too.”

“But it would have been too bad for the patient if he hadn’t been
called,” his sister said. Her inflection as well as her words conveyed a
burning sympathy with human ills. No one would have mistaken her for an
American girl; she had the sharply modeled features of a British
aristocrat. And yet she was obviously unconscious of her own
attractions. Hers was the soul of a Good Samaritan in the body of a
potential dramatic star, and neither aspect of her nature seemed aware
of the other.

“Shall we send your pictures and books as soon as you’ve settled in?”
his mother said.

The engine gave a warning of its intent to move in a deep-throated
cough. Then the two handsome women rose, kissed him discreetly, and left
as though he were going no farther than around the corner. His response
was a conveyance of the impression that he was in the habit of leaving
home permanently every week or so. In the hearts of all three was the
knowledge of their mutual affection, saved once more from public gaze.

By the time his focus had cleared he was watching the town he had always
known from the unfamiliar angle of the railway cutting as the train
swung around the Northwest Arm. It crawled along the edge of the Basin,
following the road to Bedford that he had cycled over hundreds of times,
and then made its unhurried way to Shubenacadie and Truro.

It was well after dark by the time the train had crossed from New
Brunswick into Maine. It was plunging through evergreen forests so dense
that starlight was unable to penetrate their fastness by the time the
lights were out in his berth and his eyes were closed. This was all part
of Nova Scotia, too, once upon a time, he thought. Geographically it
still belonged to Canada. It had been given to the United States to
settle a dispute at a time when the Dominion was in no position to argue
the point. So now it paid taxes and voted with the rest of the country,
but its state of mind had never been ceded with the land.

Perhaps he slept in short patches, but it seemed that he was never
unconscious of the clackety-clack, bumpety-bump of the wheels beneath
his head. So you’re going . . . to New . . . York, too. The tide has
turned . . . the tide has turned . . . a magnet draws us south. I know a
girl . . . in the U . . . nited States—or do I, after all?—one week,
two weeks, one month, two years . . . a girl from Chicago, but that was
weeks ago. Letters move while men stand still . . . letters fly . . .
millions of letters drop into wastebaskets every day . . . unwanted,
unanswered . . . forgotten. Dark hair—or was it?—tall . . . perhaps.
Alive, but sleeping . . . lonely . . . afraid . . . the only eyes in the
room. Remember our premises are different . . . different . . . Fifth
Avenue . . . the Bedford Road. Why out of hundreds . . . does one girl
. . . stay smiling in my mind? Pretty . . . no. Not at all . . . no. But
eager . . . sentient . . . sound. . . . Work to be done . . . work . . .
done.

The train was cutting a slice off New Hampshire when he woke in the
morning, and they were hurrying along toward Boston with a quicker roll.
By the time breakfast was finished in the big station, served by
ebullient Negro waiters whom he thought amazing, and Boston left behind,
the fact that he was in a different country had become easily
discernible. Once in a while he caught glimpses of white clapboard
houses set back on traditional elm-shaded lawns, but for the most part
New England small towns were revealing themselves in the vicinity of the
tracks as a succession of empty and rusting factories.

So this was what the depression looked like in America. One knew, as an
idea; but somehow the grim ugliness of it, the degradation and blight of
dead industry, was a shocking sight, and it left him as depressed as the
monetary situation which had caused it. This was far from the America he
had heard and read about, and this was surely not the New England he had
always drawn in his imagination. Movies and books and music out of
America showed none of this backside view. There was Dos Passos, of
course; he wrote out of the world he knew . . . it was all a man could
do.

His eye was caught by the weathered signs on two adjacent factories as
the train moved slowly through a Rhode Island town: the American Tool
Company, said one; and next to it a defunct concern still proclaimed
that it had once manufactured nuts and couplings. He smiled to himself
and felt better. Who else but Americans would give their plants such
names, and laugh at themselves as they did it? They might be lacking in
spiritual perception, as his father and his father’s friends said; but
the ones he had known best were generous and friendly, and there might
be worse qualities for a stranger to face.

He would listen to concerts in New York until he could stand no more. He
would find out why a speak-easy seemed to Americans superior to an
English pub. He would listen to Negro jazz in Harlem, and discover what
the Rockettes looked like and why Broadway was. If New York had a
counterpart of Drury Lane, he would find it; and there would also be
Chinatown and the Bowery and lots of art galleries, not to mention
fights and the circus and ice hockey at Madison Square Garden.

There was little doubt in his mind as to the advantages of being
twenty-five and committed to the pursuit of interpreting and recreating
the world he lived in. Doubtless he would find a good many things in the
United States that were brash and adolescent, but no one country had a
monopoly on disfiguring attributes. America was a grand place, full of
vitality and good humor. He hoped it would like him in return, for it
held his future . . . or so he thought. A theme for his first novel
began to take form in his mind.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Within the boundaries of the near-island that is Nova Scotia, and within
the pattern of its story, can be found three distinct types of
Englishmen—very much like three sons of a county family, each of whom
followed a different profession and yet stayed within the precincts of
tradition and British propriety. One son represented the king’s uniform,
another moneyed aristocracy; the third—being the youngest—stayed on
the land and yet remained a gentleman.

Each of these types has given Nova Scotia a different variation of color
in its personal make-up, and each has forced the shape and destiny of
the province to include his likeness; but no single one has managed to
dominate the others. Rather have they all been tamed by the implacable
nature of the terrain of Nova Scotia itself.

None of these three groups came here willingly; each was forced into
Nova Scotia by the nature of its profession (the army or navy), by
economics (the youngest son), or by the outcome of a war (the moneyed
aristocracy). And because none of them really wanted to go to Nova
Scotia in the first place, a portion of the individuals in each of the
three groups got out of the province again as quickly as it could.

But whether they were soldiers, hungry farmers, or Tories, they were all
born of the New England womb, thrown together into this protuberant bit
of land off the North Atlantic coast as a direct outgrowth of the rising
Yankee consciousness. Nova Scotia received them willingly, each in turn;
but they were conceived in the life force that was steadily taking its
own shape and realizing its ultimate ends in the northern British
colonies of America, called New England.

The first of these Anglo-Saxon groups to establish themselves in Nova
Scotia were the services, both army and navy. They were sent here by the
will of New England for the sole purpose of making this peninsula a base
of operations against the French in Cape Breton and on the St. Lawrence.
So Halifax was founded in 1749 on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, on
the edge of a beautiful harbor known to the Indians as Chebucto Bay.
Then, as now, the rest of the province existed—or so it was
supposed—only as a hinterland for the purpose of supplying it with food
and taxes. And the hinterland consisted mainly of the Acadians in the
Annapolis Valley and a small settlement at Liverpool some miles to the
south.

Within ten years a strong military force and an extensive fleet was
firmly settled in Halifax, even as New England desired. Louisburg was
taken and leveled, and after that it was inevitable that Quebec should
also fall. The Acadians were out of Nova Scotia, and New England was
safe at last from disturbances or trouble to the north. She was now free
to devote herself to the quarrel with her own government in England.

When this base was established at Halifax there came with it merchants
and traders and hangers-on to the army, all dependent upon the garrison
and shipyards for their livelihood, all identified in their own minds
with the army or the navy. Though they were not in uniform they were
nonetheless of the services and part of this first group, sharing the
English core of stubbornness, self-assurance, and lack of
imagination—sharing, too, the English talent for government,
reliability, and polished manners. Like all Englishmen who find
themselves on the fringes of civilization in their service to king and
country, this group never relaxed its rigid customs. So the individual
members of it formed no tangible relationship with the rest of the
province, and their point of view retained its virginity without a
struggle.

Governor Lawrence was in command of Halifax at this time, and he found
his local problems increasing as military objectives dwindled. After the
Acadians were gone, and it became evident that the garrison and the
fleet would starve if no one came to grow food for them, Lawrence
decided that drastic action must be taken. Then, as in all the years
since, Nova Scotia was ready to support many more individuals than it
counted within its boundaries. The trick was to get people to come and,
once there, to stay. Two hundred thousand acres of pasture, cleared
land, and orchards had been left by the Acadians, and they were ready to
be worked by someone else. So Governor Lawrence brought forth his
fanciest language to form a proclamation inviting anyone who would to
come and take these rich farms; and the invitation was sent throughout
all the other British colonies along the Atlantic, from New Hampshire to
Georgia.

What Lawrence neglected to include in his invitation was the fact, as J.
B. Brebner puts it, that “Halifax was the capital and, like other
capitals, was eventually to be supported by the rest of the province,
but in 1760 it was dependent on Great Britain because there was no
country population to do the work. . . . At bottom, and they were well
aware of it, the people of Halifax in 1760 were pensioners of the
British Government.”[1]

Of course the farseeing officials of New England were as eager as anyone
to continue this defensive outpost, for they hoped eventually to break
its dependence on England after it had become strong enough to be of
service to them. Thus it was not mentioned, when the proclamation was
read on Boston and a dozen other Commons, that Nova Scotia was a
difficult place to reach because access to it was only by sea, that the
Acadian farms had lain idle for years and salt water had flooded them
from broken dikes, and that Nova Scotia was little more than a
wilderness anyway—decades behind New England in the niceties of
civilization. It was seen by the officials as a region for exploitation
and profit, and the men and women who were urged to leave New England
for free lands in this frontier were being used for profit quite as
though they had been chips in a game of poker.

Halifax, and all that it has signified from the day it was founded to
this, deserves a chapter of its own, and it shall have one as soon as we
get through these generalities. I must confess that the history of Nova
Scotia faced me as an appalling bore when I first dived into it for the
purposes of this book. The shades of my revolutionary New England
ancestors rose in my subconscious, and I had figuratively to hold my
nose for the plunge. But when the pattern of these three kinds of
Englishmen, with the inexorable process pushing constantly at their
backs, began to emerge and take its place to complement the history I
had been taught in school I forgot my aversion, and found myself,
instead, hunting avidly for missing pieces in the puzzle. When they were
found, they became as relative to the life we are living today as
front-page news of the moment is relative to the life we shall live
tomorrow. So saying, I shall go on; and if you can’t stay with me, you
can always skip.

The second group of Englishmen also came to Nova Scotia—like the
services—with the force of New England behind them; but in their case
the superficial motivation seemed more dependent upon individual will,
for they were the ones who accepted Lawrence’s invitation. Going back to
our original metaphor—these were the youngest sons who had inherited
good names and good blood, but little in the way of worldly goods. They
had been sitting on the marginal edge of prosperity in the colonies,
trying to earn a livelihood from poor lands in Vermont and Pennsylvania
and upstate New York, trying to find a substitute for the trades they
could no longer follow because there were already too many coopers, or
second-class seamen, or blacksmiths, in North America.

If the country beyond the Alleghenies had been open—free of Indians and
with roads built across the mountains—they would have moved west, as
their kind did after the Revolution; but in those days of the 1760’s
northward was the direction of new frontiers. When bells were rung on
Boston Common to tell about farmlands lying idle in Nova Scotia after
the expulsion of the Acadians, New England was as ready to be rid of
these needy people as they were ready to go and avail themselves of
opportunities to the north.

They washed in like a tide through the Annapolis Valley, some sticking
in each small community, some going on. When the best lands were taken
by the firstcomers, the next shipload went elsewhere. It was natural to
follow the easiest roads, so none of them tried to cross to the east
over the hard spine of the province. Instead they skirted Minas Basin to
Truro and found good land there; then they went around the north side of
Cobequid Bay into Colchester County, and at each river mouth they
stopped in groups to form villages which they gave names such as
Economy, Great Village, Parrsboro, Port Greville, and Apple River on
Chignecto Bay. Many of them reached Amherst and the extensive marshlands
on the isthmus; and as many more went on into the portion of Nova Scotia
which later became New Brunswick, along the beautiful rivers called
Petitcodiac, Nashwaak, Miramichi, and Saint John.

In all, about eight thousand sturdy Puritans brought their families and
their household goods out of New England after 1760. Some were, to quote
Brebner again, “soldiers and sailors and fishermen and traders who knew
Nova Scotia and had been talking about its potentialities for years
. . . [and] farmers for whom a new farm had always implied laborious
clearing were obsessed by visions of the long-tilled, fertile lands of
the Acadians.”[2]

When they arrived in the Annapolis Valley they must have been more than
a little disturbed to find rotting plowshares and rusted tools, acres of
land ruined by salt tides, and the desolate evidence of homes and barns
and outbuildings burned in the wake of the people who had first made
this valley beautiful. But they were all men and women who knew hard
work and patience, and they were accustomed to the climate. So they set
about building new homes and turning the soil, without grumbling.

Of course a few who had come because they thought to find an easy living
and discovered that their hopes weren’t likely to materialize moved on
to other fields. But most of them stuck in Nova Scotia and won support
for themselves, holding to their Puritan traditions and customs and
eventually adding the color of their character to the province. They
were always considered inferior people by the class-conscious services
and their satellites in Halifax. Their accent was wrong because it had
become Yankee and their way of life was considered beneath notice
because they worked with their hands, treated their servants as equals,
and found an emotional release in their dissenting Protestant
churches—so difficult for rigid Anglicans to understand. It has been
said that they were lazy on the whole and couldn’t learn the intricate
mechanism of handling the dikes as the Acadians did. It has also been
said that they were grasping and hard and intolerant, kin to their
cousins, the Yankee horse traders in later New England. But we know of a
certainty that they were also courteous, sincere, and deeply religious.

The women were industrious and skilled in baking and weaving and sewing,
but they never worked outdoors in the fields like the wives of peasants.
The men made their own furniture, treated all mankind as equal in a
microcosm where democracy was the only form of society possible for
survival; and their innate refinement showed itself every Sunday when
they went to their bare Covenanter churches dressed in handmade laces
and the finest of homespuns, to hear one of the missionaries sent out to
them regularly by Yale or Harvard.

They were, in fact, cut of the same pattern as other New Englanders, and
it is doubtless due only to the greater severity of weather and terrain
in Nova Scotia, coupled with the tempering influence of the Highland
Scots who came later to live there too, that their Yankee inheritance
has not expanded to the same degree of inventiveness and initiative
which it has reached in the United States. They became, instead, the
firm backbone of a new kind of people; and time has justified them by
making their personal characteristics analogous with the name of
Bluenose, for eventually they developed into the famous farmer-skippers
of later days. Somewhere along the way they lost faith in their ability
to control everything they dislike, a characteristic which marks the
chief difference between Nova Scotians and Americans even today.

Shortly after these people arrived in Nova Scotia in the early 1760’s,
word seeped back to New England that they were doing all right and
finding the living they had sought. And then a sudden land boom shot
Nova Scotia property to the sky in the markets of the American colonies.
It became both fashionable and smart to invest in lots one had never
seen and never expected to see, because this was the frontier and its
value seemed to be increasing by the hour, and profits someone else had
made were talked about on every corner. Benjamin Franklin bought land on
Northumberland Strait in the vicinity of Pictou, and he was doubtless as
interested as anyone else when John Witherspoon, then president of the
College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton, thought up a way to
retrieve some of the money he had put into property in that part of the
province by settling a shipload of Highlanders there.

But when Ohio was opened to settlement, the Nova Scotia boom broke
easily. Americans got out from under with alacrity and Nova Scotia as a
consequence was thrown into prodigious debt. Once more she became
dependent upon a small parliamentary grant from England of some five
thousand pounds a year, and poverty was known throughout the province
until a war close at hand in 1775 brought back relative prosperity.

It was then that Nova Scotia discovered how well neutrality paid if both
sides in a conflict could be served. If anyone in the American colonies
was disappointed when Nova Scotia decided not to join their revolution
against England—and there were more than a few—they need only have
looked into the quite natural forces behind the helplessness of this
province, recognized their own part in reducing her to the position she
was in, and then been grateful that her friendship was never wholly
lost.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Robert Laird Borden was born in Grand Pré in the Annapolis Valley, of
parents whose own grandparents were descendants of Puritans who had come
here from New England before the American Revolution. When he died in
1937 Canadians knew that one of their great men, associated with the
most acute memories of everyone living in the Dominion, had passed away.

The life of Sir Robert Borden was like a household so perfectly managed
that all experiences seemed to be absorbed by it, without fear and
without distortion and with an ability so consummate that its workings
appeared deceptively easy. In this respect he was not only a Nova
Scotian who completely typified the quiet, unspectacular ability of his
province but also, in many ways, a symbol of the Dominion of Canada
itself.

As a boy he attended a school near his home, became a teacher in it,
went on to study law, was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-four
in 1878, and began to practice in Halifax. There was nothing remarkable
in anything he did; people of his caliber are rarely noticed in their
youth, and often they are unremembered.

At the age of thirty-six he was made a King’s Counsel, which corresponds
to nothing in the United States, since it is purely an honorary title
bestowed for eminence in the legal profession. His reputation began to
grow as a constitutional lawyer, and after that his activities widened
more quickly but still quietly. In 1896 he was elected to the Dominion
House of Commons, and five years later he succeeded Sir Charles Tupper,
another Nova Scotian, as leader of the Conservative party. Since the
Prime Minister in Canada can always be given a vote of no-confidence at
a moment’s notice, and he is technically in office merely as the leader
of his party, the opposition must also have a leader at all times, ready
to step into the role of Prime Minister himself if his party is swung
into power.

Fourteen years he remained leader of the opposition in Ottawa; and then
when Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal regime was overthrown in 1911, Robert
Borden took his place as Prime Minister. During the next nine eventful
years he held this office, and under his leadership Canada, as a nation,
came of age. Her achievements during the first World War represented the
first united effort of the unified provinces. It was appropriate that a
Nova Scotian, a man so endowed with the qualities on which that province
particularly prides itself, should have been the country’s leader during
those days. When Robert Borden took up the premiership, Canada was a
colony; when he retired from public life, she was a sovereign state. His
policy had made her so.

Under his leadership a new banking act was established in the Dominion
which has weathered all depressions and panics since; under him a
parcel-post system was inaugurated. Under him Canada went to Europe to
fight against Germany, and the Canadian Corps became, along with the
Guards, the Highlanders, and such crack regiments as the Royal Welch
Fusiliers, the shock troops of the entire British army. It is safe to
say that no country in the world’s history ever came of age winning so
much glory in foreign lands and yet maintaining such a quiet,
matter-of-fact aspect at home. For Canada, between 1914 and 1918, won
for herself a reputation comparable to that of Australia in the current
fight. The Canadian Corps became a legend throughout the British Empire;
more important, it became a legend in Germany. It began by saving Ypres
in the first gas attack in April, 1915; it ended by being the spearhead
which broke the Hindenburg Line on August 8, 1918; it was still the
vanguard of the British army when the war was over, finishing its
fighting in the market place of Mons.

During the course of the war Lloyd George created an Imperial War
Council, and its members comprised the best minds in the British Empire.
Borden represented Canada on this council, and it is generally conceded
that in his own way he was perhaps the strongest man of them all. Lloyd
George refers to him as a wise and sagacious counselor; certainly every
member of that group, many of whom were in violent disagreement, were
grateful for the calm, judicious strength which he displayed. He was
probably the quietest man there; in that, again, he was typical of the
nation he represented and the province in which he had been born. But he
was never disregarded. He insisted on the maintenance of the integrity
of his Canadian Corps; he insisted that Canada should not only fight in
the war but play her part in its direction as well. All these points he
won.

Specifically, he won the right of the British dominions to be
represented separately in the Assembly of the League of Nations and to
be given individual membership in the Council. Again, he insisted that
the peace treaties must be ratified separately by the Canadian
Parliament before they were signed by the King. And winning this latter
point made it impossible that Canada, or any of the other dominions,
should ever again have to go to war just because Great Britain did,
unless she chose to do so.

Finally, through Borden’s efforts, Canada gained recognition in 1920 of
her right to establish legations of her own in foreign capitals, though
a minister was not sent to Washington until 1927. After that his work as
Prime Minister was finished, and he vacated the office for a younger
man.

A life like Sir Robert’s is rare. With his high forehead, his oblong
face, and his profuse hair, white and parted in the middle, with his
indifference to theatricality and his absence of mannerisms, he did not
try to stamp his personality on the nation in the way a man far less
able might have done. His work was part of himself, a product of his
training and his background; and his background was as unspectacular as
a chord in music. He didn’t chew oversize cigars; he didn’t rant; he
didn’t kiss babies in public. In Canada such things have never been
necessary to prove that a man is worthy of public trust.

Well-managed affairs are seldom dramatic. By his calm and consummate
skill in avoiding picturesque blunders, in forestalling trouble before
it developed, Borden actually managed to diminish his own fame. He had
no Dunkirk to weather, no civil war. It is the way of the world to
remember its calamities and to forget its successes, because people
believe that success is the portion of man’s fate.

So the strangest aspect of Borden’s life, unobserved because it seemed
natural, was the fact that everyone took his enormous success almost for
granted. His professional and business friends in Halifax felt neither
awed nor surprised when he became Prime Minister. No one in Nova Scotia,
remembering his simple, matter-of-fact view of his own career, felt it
was anything out of the ordinary to pick up the newspapers and see
pictures of their old friend conferring with King George in London, or
with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, or with President Wilson.

The people of Canada accepted his own view of himself, and his opinion
of himself never changed a particle during his entire life. He was a boy
who had grown up in Grand Pré in the Annapolis Valley, never reminding
himself of the knighthood conferred by his king or thinking how far he
had come since he had first entered a classroom to teach—but merely
Robert Borden, doing the next job that came along. Nova Scotians so took
this man for granted that they have even forgotten to boast about him,
which is a phenomenon in that part of the world. Yet Canada today,
without him, is like a young man alone in the suddenly too-big world,
trying to remember some of the rare qualities an all-wise father
possessed.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

North Shore of Cape Breton]

The third group of Englishmen completed a family reunion when they, too,
were thrown out of America and into Nova Scotia by force rather than by
choice. In their case the force was applied in a strikingly physical
manner. These were the wealthy Tories who opposed the American
Revolution, the aristocrats who guessed wrong and thought to save their
wealth and their beautiful possessions and their easy way of life by
throwing their support into a maintenance of the _status quo_. When
their cause—or lack of a cause—was lost, and there were no more
gallant British officers bedecked with red coats and powdered wigs and
lovely manners to protect them in New York and Philadelphia and
Baltimore, the new United States became too tightly knit to hold them.
The task of organizing a republic was complicated; the men who took on
the job were conscious of their responsibility to future centuries.
These selfish, moneyed aristocrats could not be allowed to continue
their obstructing ways. The time had come for them to get out.

“But where shall we go?” they cried. And George Washington had an
answer. Perhaps the best solution of their problem, he said, would be a
general commitment of suicide. I’ve no doubt they sniffed and called him
a traitor to his class. Finally their own able general who had held New
York throughout the entire war, Sir Guy Carleton, obtained safe passage
for them before he evacuated the city in 1783, and various colonies in
British North America indicated willingness to receive them. So they
were put aboard transports—taking no more personal possessions than
refugees from Singapore or Manila managed to do—and the ships
eventually deposited them in Saint John and Halifax and many smaller
harbors along the coast of Nova Scotia. Still other groups were sent
overland to Ontario. Even today they are all known as United Empire
Loyalists.

The men and women who were landed in Nova Scotia brought with them an
arrogance, a pride, a bitterness, and a lack of initiative that harmed
them as individuals perhaps more than it injured the struggling young
colony that took them in. There were more than a few brilliant
exceptions, of course, but their personal characteristics and unyielding
state of mind rendered them as little welcome to the pre-Loyalists
already in Nova Scotia as they were unwanted in the United States. Yet
they brought to the British outpost its first culture and refinement,
and their influence has been of far-reaching and unquestionable
importance on the whole Dominion of Canada as it is known today.

In sheltered and isolated harbors along the shore of this loyal colony
of Nova Scotia such towns as Shelburne, Yarmouth, and Digby sprang up
overnight as the ships carrying these Empire Loyalists were unloaded.
One day there were empty beaches or riverbanks where forests embedded in
granite pushed close to the shore, and the next day five thousand human
beings who had never used their hands for anything more difficult than
holding a fan or a walking stick or a book were trying to find shelter
and food for themselves.

What they must have suffered is beyond our imagination. Could they have
been stripped of bitterness and the corrosive effect of pride along with
their material possessions, adaptation to this new kind of life which
they had never dreamed might be theirs would have been easier. But we
are all apt to hug our hurts to us for warmth, even as these men and
women of culture and social prominence did. Perhaps the fruits of their
education and privileges afforded them solace during the dark, cold
nights of their first winter in the wilderness, but nothing could take
the place of the prominence they had once known as bishops, professors,
judges, college presidents, and bankers.

In time, however, those who stayed became Nova Scotians, too. Their
mental gifts were shared with the communities in which they found
themselves, and their children and children’s children have brought
distinction and prominence to the province. When pride is transferred
from person to place its base is inevitably broadened, even though—as a
quality of the human mind—it may remain unjustifiable. And pride is one
of the easiest of all sins to bump into in Nova Scotia today.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The quality of the handwriting in the first letter I received from him
was of more concern to me than the message it conveyed; for though it
was obviously the writing of a scholar its characters might have been
formed by the same fellow who carved the Rosetta Stone, for all the
sense they made. After a day or so of deciphering, however, the message
at last came clear.

“When I was in England,” the letter said, “a chap I met in my first term
at Oxford said to me, ‘So you’re a colonial from Canada . . . how jolly!
Then you must know my cousin in Winnipeg . . . nice fellow . . . look
him up when you get back. Two thousand miles from Halifax? What a
ridiculous country!’

“I’ve never been in Winnipeg and I’ve never been near Chicago. But you
don’t actually live in Chicago, you said . . . rather north of it. Does
that mean a few miles or a few hundred?

“What I’m really trying to say is . . . do you ever come to New York, or
is that question on a par with the chap with a cousin in Manitoba?
Americans never seem to consider mileage when they want to be some place
besides where they are. And you did say you sometimes got to New York on
business, didn’t you? Couldn’t you come soon?

“I’ve talked to a number of American girls since the first of October,
when I got here, and I’ve gone to a most astonishing spectacle—rather
common in your country, I understand—called a football game . . . did
you ever see rugger played in England? . . . and I’ve tried a hot dog
and been introduced to Jersey applejack. Also, I was in Times Square on
election night. But I’d like to see you, too.

“I’m working like the devil, at two jobs, really, research and private
writing, though the teaching part of the fellowship fell through. And
I’m not going home for the holidays. I once spent a Christmas alone in
Paris, and another time I watched the Herr Professor in Freiburg consume
a colossal Weihnachts meal. . . . Doesn’t business ever bring you to New
York at this time of the year?”

It was not until the Ides of March in 1933 that I saw him again. Bread
lines in New York were long, banks were closed, Manhattan was seething
with rumors, and hopes were being discarded right and left. He had been
in the United States nearly six months, and the recurrent sense of
strain and unrest where he had expected to find a bright certainty had
already modified the easy laughter in his eyes. Rather often during the
three days of that week end I felt as though I were seeing a boy who had
never encountered meanness or cruelty in his life discovering for the
first time that man could be inhumane.

I had worked in the metropolitan area of Chicago for a number of years,
though my home was on the North Shore, and I had been aware of poverty
and human degradation for so long that it had become an accepted, if
deplored, state of affairs in the world as I found it. Now it was
painful to see this country of mine having a physical as well as an
emotional effect on him, particularly when I discovered that he had only
recently been faced with a fact quite new to him; namely, that he was up
against bitter competition in the graduate school of a university.
Americans learn somehow to defend themselves from their fellows as early
as they can remember. But the world this grown-up boy had always known
was like a large and tolerant family, in which it was taken for granted
that all its members were men of good will.

New York was noisy, garish, and frantic that March week end. But since
none of its stringencies bore any relationship to myself, and because
this city had always meant a holiday and the stimulation of extravagance
in my experience, I enjoyed it as I always had. Only, this time I tried
to see the crowds—crowds milling its streets on their way to nowhere,
crowds sitting at restaurant tables through twenty-four hours of every
day, crowds buying and spending and trading—through his eyes, as though
I had never seen them before.

Automats appalled him and cafeterias made him furious; they were
uncivilized, he assured me, and he’d starve before he set foot in one
again. People who shoved things in his face and asked him to buy, people
who prided themselves on making smart deals at someone else’s expense,
people who gambled large sums of money on watered stocks they knew
nothing about and then shot themselves when they were cleaned, were
suddenly become monstrous to me as seen through his eyes, though
subconsciously I still accepted them as natural phenomena. That simply
happened to be the way of the world I had always known.

I remember that we walked up Fifth Avenue in the late afternoon,
engrossed in our own private delving into the mysteries and agonies of
the universe. He did the delving, actually, and my eyes had a tendency
to wander to the shop windows—to emeralds chez Tiffany, and mink in
Revillon Frères, and inexpensive lotions in expensive containers at
Elizabeth Arden’s. Only when Fifth Avenue is completely destroyed will
we find better things to desire than the wares displayed in its windows.

We walked through the brown prespring paths of Central Park and came out
again into sunset traffic, our questions still unresolved, and the
universe still with a hangover, but our own spirits higher. That night
we heard Schnabel in Carnegie Hall, a stern, gray little man with a very
straight back whose power over us for the moment was complete. Out of
the isolated pools of consciousness in which we sat our eyes met. His
were smiling again.

If our backgrounds were different, it was not so much in what is called
the social scale as in the wide divergence between the professional
world and the world of business and technology. Our approach to any
subject or experience was invariably by dissimilar routes—his as the
artist, mine as the pragmatist. But the very differences served to
complement each other, and so created a wider understanding for both of
us through every experience shared. Though I disagreed with him
instinctively when my country and my kind of people were subjected to
examination by the penetrating vision of a newcomer and a potential
novelist, my common sense was forced to uphold the validity of his
judgments and conclusions.

More important than anything else, the wrapping of aloneness which had
insulated me the whole of my life from all other human beings—to my own
discomfiture and the despair of everyone who had tried to penetrate
it—was now being dissolved by this man who made no effort to do so.
Without talking about it, we recognized that being together was good.

I try to remember now the details of our widely spaced meetings during
the following three years; but only odd moments come back to me clearly,
picked out by the spotlight of memory. His handwriting in letters became
legible with familiarity, and I find that one of his poems, or the
opening page of his first novel, are easy to recall. But the snatches of
time that we managed to spend together have blurred outlines. One thinks
as one sets out on a special adventure, “_This_ will I remember as long
as I live”—the new gown, the sleek car waiting at the door, those songs
he asked the orchestra to play, the laughter in his eyes—but years
later the only moment of the evening that remains clear is the one in
which a cup of coffee was spilled the length of a new peach-colored
Chantilly dinner dress.

There was an afternoon when he arrived at our house one June, proud as a
retriever because the twenty-five-dollar, ten-year-old Studebaker had
carried him nine hundred miles in record time without complaint. When my
father reached home several hours later and saw the rakish, disreputable
old hag of a car standing before our doorstep he ordered it around to
the garage at once, insensible of the pride a Nova Scotian can feel in
having made such a good thing out of nothing. What are looks compared
with character?

And then I remember a Christmas week in New York which I chose to spend
there with friends because things were rapidly getting bleaker for him.
The novel had been finished during his second winter in the United
States, but no one wanted to publish it—good stuff, they said, but the
subject was too hot. A Ph.D. to add to his name was practically in the
bag, but there were no academic openings of any nature for a young man
whose subject was classical history. Only science was paying off in the
United States in the early thirties. If he thought merely being with me,
and being able to talk out the burdens in his mind, was a help, that
seemed to me ample reason for being wherever his work kept him.

Snow fell properly on Christmas Eve that year, the plays we saw pleased
us without relation to their merit, friends warmed us spiritually before
their hearths, and the world narrowed to dimensions we could enjoy.
Crowds had ceased to be thousands of individual faces for him by that
time. Instead of feeling the impingement of countless strange
personalities upon his own, he had learned how to lose himself on city
streets, noticing only now and then a particular human being whom he
found of interest—the waiter who always served us in the rathskeller on
Third Avenue, the haunting eyes of Alfred Stieglitz as he showed us
behind the scenes at An American Place, an English poet who was training
for the Foreign Service by way of a Commonwealth Fellowship, a girl
demonstrating hair curlers in a five-and-ten.

By the following May a doctorate was in his pocket and his life at the
university practically ended. Opportunity for a post in his chosen
profession in the United States was out of the question until prosperity
returned and the output of graduate schools no longer exceeded the
requirements of expanding university departments. But he was still a
Nova Scotian with a Highland lilt in his voice, a belief in the
essential worth of human life, and an insatiable sense of wonderment.
Unable to control the future, he was unwilling to tempt its
possibilities by borrowing on the unknown; so our friendship kept the
seeds of its ripening within itself.

It was late in this spring of 1935 that a note reached me from his
mother in Halifax, whom I had never seen. Would I be their guest for a
few weeks during the coming July, she asked. Here was handwriting full
and ripe with generosity, its lines flowing upward and its _t’s_ well
crossed.

I knew well enough how much I longed to meet his family, whom he loved
too well to talk about lightly; but I was afraid to go. What did I know
of a Nova Scotian home or family life? Yet my desire to understand him
as completely as he chose to let me could be fulfilled only if I learned
for myself the values and boundaries of his background. Perhaps if I
went to Nova Scotia I should then be able to comprehend why he loathed
Winchell’s column as though it were a daily personal insult, why
fluorescent-tube lighting and posturing politicians seemed to him
equally ugly, why he thought skyscrapers were monstrosities, and why our
flat, white concrete roads in Illinois, that took us straight as a taut
ribbon to the horizon, made him feel like something in Huxley’s _Brave
New World_.

When he returned to Canada this time he intended to stay. Perhaps he had
been born just too late for one era and too soon for the next, but at
least a conviction had taken root in his mind that only out of his own
background could a sincere writer bring forth honest work. If there was
no teaching to do, there were still typewriters. Canada awaited just
interpretation by her own, and this son of Nova Scotia would henceforth
look homeward for inspiration and reward.

“Thank you,” I wrote his mother, “I should love to visit you in July.
I’ll drive back with him in the old Studebaker whenever he is ready to
go.”

-----

[1] Reprinted from Brebner, _The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia_, by
permission of Columbia University Press.

[2] _Ibid._


                                ROUTE 2

    _New Brunswick Border_ . . . formed by the Missaquash River.
    This was also the division in 1755 between the French Fort
    Beauséjour on the western shore and the British Fort Lawrence on
    the opposite side. On both banks of the river lie the Tantramar
    Marshes, which cover eighty square miles. The name is a
    corruption of a French word which means a loud noise, so called
    because myriads of wild fowl frequent these marshes on their
    migratory flights north and south and their periodic presence is
    marked by the sound of their cries and calls.

    _Amherst_ . . . population 7,450. Named for Baron Jeffrey
    Amherst, known in Massachusetts by a town and a college of the
    same name. He was once Governor of Virginia. A variety of
    products are manufactured here, including railway cars, steam
    engines and boilers, furnaces, shoes, trunks, confectionery, and
    what the guidebooks euphemistically call “sanitary enamelware.”

    _Beauséjour Tea Shop and Inn._

    _Joggins_ . . . fifteen miles off Route 2, on the shore of
    Cumberland Basin. Famous for its rock formations and large
    fossil beds, from which samples have been taken for exhibition
    in museums throughout the world. It is an excellent field for
    geologic study. Coal from the fields here was sold in Boston as
    early as 1720.

    _Springhill_ . . . population 6,355. Situated seven hundred feet
    above sea level in the Cobequid Hills. It is chiefly a
    coal-mining town, with a yearly output of some 750,000 tons. The
    deepest coal mine in Canada is here, running vertically to a
    depth of 3,300 feet.

    From this point Route 2 runs through beautiful country on its
    way to Minas Basin, crossing through valleys and climbing hills
    covered with maples. There is good trout fishing in the rivers
    and brooks encountered on the way.

    _Parrsboro_ . . . population 1,919. This village was settled
    first by New Englanders before the Revolution, near the site of
    a large Indian settlement. It is still filled with the whispers
    of legends and grandfathers’ tales. One such tale has to do with
    the manner in which a privateer came from Machias, Maine, in
    1780 to loot the town, but met with such stout resistance that
    the leader was killed and his men taken prisoners. Another tells
    how an Italian pirate who had captured a British vessel, which
    included a rich cargo and the captain’s daughter, was blown from
    his course by a terrible storm and landed at Black Point, near
    Parrsboro. The captain’s daughter was thrown into a cave, a
    stone was placed at the entrance, and the pirates sailed away.
    Indians found her skeleton later, and it is said that her cries
    can still be heard there.

    Amethysts, agates, and other attractive minerals may be picked
    up along this shore, where they are found in abundance. But the
    semi-precious stones seem pallid in comparison with the depth of
    color and beauty of form in this landscape.

    _Economy_ . . . from here to Truro the farmlands are exceedingly
    fertile. The New Englanders who took over Acadian farms in this
    vicinity found hundreds of acres of marsh and upland not only
    ready for cultivation but capable of yielding heavy crops year
    after year without the assistance of fertilizer. Portions of old
    Acadian dikes, the tracing of French gardens, and ruins of old
    French mills may be seen from Great Village to Old Barns and
    Clifton.

    _Debert_ . . . this name is not to be found on any but the most
    recent maps of Nova Scotia. It belongs to a district several
    miles off Route 2, about a dozen miles outside Truro. Until 1940
    it was little more than a crossroads, known by the name of the
    nearest farmer, I suspect; but practically overnight it has been
    expanded into the largest military camp in Canada, serving both
    as training center and as layover for troops of all
    classifications on their way to Halifax and overseas service.

    _Truro_ . . . population 8,000. Known as the hub of Nova Scotia.
    The Acadians were succeeded here by northern Irishmen and people
    from New Hampshire, and the town looks very much like a New
    Hampshire village today. Its most distinctive feature is
    Victoria Park, covering a thousand acres of natural woodland,
    cliffs, rivers, footpaths, good roads, and a deep gorge with two
    beautiful waterfalls.

    Clara Dennis tells a thought-provoking story about this park in
    her book, _More about Nova Scotia_. A citizen of Truro died and
    willed “the surplus of his estate to be used for reorganization
    of the British Empire on a cosmopolitan basis broad enough to
    include the United States of America,” she relates. None of his
    executors, however, felt qualified to interpret the spirit of
    the will through propaganda designed to bring about such a state
    of affairs as had been described. So an order of the court set
    aside the terms of the will as being impossible to construe, and
    turned the money over to the trustees of Victoria Park for the
    purpose of beautifying it.

    The Nova Scotia Agricultural College and Agricultural Extension
    Service of the province are located in Truro, as well as the
    Nova Scotia Normal College—the latter with an enrollment of
    some six hundred students annually.

    _Stewiacke_ . . . population 803. This community is concerned
    chiefly with lumbering and lumber mills. (See Chapter VII for
    pronunciation.)

    _Shubenacadie_ . . . nothing much happens here except a long
    wait each day on the part of trains from Montreal and Halifax.
    It is the center of a dairying district. It is also a crossroads
    for Windsor in one direction and the Musquodoboit Valley in
    another. Maitland is twenty miles away, a very small place where
    the largest wooden ship ever built in Canada was sent down the
    ways.

    _Grand Lake_ . . . this is the largest lake in an extensive
    chain which crosses the province from east to west. Landlocked
    salmon, sea bass, and trout are caught in its waters.

    _Prince’s Lodge_ . . . a community of summer cottages and larger
    homes, about six miles from the center of Halifax. It was once
    the suburban residence of the Duke of Kent, Victoria’s father,
    who had a villa built here, surrounded with woodland paths in
    the shape of letters of the alphabet, a lake made in the design
    of a heart, and subsidiary buildings suitable to his needs.
    Julie St. Laurent was the charming French widow who shared this
    grandeur with him until he was recalled to London. Nothing is
    left of the estate now but the music room and bandstand, in the
    shape of a rotunda, standing between the motor road and the
    Basin. When the other buildings burned to the ground the estate
    was broken up and sold in small lots.

    _Fairview_ . . . once a suburb, this is now practically part of
    Halifax. All the unidentified dead from the sinking of the
    _Titanic_ are buried here in the local cemetery.




                                   IV
                        _EASTERN CANADIAN PORT_


Between the Annapolis Valley and Halifax the road turns abruptly to
skirt the wide estuary of the Avon River as far as Windsor, and then it
climbs up and over the spine of the province. When the summit of Mount
Uniacke is reached a gradual descent rolls out ahead for another
twenty-five miles to the Atlantic coast, and every aspect of the
landscape changes. Nova Scotia has suddenly become a radically different
kind of place.

Instead of emerald meadows, orchards and hedgerows, and burnt-caramel
mud in the river bottoms, there are tortured rock formations that look
like something a creating hand has thrown aside in disgust at its own
incompetence. Scaly granites are covered by a tangle of formless
evergreens and carpeted with a matted undergrowth. There is game in the
forests and a wealth of timber; there are many tiny lakes, some of them
known only to guides and to the animals that go to their shores to
drink. But there are few signs of habitation anywhere. The scenery
becomes monotonous because land worth plowing is nowhere to be seen, and
the forty-five miles between Windsor and the outskirts of Halifax seem
twice their actual distance.

This is the section of the province that resembles Finland. The greatest
part of this area on the Atlantic side of the spine is spruce-green, but
most people tend to think of it as gray because the rocks are
dun-colored where they show between the trees of the forests and at the
edge of the lakes—as knobby as the muscles of a prize fighter. . . .
And when the wind comes off the sea and the smell of salt water is in
the nostrils, the whole world is emptied of color.

It is easy enough to see how this part of the peninsula effectively
separated the two coasts for such a long while, and why the people of
Minas Basin felt so much closer to Massachusetts in the eighteenth
century than they did to Halifax. Even today, with roads across the
province running smooth as belts in a factory, there are no real inland
settlements. Nova Scotia is one long and involved seaboard—so involved,
in fact, that if it were extended in a straight line it would be found
to have more than five thousand miles of shore.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The old Studebaker stopped trying somewhere north of Bath in Maine, but
a little urging started it again and we drove on through the night to
reach Bangor and a train which I could pick up there for Nova Scotia. He
checked his trunks on my ticket in order to lighten the load in the car
still more, and I left him in the Bangor station at four-thirty in the
morning determined to get home with his prize buy if he could.

It took me another nineteen hours to reach Halifax. The train was
excessively dirty, hot, and crowded, and we seemed to spend a lifetime
in every junction we encountered. While I listened to a French woman
explain the attractions of her home in St. Pierre, or perhaps it was
Miquelon, I began to realize why the words _hell_ and _Halifax_ are so
often considered synonymous in the United States. The journey to both
localities is a murderous one. I must be fair, however; illness was
creeping up on me that day faster than I guessed, and air-conditioning
on trains has gone into general effect in Canada since then.

It was nearly midnight when the train puffed into the Halifax terminal
and I crawled out of it, unheralded. I know better than to ring strange
doorbells at such an hour. He had promised not to send a telegram
announcing the separation of our ways until the following morning,
giving his family only a marginal warning of my approach.

A shampoo in the hotel after breakfast restored my self-confidence, and
then I set off to find the family home. Like most doctors’
establishments in British countries, his father’s office was part of the
house itself; a wide brass plate by the front door, with his name
imprinted, made it easy to find where it stood near the end of a solid
Victorian row. When the placid-faced Newfoundland maid opened the door
in answer to my hesitant ring, and asked my name, I suggested she tell
her mistress only that I was a friend of her son. I don’t know why
saying one’s name for a stranger always feels like giving a bit of
oneself away.

I was shown into a blue drawing room dominated by a lovely copy of the
“Madonna of the Chair,” and the door was closed behind me. Not a sound
anywhere. Old-fashioned wooden shutters of a kind I had previously
encountered only in books were half-closed over the lower part of the
windows. Heavy Oriental rugs repeated the tones of the painting in blue
and gold, and the other furnishings in the room, chiefly of polished
mahogany, were all more comfortable than distinguished. The library
beyond was in half-light, but I could see a background of books, chairs
slip-covered for summer, and a row of silver trophies.

Then the door behind me opened and one of the most naturally gracious
women I have ever met stood there smiling as I turned around, waiting
for me to announce my business. So the telegram hadn’t arrived, I
thought, and wondered how I could tell her my name now without making
her fear a mishap to her son. My solitary presence frightened her
anyway; she had never seen a picture of me, but I must have looked
unmistakably American. One hand went to the region of her heart and she
spoke his name, as though all her life she had been waiting and dreading
bad news of him. Then her hand went out to me and her smile enveloped me
in concern for my comfort. From that moment I was in love with her
completely.

It took only a moment to explain where he was and how I happened to be
alone, and then another figure appeared from behind the blue hangings at
the library door. His was the sandy hair paling to white, the long upper
lip, and the high complexion of the pure Scot; but all I could see as he
emerged was the glittering head mirror, still attached to his forehead,
which he had been using in examination of a patient’s throat, forgotten
as his acute ears heard his wife’s outcry. He had no idea that he was
scaring me as much as I was upsetting him; he never dreamed that I was
quite as shy as he, though I showed it in a different way. He stood
there looking at me steadily; muttered “God bless my soul!” as his wife
explained there was no need for worry; and then disappeared into the
shadows again by a far door, taking the glittering round thing on his
head with him.

Of the remainder of that day I can’t seem to recall anything at all. By
the time the Studebaker had wheezed into the driveway late that
afternoon I had a mounting fever, and two days later I was in hospital
in the care of this father who was one of the most competent surgeons in
Canada. Perhaps my urgent need and its generous fulfillment by these
kindly, hospitable people formed a bond between us more quickly than
anything else could have done. To the Doctor I was transformed almost
immediately from the representative of an idea which he had no wish to
pursue into a patient whose needs he understood completely, and over
whom for the time being he could exercise absolute authority. To his
mother I was the child of other parents whom she had never met, and she
never lost a sense of caring for me in their stead. By his sister, who
returned from a vacation on Grand Manan while I was in hospital, I was
accepted not only as a potential sister-in-law but, better, as a friend,
and I began to discover why her counsel and advice had always inspired a
younger brother with the desire to measure up to the brilliance of her
academic achievements.

My convalescence in their sunny front bedroom was a succession of quiet
days filled with loving voices and small courtesies that attempted
constantly to keep me from feeling too far from my own home. It is small
wonder that I shall believe to the end of my days that Nova Scotians
have the most expansive hearts among all varieties of men. By the time I
was on my feet again, only a week remained before I must leave to keep
an appointment in Illinois.

It was one of Nova Scotia’s warm summers—sleepy, unconcerned, and
gentle. I watched him share in the doubles championship during the last
days of the annual tennis tournament held on the Cathedral courts, but
aside from this I knew little more about Halifax when I left than when I
had arrived. No one asked me questions or looked at me with more than
passing interest, and I was left to observe the spectators as well as
the players, during the week of the tournament, with the sensation of
being able to see and not be seen.

It was difficult to be sure how these Nova Scotians were different from
Americans, and yet they unquestionably were. Perhaps it was the lack of
wisecracks and banter; yet they were overflowing with good health and
high spirits. Both men and girls were intent on their game and obviously
played for the love of it, since the age of some of the entries must
have been nearer sixty than thirty. But there were no cheers from the
scattering of townspeople in the stands to encourage the players—only
the delicate clapping of hands now and then, and the call of “Shot!”
from an opponent on whom someone had scored.

The girls, both on the courts and in the stands, had a blurred
appearance in comparison with American girls of the same age; their hair
was brushed back with less concern for a final effect, their make-up was
fairly difficult to detect, their lips were often free from any
extraneous coloring whatever, and junk jewelry and attention-seeking
details of dress were entirely absent. Each appeared to want to look as
nearly like her neighbors as possible, and the majority were
unquestionably successful. For this reason the timber of a voice or the
angle of a smile became distinguishing features by which I learned to
identify them; and long after I was back home again it was by these
marks that I remembered them, rather than by something extraneous to
personality that each had worn.

I left one warm afternoon on the _Britannic_ as she returned to New York
from a holiday cruise. When all were ashore who were going ashore, he
stood below on the pier for the last hour before she sailed; and I found
myself remembering the night in Southampton three years previously when
I had first watched him, never dreaming then that I should be leaning
over a ship’s rail looking at him so again. Just above me now on another
deck stood a girl whom he had known several years before in England, an
American who was overjoyed to have recognized him. I could hear the
messages she called down to him, but neither she nor I could distinguish
his replies; so his attempted introductions were lost in the space
between us, and she remained unaware of my existence. He continued to
smile at us both and look uncomfortable.

And then whistles blew and chains rattled and people called good-bys in
higher, shriller voices. The strip of oily green water began to widen
between us and the pier. In a few moments Halifax could be seen climbing
up and down Citadel Hill, and a Nova Scotian sunset of no mean
proportions was attempting to outdo every other impression I had
received from my first holiday in this Maritime Province. The crowd
still waving on the pier became a blurred, dark thread, and then the
land itself moved off to the horizon while the odor of its spruce
forests went with us out to sea.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It seems strange, when you think about it, that this garrison town which
was built at the will of a Governor of Massachusetts to protect New
England should now be no part of the United States, after so many years
of being directly dependent on the fortunes of the colonies to the
south. The trouble is we never do think of it because it doesn’t match
what we learned in history classes at school. I don’t suppose the
reasons why Nova Scotia stayed neutral when the other English-speaking
colonies revolted are any more involved than the reasons why the United
States waited two years to take part in the present war. It all depends
upon whether they are your own reasons or somebody else’s
rationalizations.

One of the things that kept Nova Scotia neutral was rum. Another was the
juicy promise of war profits. Still another was the inevitable tendency
in human nature which prods us into believing that we can eat our cake
and still save the frosting. Certainly Nova Scotia’s neutrality was
never a matter of emotion; those individuals later known as United
Empire Loyalists were still living their easy lives in the thirteen
colonies, remember.

In the matter of rum—well, large distilleries had been set up in Nova
Scotia by Englishmen for the purpose of changing molasses—brought from
the West Indies—into this potent beverage. And the owners had seen to
it that these distilleries became an important cog in the economic life
of the colony, especially to the men in Halifax whose livelihood
depended on this extensive business. Many Halifax merchants were kept
deliberately in its debt. And then there were thousands of soldiers and
sailors who contributed to the local treasury by means of rum, for they
paid imposts on every drink. The English manufacturers allowed Halifax
authorities to levy these taxes in exchange for protection. The familiar
saying that one half of Halifax made rum and the other half drank it was
founded on more than fancy.

As to war profits—Halifax has always been primarily a naval and
military town. In the years preceding 1775 many troops and ships had
been withdrawn from this port by England, but with the prospect of war
on the North American continent, and their imminent return, merchants
and traders in Halifax saw renewed prosperity on the way. Brebner tells
us many of these things in _The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia_; and he
states, too, that it was inevitable that Nova Scotia should be retained
by Great Britain, because she was governed by the sea and Great Britain
was the stronger maritime power. So perhaps in this respect her loyalty
was not an expression of her will but of her dependence on the stronger
power, for she was at the mercy of the country which could best help her
to exist. If history doesn’t always repeat itself, it does at least
produce offspring bearing a familiar family resemblance.

Of course there were plenty of people in Nova Scotia in 1775 who swung
their support solidly behind the thirteen colonies in their revolt. An
attempt was made to duplicate the Boston Tea Party in Halifax harbor,
but it was easily quashed. And the farmers of Minas Basin, who found an
eager market for their produce in Boston, were as ready to sell to New
England as to the British forces. But all this friendly activity took
place at the beginning of the war. Before it was a year old Nova Scotia
was neutral in diplomatic terminology only.

It was in 1776 that a military raid was made on the province by way of
Maine when a small group of colonial militiamen tried to capture it. The
raid failed completely, and after that the peninsula was never in danger
from land forces. But a far worse form of suffering took its place. From
1776 until the end of the war Nova Scotia was never free from American
privateers who marauded the coastal settlements.

In those days the privateer—described by Webster as “an armed private
vessel commissioned to cruise against the commerce or war vessels of the
enemy”—was considered a legitimate adjunct of hostilities. But when
these vessels landed and looted settlements in a neutral colony, they
were merely pirates. Such pirating was not undertaken with official
sanction, of course, but the pirates were Yankees, nonetheless, and
recognized as such by the people they molested for seven years.

A vessel would appear in the harbor of a small, unarmed settlement on
the coast of Nova Scotia and tie up at the wharf. Its crew would strip
every vessel in the harbor and often tow all the craft away, abandoning
them at sea or making use of the vessels themselves. Every house in the
village would be looted of valuables and every object which the looters
fancied or thought they could sell would be carried away. When the
village was cleaned, the houses were more often than not burned to the
ground . . . until a better plan entered the minds of the privateers.
They began to offer not to burn a town for a payment of five thousand
dollars, and the villagers were forced to pay—when they could collect
that much money—because resistance would have been more costly than
acquiescence.

And that is why people who began the war as neutrals in Nova Scotia
ended it as bitter enemies of the new republic.

Only Halifax grew fat on the profits of the war. Privateers knew better
than to bother this harbor. Rents soared when exiles from the warring
colonies arrived; and merchants made the most of their opportunities,
salting down fortunes that were to last for generations and widening the
conspicuous breach between modes of living here and elsewhere in
outlying communities of the province.

Immediately following the war Halifax began to expand. Society—spelled
with a capital—flowered, and the governors sent out from London brought
court favorites with them. A choice triangle of rich land, formed by the
Avon and St. Croix rivers in the vicinity of Fort Edward, was parceled
out in lots to those in a position to ask favors, and the resulting town
of Windsor became a fashionable suburb of Halifax. Opulent country
villas and hunting lodges were built there, a race track got under way,
and fast horses and expensive carriages transported fashionably dressed
Haligonians the intervening fifty miles. King’s College was founded in
Windsor for the sons of gentlemen only, and it was raised to glory and
renown as an educational institution by those men of intellect and
training who arrived from New England with the Empire Loyalists after
1783. This beautiful town of Windsor became, in short, a center of
snobbery and disdain, as well as the seat of learning and culture in
Nova Scotia, and for years the incandescence of its dinner parties,
sleighing parties, and endless balls was recognized even in foreign
capitals.

                 *        *        *        *        *

One day early in 1719 an obscure wigmaker of Edinburgh whose name was
Andrew Haliburton decided it would be more amusing and perhaps more
lucrative to cater to the tastes of human beings in Boston than in
Scotland. Once he had emigrated to the new world, however, he stopped
making wigs and he stopped being obscure and eventually he married
Abigail Otis of Scituate. Their son William married his cousin Susanna
Otis, and so blueblood was added to Otis blueblood and the Haliburtons
found themselves sitting near the top rung of the social ladder.

When William and Susanna decided to take themselves and their offspring
to a place in Nova Scotia called Windsor they went not as did so many
improvident Puritans of their time, to take up lands left by the
Acadians, but rather as established gentry, for they had acquired an
extensive holding in this aristocratic suburb of Halifax. Their son, in
turn, performed only as was expected of him when he achieved distinction
in the legal profession in Nova Scotia and married twice into families
of unquestioned new-world prominence. And he was probably in no way
surprised, after producing a son himself in 1796 whom he named Thomas
Chandler Haliburton, to have that son become one of Nova Scotia’s most
noted products, for the lad was to achieve the distinction of being
Canada’s first and last creative satiric humorist.

Both as a man and as a writer this latter Haliburton was a paradox. Not
only were his manners supercilious and his point of view scornful, but
there emerged in his nature a strain of Lowland Scot which his
biographers are in the habit of crediting as the source of a strong
tendency toward buffoonery, callousness, and the coarse vulgarity which
showed so conspicuously in his writings. Whatever their cause, two
utterly unrelated qualities were combined in his nature and in his work;
and they happened to fuse in this instance into the fire of genius and
the sure touch of an artist. Though in a strict sense he cannot be
called the father of American humor, he must at least be acknowledged as
its stepfather; for the work of Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, and Irvin Cobb
stems from his famous character of Sam Slick, and Sam himself must
always be given a place beside such individuals as Tartarin, Pickwick,
and Huckleberry Finn.

Haliburton wrote many books in the course of a full life, including a
serious historical study of Nova Scotia, but only one—_Sam Slick, the
Clockmaker_—brought him world renown. This clockmaker was a Yankee
peddler in Nova Scotia who gave freely of his opinions regarding the
foibles and weaknesses of the people he served in the course of his
peregrinations throughout the province. He railed at their conceit and
their backwardness; he poked his wry tongue into their petty prides and
their lack of initiative. He was the prototype for that century’s smart
Yankee and the first of all cracker-barrel philosophers. But if he
showed up Nova Scotia with a biting wit and merciless sarcasm, he showed
up the vulgarity of himself and his own young country as well. He talked
about Yankees as “the most free and enlightened citizens on the face of
the airth . . . takin’ the shine off all creation,” and he said of them
that they “reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.” Again he
said, “We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but
when once obtained, it is not in human natur’ to surrender it
voluntarily.” And he gave to common usage many terms, such as “upper
crust” for British aristocracy and the phrase “Circumstances alter
cases.”

Haliburton based his literary method upon the classical tradition of
Swift, Addison, and Defoe, but his underlying theme was always directed
toward social reform and awakening. Such is the approach of all great
humorists, for humor—as J. D. Logan pointed out in an essay on
Haliburton in the _Canadian Magazine_ of September, 1921—is founded
upon a point of view which sees the comic in the cosmic, which takes a
common-sense attitude toward the relationship of the individual or the
small society to the whole universe. The more parochial and provincial a
group may be within a unit of society, the less capable are its members
of seeing themselves as comic when viewed as part of the cosmos.

Haliburton was an exceedingly handsome man, with sharp, cold British
features, piercing eyes, and a straight, horizontal mouth. Never was he
able to forget himself as an aristocrat, and he spoke of less fortunate
Nova Scotians as yeomen or peasants. He was a just product of King’s
College in Windsor; and though he practiced the profession of law first
in Annapolis Royal, it was in Windsor that he built a charming villa on
his father’s estate and saw to it that he had ample leisure for literary
work. In time he obtained a seat in the House of Assembly in Halifax and
later succeeded his father as Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.
Finally—through the influence of his friend and publisher, Joseph
Howe—he won for himself an appointment to the supreme-court bench,
though he was entitled to it, according to one of his biographers, by
right neither of seniority nor of legal acumen. And then he proceeded to
oppose publicly and bitterly Howe’s most cherished hopes for political
reform.

Perhaps if Haliburton had been a good justice and had maintained the
dignity of his office, Nova Scotians would have forgiven him the sarcasm
leveled at them in _Sam Slick_. But he interspersed court procedure with
witticisms and cheap puns, conscious that the crowds had come to hear
his cutting remarks as they would attend a show. So he began to find
himself sharply out of favor with those whom he considered his own class
in Nova Scotia, and nowhere was he accorded less honor or sympathy as a
creative writer than at home.

Canada has always been incapable of accepting humor turned upon herself,
because it is not in the nature of the Canadian people to laugh at
themselves. Nor are they able to tolerate criticism or satire directed
at them from within or without their society.

Haliburton created not only a valid point of view but three-dimensional
characters to carry it, and the social reforms which he hoped to affect
were wide enough in their scope to make _Sam Slick_ worthy of the place
he occupies in English literature. If he has, through the years,
produced less pleasure and less effect upon his readers than some of the
characters modeled upon him in the work of Dickens, the shortcoming lies
not so much in Haliburton as a writer as in the incapacity of the people
for whom he wrote to view him—or themselves—in their true relationship
to the cosmos. So it is that today Haliburton stands alone, without a
successor, as the only truly Canadian satiric humorist, while his own
people still fail to understand the universal appeal of a writer like
the American humorist, Mark Twain.

After he had reached the age of forty-five Haliburton made several trips
to England. When he discovered that his books were read with eagerness
and delight there, and that he himself was greatly admired, he closed
his home in Windsor, resigned his judgeship, and moved to London. Within
a few years he married an English widow who was able to present him not
only with a handsome income but likewise with excellent social
connections. She leased a magnificent manor on the Thames which had been
built by George I for his mistress, and finally Haliburton’s distinction
was capped when Oxford University bestowed upon him the honorary degree
of D.C.L. as a tribute to his contribution to English letters.

Haliburton needed an audience for his tongue as well as for his pen,
however, and three years later he won election to the House of Commons.
But his wit and eloquence had dimmed, though his self-assurance had not.
He crossed verbal swords with Gladstone more than once, and always came
off badly in the encounters. Though he advocated to the end of his
political life the advisability of imperial federation and the union of
British North America with the United States, he was never considered
better than a failure in English politics.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was perhaps the first Canadian not only to
find his keen mind running ahead of his fellow countrymen but to be
slapped down for his pains in trying to enlighten them. He was also the
first Canadian, conscious of being out of sympathy with his fellows, to
run for the place he considered his spiritual home—England. Many of the
successors of this prodigal son found it easier than he to be knighted
after their safe return to the parental roof, for Haliburton was never
given a title. But the formula missed only by a generation in this, its
first trial. His son was elevated to the peerage—having inherited none
of his father’s tendency toward persiflage and derision—and this family
of Haliburton’s has been seen no more in Nova Scotia.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It gives me pain to say it; but today Windsor is one of the most dismal
sights in the whole province, and I suggest that no visitor who is
unacquainted with its story stop to examine its physical aspects too
closely or inquire too pointedly into its habits. One or two of the old
houses remain, the surrounding country is still lush, and a handful of
the most charming individuals I have ever met anywhere live on family
farms and homesteads near by. But Windsor, which was once so unique, now
seems as lifeless as a stagnant pool. Only the things of nature
surrounding it remain as lovely as they ever were.

It was a town built upon egocentricity, self-righteous conservatism, and
a holier-than-thou point of view, and so it began to disintegrate from
the moment it turned its back upon the rest of mankind. There are other
reasons for Windsor’s decomposition, economic as well as spiritual; but
the seeds of decay were within itself from the start. King’s College was
exclusive and intolerant, allowing no one to enroll for instruction in
its halls of learning but members of the Church of England in good
standing; thus it gave rise to other colleges in opposition to this
intolerance, and as a consequence Nova Scotia has today more
institutions of higher learning per capita than any other part of
Canada.

The race track in Windsor was abandoned and torn down long ago; King’s
College lost its vigor and then its standing, and finally it became
amalgamated with Dalhousie University in Halifax; fine old estates were
cut up into building lots; the home of its most famous citizen is now a
museum; and only the lovely old elm trees on the road leading out of
town toward Halifax keep themselves aloof from the changes that have
taken place within their sight. Windsor is like an organism that died
long ago, but it remains unburied because those closest to it have
become accustomed to its color and condition. It is a phenomenon which
no American could ever understand.

                 *        *        *        *        *

I sat near the summit of Citadel Hill in Halifax on a summer morning in
1941, on the motor road that circles the star-shaped moat enclosing the
barracks that top this rise, and watched a convoy sail for England. A
soldier eyed my car as he measured his beat at one of the entrances of
the old fort; but I wasn’t breaking rules and had no intention of trying
to take pictures, so he didn’t tell me to move on. Above us rose a Union
Jack, held outright in the clean, sunny wind, and directly below me the
trampled grass of the hill formed a brown carpet that sloped gradually
to the streets surrounding its base.

Chebucto Bay this was called by the Indians and New England fishermen
who were familiar with its advantageous shelter long before there were
any settlements closer than the Acadians on the other side of the
province. The sea pushes between great headlands to form this famous
harbor, past a large island and a small one, narrowing to river width as
it passes the town. And then suddenly it opens into a wide, blue basin
some twenty miles in circumference and fathoms deep, hidden from sight
of the town by a knobby bluff.

With the help of St. Margaret’s Bay to the southeast, Halifax harbor
forms a second peninsula on this peninsular province; and within the
indentation of the harbor itself is still a third small projection,
seven miles long by three miles wide—the city itself. So it may be said
that Halifax is built on a peninsula on a peninsula on a peninsula.

A plan for the town, made by the engineers who accompanied the first
shiploads of troops when they settled here in 1749, may still be seen in
the Nova Scotia archives, showing how it was mapped out in square
blocks, around a parade, between a hill and a beach. The streets in the
plan are drawn for sixty feet in width; but someone must have made a
mistake, because they were built fifty-three feet wide instead—and so
they have always remained. What a pity!

No matter what your state of mind, your mission, the weather, scarcity
of time, or the day of the year . . . greet Halifax first from the top
of Citadel Hill. From there the whole city fans out in every direction,
embraced by the sea and supported by the fringe of green forests on its
outskirts. It is a pulsing, breathing, creating, and conscious thing
when it is seen whole like this, and its parts bear valid relations to
one another.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Northwest Arm, Halifax]

Several miles behind me were green forests, kept away from the town by
the long salt finger of the Northwest Arm. The native gray stone
buildings of Dalhousie could be seen in neat patches on a green campus
blanket, and far off to my right—stretching to the borders of the
handsome park that tips this peninsula—were the homes of those who
considered themselves the major citizens of the place. Between the base
of the hill and the water front were the square blocks of buildings that
comprise the business section, as much like Liverpool or Grimsby as a
seaport on the North American continent could well be. And lower yet, as
far as I could see in both directions, stretched the real life of the
town—the docks and sheds and piers and wharves that border the Stream,
as this narrow part of the harbor is called.

Across the harbor are the storage tanks and tall shafts of Imperoyal and
that nondescript brown patch of a town that is Dartmouth, connected to
Halifax by water-bug ferries that scurry back and forth across the
Stream. George’s Island, a fortified drumlin in the harbor, lies fairly
close to the Halifax shore, allowing just room enough for a ship to
slide by without being squeezed, while McNab’s Island seems to be almost
on the horizon, though it is less than three miles away.

Off to the left the Stream narrows perceptibly as the shores on both
sides become higher. And then Bedford Basin opens wide beyond, the way
the tip of a balloon bulges suddenly when air begins to expand it. I
thought how different this whole place looked five years before, the
June we were married and had come here to live in a small cottage on the
shore of the Basin just below Bedford. It was one of those Nova Scotia
summers that are sodden with rain, but the fine days reveal themselves
brightly in my memory.

In 1936 the surface of Bedford Basin was broken by nothing more
formidable than a few dinghies under sail; motorboats are rare in this
province—they are looked upon as a sacrilege by amateur seafaring
sailors. We had a coltlike sailboat that bucked and all but threw us in
dirty weather, yet it showed up to advantage those further merits of a
husband who could scarcely remember when he had first handled a tiller.
My own ineptitude shocked him, but I finally learned the immediacy of
action contingent upon the shouted order “Haul in the jib sheet!” Having
learned, I became extremely proud of this minor proficiency, at the same
time keeping to myself a continued belief that the performance of
sailing is a major miracle. I’m still timid about admitting what a fool
I was that summer.

When I found myself once more in Halifax as the bride of the only son of
a prominent family, I became suddenly uncertain of the requirements of
my new role. In an American metropolis one behaves, within wide limits,
as one pleases. Here I sensed that eyes followed me every time I
appeared on the streets or at a party. Nothing unkind or critical was
ever said in my presence, and there was no reason to think that
whispering in corners was concerned with me; but I began to squirm
nevertheless. Not that I considered Halifax another Main Street; it has
been a port of the world too long for that. It was rather as though I, a
dry-land animal, had been thrown into a marsh, and my pores were
unadapted to this new environment. I didn’t understand that stares
unaccompanied by comment may be complimentary, or that whispering in
corners may be concerned with pretty speeches which the perpetrators are
too shy to give openly to the one concerned.

So I began to say the wrong things in public and in private because I
uttered the first idea that came into my head, and it wasn’t done; I
wore the wrong things because my tastes were sharply defined on
individualistic lines; I did the wrong things because my training was of
the business world, not a town-and-gown society. Had I spoken a foreign
language it would have been far easier for me to accept the outward
differences in our manners, even as it would have been easier for them
to accept me. But we’re all so foolish that way—both Britishers and
Americans. We can climb mountains together when the need arises, but we
continue to stumble over pebbles if we’re accustomed to asphalt and
refuse to go farther until the other fellow sweeps the road. The
Britisher is proud and shy; the American is aggressive and
unconstrained. But all of us like roast beef and horses and beer and
week ends. Wouldn’t it be unpardonably dull if we all behaved exactly
the same way? Let’s _like_ each other’s differences, instead of gagging
on them.

Of course it’s easy enough for me to talk now. I was a trial and a third
to my family-in-law that summer, in spite of the fact that I was
admiring them tremendously every minute. The mistakes I made were
apparent to me only after years of learning to be ashamed of myself, and
my errors in judgment were corrected after tears and fury on my part and
endless patience on the part of the young Nova Scotian I married.

I suppose I was resentful because I discovered there are only two kinds
of people in Nova Scotia: those who belong and those who don’t. No one
within the borders of the province retains the least doubt as to which
group claims his membership. It is almost as though every last
individual born and brought up there has been given a secret
understanding of himself and his homeland—a touchstone for those who
share the secret, but an insurmountable wall for anyone who would try to
climb in from outside.

My experience that summer was in no way remarkable. Scores of books have
been written on the same theme. I note it as significant here only
because it warped my judgment of Nova Scotia in the beginning and
discolored most of my reactions to it. And yet Halifax and the entire
province won my affection against these heavy odds. Today’s praise,
therefore, is neither transient nor idle. I love Nova Scotia now for
reasons this book will never be able to reveal. Not that I shan’t
continue to attempt a revelation, but I have always found it easier to
be uninhibited when I talk about something I dislike with emotion than
something I admire with devotion. Shame on me, that this should be so.

The tranquillity which I eventually found in this fringe of Canada
erased all personal abrasions, and loneliness was lost in the sense of
timelessness I derived from days spent at little fishing villages like
Peggy’s Cove or Terence Bay . . . or a long afternoon lying on the
sloping lawn at the Dingle while we watched sailboats and canoes and
rowboats move soundlessly over the surface of the Northwest Arm as
gracefully as gnats and dragonflies on a green pond, and tried to make
plans in a world without a future—a world which seemed even then to be
bent inexorably on self-destruction.

All of Halifax was empty and old-fashioned and filled with echoes of
very small sounds during that summer of 1936, which now seems so long
ago. Most of the people on the streets appeared to be old and tired; the
young were all some place else. Wherever one went there seemed to be a
lot of space, no rubbing of shoulders or bumping into anyone. I can
remember walking through those heavenly gardens at dusk with a sensation
of being quite alone with the fragrant beauty of oversize blossoms,
great drooping trees, and waterfowl intent on their own pursuits. Point
Pleasant Park in those days was the private estate of every Haligonian,
where he could stroll at leisure with his own uninterrupted thoughts in
a forest preserve deep enough to shut the world of men away beyond the
high iron gates. Many people walked there every day; but rarely did they
meet, and so the illusion of privacy was scrupulously maintained.

I remember a night when we found ourselves becalmed in our sailboat in
the middle of Bedford Basin, halfway back to our wharf from the Narrows.
And no one either knew or cared. There was a supply of beer and food on
board, and the friend with us proved himself worthy of being included in
a list of indispensables on a desert island. We could see the lights of
itinerant cars crawling over the bumpy road on one side of the Basin;
but after midnight only the stars made points of light in the blackness,
while phosphorus washed radiance against the sides of our bobbing craft.
Conversation was rich with provocative ideas that night, and I learned
to gauge the breadth of vision in the male talk of modern Bluenoses. So
we waited patiently within sight of the undulant horizon, and finally
dawn brought a faint sigh of air sufficient to fill our sails in small
and tantalizing, but effective, puffs.

Today Bedford Basin seems less than a quarter the width it did that
summer. Pleasure craft are forbidden on it now and swimming on its
shores is not allowed. Instead of dinghies and starboats it is crowded
with merchant ships of all sizes and vintages and flags. Some are
interned for the duration; but most of them are filled to the Plimsoll
line with food and munitions and the implements of war, waiting for
convoy to Glasgow or Murmansk. In 1941 there was a towering gray object
at anchor in the Basin which had formerly been a French hospital ship,
and in one small cove could be seen barges where soldiers had been
practicing night landings.

Halifax now has double its usual population, and the place bulges like a
crammed gunny sack splitting at the seams. Trams discarded by Toronto
have been brought here to help relieve traffic jams, living quarters are
at a premium, the water supply is so low it takes three hours to run a
bath on the upper floor of houses in some sections of the city, and at
any hour of the day or night Barrington Street has the appearance of
noon on Seventh Avenue, New York. Except that here the majority of
pedestrians are in uniform; and often the uniforms indicate that the
wearers are men without a country, citizens only of the United
Nations—Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Free Frenchmen. Then, too, there is
the human jetsam from countless shipwrecks which manages to float back
to this eastern Canadian port, and the unhappy crews of interned ships,
all the girls who follow uniforms, outpourings of mushroomed offices,
friendless wives of officers on duty, and still some of the old
inhabitants who find it difficult to realize that Halifax is their
property no longer since it has been taken over by more than two score
nations at war.

The Dingle is matted with sailors and their girls during every hour of
the day; Citadel Hill is brown with their bodies each evening as they
hunt a place to sit and talk; Point Pleasant Park can produce a soldier
and his girl behind every old tree; the Public Gardens are gayer than a
Swiss Kürsaal throughout the warm weather, when bands play in its old
rotunda and thousands of human figures mill along its gravel walks,
taking care always to respect the flower beds flaming with masses of
rainbow colors. Restaurants—such as Halifax affords—are too busy to
change tablecloths, parking space for a car is nearly impossible to find
on the main thoroughfares, hotels and rooming houses never want for
guests, and private homes continue to hold open house for as many
servicemen as each can afford to entertain.

It’s an impressive, emphatic place, and since the early months of the
war—when rumors were as thick as fog—it has gone about its job with
tight lips. Wonderful stories have come out of it, of course; but it’s
always easier to hear these tales a thousand miles away than in Halifax
itself. The stories that afford Haligonians more personal pleasure than
any others are the ones emanating from Berlin in which this or that
great battleship or cruiser or aircraft carrier is claimed to have been
destroyed by enemy action. Often it will be anchored right there in the
Stream. The town looks at the familiar camouflaged shape lovingly and
goes on with its business, chuckling inwardly but never giving the enemy
the satisfaction of pointing out the mistake.

That morning last summer when I sat on the summit of Citadel Hill,
freighters were tagging one another in line from the Basin as far as I
could see to the horizon. Each merchantman was the distance of
approximately four from the one in front, all of them seeming to slide
effortlessly through the water. Ever since dawn they had been moving
past the town to the open sea, and for hours more they would continue.
Little dispatch boats weaved among them and barked at their heels,
marshaling them like faithful collies herding sheep. Out on the horizon
two huddled groups could be seen: those that had already passed out of
the Basin and now awaited orders for lining up on the march across the
ocean, and a second group of incoming ships halted at a safe distance
until the convoy was complete and on its way.

Submarine nets at the harbor mouth are opened and closed between each
incoming ship, and particular care is given the vessels that carry
munitions; for no one forgets the terrible explosion that occurred in
Halifax harbor during the first World War. That was on the December
morning in 1917 when a good portion of the town was blown away as the
result of a collision between two ships that met unexpectedly at the
Narrows. One was a relief ship and the other was a French merchantman
carrying picric acid, benzol, and TNT.

Hugged close to the passenger piers this morning lay seven transports
dressed in service gray, each as devoid of trimming as a modern private
in the Canadian army. All of them were packed to the rails with
regiments of men in khaki and air-force blue, dotted here and there—if
one were close enough to see—with groups of young nurses and volunteers
in one of the women’s auxiliary corps. For days these ships had been
taking the outpourings of trains that kept arriving from every province
in the Dominion. Now the gangplanks were up and they were ready to sail.
No bands would play them off as they did twenty-five years ago, no flags
flutter from clenched fists, no women stand about crying, and no
children watch a sight grown familiar and commonplace. For the duration
of this war the docks and yards of Halifax harbor are forbidden ground,
closed to everyone except bona fide holders of a pass. The penalty of
getting through the protecting wire fences unlawfully has proved in more
than one case to be instant death.

I realized I had been sitting there a long time, almost motionless. And
still the freighters plowed through the Stream like logs carried by the
current. Perhaps the transports wouldn’t sail until the next day. I
counted the churches visible in the panorama below me: St. Paul’s, built
in 1750 with materials brought from New England, still proud of itself
for being the oldest Protestant church in Canada; St. Mary’s spire, the
tallest and loveliest; All Saint’s Cathedral, solid, imitative, and
dull; and old St. Matthew’s, dour as a true Scottish kirk.

What would be the last thing in Halifax those soldiers were likely to
see, if it was still daylight when their ships steamed out? Point
Pleasant Park? One of these church spires? No, of course not; it would
be the flag at the top of the hill behind me, an emblem beautiful in its
symmetry and balance of color, a symbol of the empire of which this old
town has always been a vital and self-conscious part.

“Been in Halifax long?” I said to the soldier who was leaning against my
car when I got back to it.

“God, yes,” he said heavily, and then he looked embarrassed.

“Never mind,” I reassured him. “I don’t belong here, either.”

He smiled then. “I don’t know where you’re from, lady, but I know where
I’d like to be. Right back in Portage la Prairie . . . that’s in
Manitoba.”

“Stationed here permanently?” I asked.

“Feels that way, but I may get shoved off some place else any time. This
dump ain’t nowhere.” He scratched his head, tipping his forage cap
farther over his right eye. “Guess it’s gotta be, though . . . this
harbor. Hear how they blew the nose off one of our destroyers—right out
there almost where you can see—just a month ago? She limped back
looking a mess, sure enough.”

“No. I hadn’t heard that one.”

“You heard about the _Surcouf_? Her frog crew mutinied and took her
straight to Brest, with all the Admiralty charts and everything.”

“You don’t believe it, do you?”

“That’s what they say.”

“But you know it’s only propaganda—one of the usual Goebbels stories.”

“Who? Oh . . . him! Say, you know, my old man landed here once, when he
came from Bessarabia. Bet he’d like to hear how it looks now.”

“Be careful you don’t write the stories you’ve been telling me. Letters
are censored out of here, aren’t they?”

“Never mind. My old man can’t read good, anyhow. Did you hear how last
week, when the _Rodney_ was in . . .”

“Good-by,” I said. “And good luck.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Halifax is the sound of carts on cobblestone streets, of the cannon
being fired from Citadel Hill every noon, of geese quacking in the
Public Gardens after the gates have been closed at ten o’clock each
night, of foghorns and boat whistles and quayside traffic, of
beautiful-voiced women, and of marching battalions and pipe bands to
lead them. It is encompassed by the sound of wind in the forests, and
waves tearing tirelessly against the shore, and freight trains coming in
through the night from thousands of miles away to deliver food and
clothing for people scattered around the world. It is also the homely
sound of logs burning on hearths, bumbling and turning over into more
comfortable positions.

Halifax is the smell of balsam and spruce mixed with ozone and salt
spray. It is the water-front odors of tar, bilge water, fishmeal, oakum,
and rotting wood. It is also the smell of manure dropped by Clydesdale
horses pulling slovens along Water Street, of ether clinging to the
clothes of able surgeons, of long streets lined with blossoming lime
trees in summer, and of roasting joints of lamb and beef with Yorkshire
pudding.

As for color—Halifax houses flaunt some of the dreariest hues known to
the human eye, and these ugly shades of paint are confined to four
tones. One could almost imagine that a supersalesman had managed to rid
himself of an overloaded stock of just these four shades that no one
else would buy. Chocolate brown, battleship gray, the nasty shade of
cooked liver, and a dark, bilious green—such comprise the gamut of
colors used in painting the wooden houses in the old part of town. Out
in the new section three other tones have been added—white, barn red,
and the tan of badly cured leather—but since the shapes of these newer
houses are for the most part less distinguished than the old Victorian
models, the general effect is hardly one of improvement.

In spite of the fact that Halifax is built on solid rock, wood has
always been cheaper and easier to obtain for building material than
stone; so, with only a few notable and disastrous exceptions, every
dwelling in the town—from Young Avenue to Grafton Street—has been made
of wood. Salt air rots the outside walls and paint peels from them, but
wood always has been used; so wood always will be used, for that is how
it is in Halifax.

It is my belief that the colors of house paint we see in this port today
are the same ones used originally when the first compact boxes were
built to house officers and merchants. The aim then was doubtless to
make these wooden affairs resemble as nearly as possible homes
remembered in the old country. Gray paint and brown paint were meant to
look like gray stone and that lovely old weathered brown stone we see in
English buildings like Kenilworth. Perhaps the dark green was meant to
resemble ivy-covered walls. I can’t explain the liver color. Whatever
the reason for this choice in paint, the total effect has contrived to
look like nothing but exceedingly bad taste.

And yet I love nearly every street in Halifax. The first winter that I
saw the place bare of foliage and grass I was depressed enough by its
gloomy face to want to hide until dark came to cover it over. Now I know
that the most unimpressive front can hide the most charming and colorful
interior. Moreover, I know that the owners of these ugly old houses
would consider it an insult to their neighbors, as well as an invitation
to the tax appraiser, to paint their houses in such a manner as to draw
attention to themselves and so belittle the appearance of the houses on
either side. Americans will find that kind of motivation nearly
impossible to believe, imbued as we are with the theory that to be the
envy of one’s neighbors is the sum of existence. But again I stress my
point—unless such fundamental differences in value are recognized,
nothing else in Nova Scotia makes sense to the outsider.

I remember hearing the Doctor chuckling one time over an episode which
he thought inordinately funny. A pleasant-enough fellow with the proper
introductions had come from Toronto to Halifax to represent a large
insurance company. (To understand the story you must remember that
Toronto is more American, in its outward habits and point of view, than
British.) The salesman established his office in a business block, and
then he started proceedings to buy one of the largest houses in the
South End. It wasn’t for sale. So he raised the amount of his offer. But
the owner repeated what he had said in the first place; it wasn’t for
sale—at any price.

Eventually the newcomer settled for a smaller house with ample grounds
in a good location. He had it painted white, added black trimming, and
turned the front door into a brick-red color. Then he improved the lawn
and gardens, widened the driveway, and tore down the crippled iron fence
that had always enclosed the property. As I remember, he also bought a
yacht; secured memberships in the best clubs; and drove the most
expensive car in the province, custom-built in colors to match the
trimming and front door of his house.

At the end of six months he grew worried because business had failed to
materialize. So he began to entertain more lavishly. Still not enough
new policies were written to pay for having the fence taken down.
Finally he made an appointment with one of the most sagacious men in
town, and he put the problem to him.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “What’s wrong with this place? I’m one of
the best men in my whole company. My commissions have topped all our
other salesmen for years. But I can’t crack Halifax.”

“We’re fairly difficult here, I’ve no doubt.”

“Well . . . yes, but I’ve never met friendlier people. If you don’t like
me, I’d never know it. And yet I can hardly make a sale.”

“Perhaps you’ve created an unfortunate impression.”

“Good Lord, how?”

“I don’t know much about the details of your business,” the Haligonian
said quietly. “But I should guess that you don’t yet understand Nova
Scotia. You will in time.”

“But I’ve done everything I could. I’ve spent enough money to equip an
army.”

“I rather suspect that’s your trouble.”

“_That_ is? But why? My company has never been represented here before.
How else could I convince Halifax that it’s one of the best?”

“If I may say so, nobody ever convinced Halifax that way. If no one will
buy from you it’s because they’re convinced your company is unsound.”

“I don’t follow the reasoning.”

“Pardon me if I’m candid. I take it that’s what you want. Every man I
know in Halifax reasons that your company couldn’t possibly be any good
or it wouldn’t hire a man who throws money away so casually.”

Whether or not the company in question is now represented in Halifax I
don’t know, but their first representative folded in less than a year.
It took him that long to prove to himself that his informant was right.
The house he bought was repainted by its subsequent owners to resemble
its neighbors as nearly as possible; and everyone in the vicinity
breathed easier, I am sure.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Government House, Halifax]

The few really beautiful buildings in Halifax are notable, and they
stand out like burnished silver in a miner’s kitchen. Because they are
public buildings, even the shyest of Haligonians is able to admire them
unashamedly, relieved of a fear of attracting attention to himself; for
he is admitting admiration of something that belongs to the community,
not to himself. Government House, the Province Building, and the new
buildings on the spacious campus of Dalhousie University are worthy of
any man’s pride. They are all made of native stone, quarried not far
away, and fashioned on early Georgian lines—stemming from the same
influence that produced our own southern colonial. With their wide,
leaded windows in happy balance, lines well proportioned, roofs sloping
and high, and care shown in such details as broken pediments and
fanlights over lovely Georgian doorways, they are thoroughly satisfying
evidence that good taste has not been completely outlawed in Halifax
architecture. When every wooden house in the place has rotted away or
burned to the ground, these handsome stone structures will remain. And
who is to say the conclusions of antiquarians will not be righteous,
when Halifax taste is finally judged by such monuments?

                 *        *        *        *        *

Of all public figures in the history of Nova Scotia, the one nearest the
heart of the province, now as well as in his own lifetime, is Joseph
Howe. His name still carries a good sound in the ears of his
people—plain Joe Howe. Every Nova Scotian knows what he looked like,
what he talked like, what he sounded like; for in everything he did and
said he was the personification of the province. But among Nova Scotians
he was unique in this: he worked at home—not for a profession like
medicine or education—but for Nova Scotia.

He was born in Halifax in 1804 of Massachusetts loyalist stock. He grew
up adoring a father who was a strict religionist but too poor to give
him a proper education, and so he learned printing in the back of his
father’s shop, educated himself, and at the age of twenty-four bought
and began editing the _Nova Scotian_. Within no time at all he made it
the leading newspaper of the province and his editorials were quoted
widely.

Nova Scotia in those days was no part of Canada as we know the Dominion
today, except that it happened to be on the same continent with four
other colonies—all governed from the same Colonial Office in London.
Each was ruled by a governor sent out from England who was supported by
a council of twelve gentlemen, appointed by the King, who held their
offices for life. There was also in each colony a legislative assembly,
consisting of members elected by the people, but the power of these
latter groups was practically negligible and their responsibilities
nonexistent. They could talk their heads off, disagree with governor and
council, and demand their privileges; but aside from levying certain
taxes, their only privilege was of listening to one another complain to
no avail.

In Nova Scotia, as in the other colonies, it was the council that
counted, for here sat a chief justice who made a law, administered the
law, and then interpreted it; here sat the bishop of the Anglican
Church; here sat the bankers who were able to issue notes from a bank
without a charter; and here sat the businessmen who took to themselves
all prestige and profit under the friendly eye of the British governor.
Their meetings were by law held behind closed doors, for this was the
aristocracy of the colonies.

The Family Compact, it was called; and it took a onetime printer’s devil
to break it forever in Nova Scotia, whereas only rebellion could do the
same thing in the rest of Canada. Joseph Howe had a superabundance of
courage and integrity, of imagination and the eloquence necessary to
communicate his ideas to others. The scope of his ideas grew with the
gradual realization of his own powers and capacities, but always they
were directed toward one thing alone—the betterment of life for Nova
Scotians. He was never bedazzled by the uniforms and the titles of the
English who arrived in vessels from the old country to govern him, nor
was he intimidated by the snobbery of a society bent upon maintaining
its wealth and the lucrative sources of its income, any more than he was
pleased by a pat on the head from the hand of a colonial-minded British
set which regarded Nova Scotia merely as a port of call in a rapidly
expanding British Empire.

Unlike his friend Haliburton, Howe was not a wit; but he was a poet, and
here lay the most significant difference between the two men. When
Haliburton found the narrow-mindedness of Nova Scotia stifling, he left
it in contempt and went to live in England. Howe reacted more robustly.
Knowing every village and nearly every family in the entire province, he
put his faith in the people, absolutely and without reserve. He stayed
home and fought against the Family Compact, and when it was broken he
went on to fight against those financiers and social snobs who will
always cling like parasites to the skirts of the powerful and in the
name of loyalty hope for scraps from the rich man’s table. Nova Scotia
was able to thank him for leading a revolt by the power of his mind and
his speech, and winning it without bloodshed.

When the _Nova Scotian_ printed an attack on the government in Halifax,
accusing its members of corruption and mismanagement, Howe—as editor of
the paper—was sued for libel. Not a lawyer in the province could be
found to plead his case, for they considered it indefensible. So the
thirty-one-year-old newspaper editor read everything he could find on
the laws of libel in the two weeks at his disposal, wrote out two
paragraphs of a speech, and then appeared to plead his own case. He
spoke for six and a half hours, and again the following day. When the
case ended with his acquittal he found himself carried out of the
courtroom on the shoulders of a great crowd. From that moment the people
knew he belonged to them, as their champion for responsible government.

The following year he became leader of the Popular party when he was
elected to the Legislative Assembly in Nova Scotia, and by his efforts
and specifically by the color and incisiveness of his words he was able
to force successive governors from the province until the Colonial
Office in London agreed to an elected council and finally to a
curtailment of the powers of the governor, who ever since has been
granted no greater authority than the King of England himself possesses
in relation to his Prime Minister and cabinet.

Joseph Howe went on to energize the imagination of everyone who came
within sound of his words or reach of his pen. He used his power to
establish an educational system in Nova Scotia free of the church, he
promoted an intercolonial railroad to connect the vital points of trade
in British North America, and he never failed to use a verbal whip on
those who sought to exploit a government in order to garner fat
contracts. So he was scorned and insulted by the privileged, who called
him ugly and uncouth and insisted that the province was becoming a place
unfit for gentlemen to live in.

In the words of Howe’s most ardent biographer, “Young ladies carried
themselves with greater hauteur than ever, heroically determined that
they at least would do their duty to Society. Old ladies spoke of
Antichrist, or sighed for the millennium. All united in sending Howe to
Coventry. . . .

“There was too much of human nature in Joe Howe to take all this without
striking hard blows in return. He did strike, and he struck from the
shoulder. He said what he thought about his opponents with a bluntness
that was absolutely appalling to them. He went straight to the mark
aimed at with Napoleonic directness. They were stunned. They had been
accustomed to be treated so differently. Hitherto there had been so much
courtliness of manner in Halifax; the gradations of rank had been
recognized by every one; and the great men and the great women had been
treated always with deference. But here was a Jacobin who changed all
this; who in dealing with them called a spade a spade; who searched
pitilessly into their claims to public respect, and if he found them
imposters declared them to be imposters; and who advocated principles
that would turn everything upside down.”[3]

At the age of fifty-five Howe became Premier of Nova Scotia, and in
1868—after the colonies of British North America had formed a federal
union to become the Dominion of Canada—he accepted a post in the
cabinet of Sir John Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister. Five years
later he returned to Halifax and moved into Government House as
Lieutenant Governor of his own province, but within a month of his
election he was dead.

“On the morning after Howe’s death a wealthy Halifax merchant, one who
had been a devoted friend of his, saw as he was entering his place of
business a farmer or drover, one well known for ‘homespun without, and a
warm heart within,’ sitting on a box outside near the door, his head
leaning on his hand, his foot monotonously swinging to and fro, looking
as if he had sat there for hours and had no intention of getting up in a
hurry. ‘Well, Stephen, what’s the matter?’ ‘Oh, nauthin’,’ was the dull
response. ‘Is it Howe?’ was the next question, in a softer tone. The
sound of the name unsealed the fountain. ‘Yes, it’s Howe.’ The words
came with a gulp, and then followed tears, dropping on the pavement
large and fast. He did not weep alone.”[4]

                 *        *        *        *        *

Visitors in Halifax tend to think of their days in the town as a
succession of Saturdays and Sundays. To those who are stationed here as
a result of the war, it must seem to be always Monday morning. My own
memories of it are divided distinctly into Saturday and Sunday groups.

Everyone moves at a quicker tempo on Saturdays in Halifax in normal
times, though never could the day be called agitated at its most rapid.
Saturday mornings belong to all the housewives who start off early for
the great market on Brunswick Street, woven Indian baskets hung over
their arms. A neat social distinction is involved in the color and shape
and size of these baskets. Even the figurative Colonel’s lady carries
her own, to fill it with vegetables and tinned biscuits and choice cuts
of meat. Paper-covered parcels brought home under one’s arm, on the
other hand, would be inconceivable in the best circles. Or so it was
before the war. You can see the pitfalls for the uninitiated here; first
I disgraced my husband’s family by walking home from a shopping
expedition laden with my purchases, all in brown bags or wrapped boxes.
When I finally understood about the baskets—even they must not appear
after noon—I made the mistake of buying one with a common sort of
handle!

Saturday afternoons in summer are filled with swimming, holding a tiller
to a point on the compass, maybe watching a baseball game on the Commons
or a cricket match on the Wanderer’s grounds. Saturday afternoons in
winter are unendurable, except when they are broken by tea at four
o’clock before an open fire; for one is expected to take outdoor
exercise no matter how vile the weather. Halifax is generous, though, in
the opportunities it offers for walks.

Point Pleasant, for instance, is an extensive natural park at the
seaward tip of Halifax, covering a bluff that projects into the wide
harbor. Its forest paths are sprinkled with filtered sunlight and they
are soundless except for the birds. If war has changed these details,
you may be sure peace will bring them back again. Paths circle the park
and cross it and interlace it, but no cars are allowed beyond its iron
gates. Point Pleasant is an experience of emotional cleansing and
refreshment, as much as it is a place.

The Public Gardens, laid out in 1753, are tightly enclosed by a high
iron fence which even small boys cannot climb. Still blooming
prodigiously within are well-tended flower beds and bordered paths which
manage to prove that man’s imagination, love of beauty, and hard work
can conquer unfertile soil and keep an idea alive through the span of
nearly two hundred years. There are small ponds and rivulets and bridges
and fountains within the Gardens, too, loved and inhabited by a variety
of fowl. There is an open bandstand in its center, benches at intervals
along its shaded paths, and name tags on every tree and shrub for
identification. One of the first sounds I learned to identify in Halifax
was the watchmen’s warning whistle in the Gardens, as he went the rounds
to put all visitors out by ten o’clock each night. After ten it was dark
inside the iron fence; but, lying in bed across the street, I could hear
winds playing through the rare old trees, and imagine the whisper of
blossoms closing for a nap before dawn and the honk of geese as they
gossiped about the nursemaids and their charges who had visited the
Gardens during that day.

If Saturday nights nowadays are given over to parties, affairs at one of
the clubs, or a social evening distinct from any other night of the
week, it has come about since I was last there. Only Buckingham Street
gives evidence that the week is over once more and pay resting heavy in
pockets. For Buckingham Street is where loafers, stevedores, and truck
drivers have been standing on corners talking for the last hundred
years. The knotted groups of men shift and change their personnel, but
they never entirely disappear and they never cease to indulge in the
great Nova Scotian vice—talk. These street corners take the place of
saloons and taverns and the English pub, of which there are none in
Halifax; they are the equivalent of the poolrooms and barbershops of an
American small town. They are the outdoor clubs of the working classes,
as familiar and unnoticeable to the rest of the inhabitants of this port
as . . . as the clutter of tipping telephone poles that border all the
main thoroughfares and spoil every vista with crisscrossing wires and
knobs and scarred spars. These groups of men along Buckingham Street,
standing slack in their ill-fitting clothes, are quite as indigenous to
Halifax and as characteristic of the temper of the town as the
Saturday-morning housewives with their colored market baskets. Neither
catastrophe or revolution nor a boom is likely to change or inhibit
them.

                 *        *        *        *        *

A gray Nova Scotian winter sky pressed close over our heads all that day
before the first Christmas of our marriage. We had arrived in Halifax
the night before. A sense of pleasure colored by childish anticipation
of a new experience played along my spine, for at no other time in a
year is the realization so strong in a human heart of being either
within a group which is held together by affection and tradition or
outside and alone. Only once before had I been anywhere but enclosed in
the warmth of my own home at Christmas; and now I had been taken in by
another close-knit family, with the privilege of sharing in their
cherished habits and learning which customs they had loved enough to
carry across the Christmases from one generation to another.

Halifax in winter is enormously ugly. There is nothing pale and drab
about it, nothing self-effacing. It is monstrously impressive and
forever unforgettable in its dreariness. Shorn of color and the drapery
of foliage, bereft of sun and starlight and flowers, it makes no
compromise with winter and attempts no cheerful compensations in the
form of evergreens set at graceful intervals on lawns or close to
doorways. Who would think of bringing spruce or fir trees into town when
the place is hedged with them? No candles gleam in windows to add
outward greeting for the holidays, few doorways are lighted, and no one
attempts by personal adornment to add a touch of gaiety to the scene.
Winter is never a clear-cut thing of glistening snow and rosy cheeks and
frostbitten fingers. It is merely the absence of summer, borne with
resignation and fortitude by people who have learned to endure this
glutinous, formless mass of gray that encloses the town like the
substance of a nightmare.

On the other hand, there is no place like Halifax in winter for making
the transition from outdoors to indoors the miracle it becomes each time
a heavy oak front door is closed behind one and the smell of wood smoke
takes the place of soot-laden fog. Since fruit wood as well as balsam is
inexpensive, odorous fires dance and chatter on hearths, shutters close
out the weather, and a loving welcome augments generous hospitality for
anyone who is invited within.

The Doctor’s house seemed to be creaking with hurried footsteps and a
sense of anticipation on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Smiles
encompassed one’s person and seemed to linger on ideas glimpsed over
shoulders. Here in this home, I knew, was a portion of what must be
going on within hundreds of similar houses that look bleak on the
outside and yet are filled with kindliness hidden from passing eyes.
Here I should find a true expression of enthusiasm, so patently lacking
in public functions, and I should understand at last why spontaneity and
sparkle, which is considered bad form outside one’s own four walls, is
reserved for families alone.

My nose began to identify familiar odors. . . . Mince meat! Yes, pies
must always be made the day before. Or was it plum pudding? Would they
have turkey and candied yams and chestnut stuffing, or . . . what _was_
the traditional British equivalent? Roast boar? Hardly. Ham? And was the
tree standing on the cold back porch, ready for its entry on Christmas
Eve? At home Mother always decorated our house, letting her imagination
play with tradition. And it was my father’s act to bring in the tree as
soon as the Christmas Eve dinner of baked beans and fresh rolls and
salad and gingerbread was over.

But this was Halifax and not the North Shore, and I wanted not to
remember our ways but share willingly in new manners and habits. The
baked beans and gingerbread were an inheritance from my New England
grandmother, always considered a fit prelude to the feast of the next
day. If there was no odor of molasses and salt pork coming from the oven
in this house, there was a distinct smell of antiseptics creeping in
from the Doctor’s consulting room. Of course! This was Saturday, and the
busiest day of the week for the Doctor. That accounted for the constant
ringing of the doorbell and the muffled footsteps as patients were shown
into the waiting room at the left of the front door.

There were no pale green walls in the Doctor’s office, no copies of
_Harper’s Bazaar_ and _Fortune_ to help tide over inevitable waits.
_Blackwood’s_ and old numbers of the _Manchester Guardian_ took their
place. Nor were there expensive draperies at the windows, upholstered
armchairs in modern _décor_, exquisite prints on the walls, or goldfish
swimming in a bowl—all proclaiming to sufferers how their money was
spent on receipt. Fumed oak, brown leather, and a blooming plant grown
from a lemon seed followed the Halifax pattern in doctors’ waiting
rooms. But the care each individual received behind those closed doors
which separated waiting room from office was the result of many years of
study, experience intelligence, and skill, combined in balanced
proportions in a man of rare character.

Many of his patients came to him from long distances in the country.
They needed no luxurious surroundings while they waited to convince them
that the careful ministrations of this surgeon would heal them if it
were within the power of any human being to do so. On this afternoon of
Christmas Eve they knew also that he would recognize their requirements
as more important than any extraneous matters incident to a date on the
calendar.

It was when I happened into the drawing room on an errand for his mother
that I saw the tree, standing in a far corner already trimmed. All
Christmas trees in Canada, I have learned since, have a secondhand
appearance compared with the trees we buy and take home to trim in
America. Each year the best of those cut in Canadian forests are sent to
markets in the United States and sold at prices which would scandalize
Canadians. Only smaller, scrawnier ones are left for home consumption.

But what did tinselly Christmas trees matter when the lady of this house
was as serene and careless of time as though no last-minute parcels
remained to be wrapped, no stray uncles waited to be called in from a
lonely restaurant dinner, no checking of details was necessary to be
sure everything was in readiness for the next morning’s celebration?
Hers was the lifelong job of anticipating the wants of her family and
supplying comforts before their lack was felt. Self-abnegation to her
was neither a duty nor a necessity. It was a way of life, lived so
unobtrusively as to be unapparent to everyone.

We sat before the fire in the library after supper, knitting and talking
of minor family affairs. His father read to himself in his own big chair
at the left of the hearth; his sister went over with her brother an
academic problem of intense interest to them both; his mother let her
gift for mimicry enrich a story she told me of Newfoundland Mary’s
difficulty in deciding how the new missus should be addressed to
distinguish her from the mistress. And then Christmas Eve was over. The
Doctor looked at his watch, wound it, remarked that it was ten o’clock,
and went upstairs to bed. Within ten minutes everyone had followed.

It was the first time I had gone to bed before midnight on Christmas Eve
since I had attained the stature of being allowed to stay up and
participate in family rituals—candlelight, carol singing, fruit cake,
and wine. By eleven everyone was asleep in the Halifax house.

“They’re all such dears,” I thought as I lay quietly in the dark. “The
Doctor was tired after a lot of consultations today. And he did three
operations this morning. Maybe they save all their Christmas fun for one
day.”

By eight o’clock the next morning the house was stirring.

“Hullo,” he said, without opening his eyes. “You just bumped into me in
a railway carriage—in my dream. Or was it another girl?” When he
finally opened his eyes he said, “Look, the sun’s shining! I don’t
believe it. We’re in Halifax, aren’t we? Turn out the light.”

“Your mother just knocked on the door,” I said. “Your father wants you
to get up. Come on; it’s a lovely day. I don’t want to go down without
you.”

“Why not? I’ll be along pretty soon. Tell Mary lots of bacon.” “What
shall I do with our packages? Do you put them under the tree before
breakfast, or do you open them after you eat, or what?”

I’ve forgotten what he said, but I gathered he was still half asleep; so
I tried to swallow the feeling of being not more than eight years old,
and went downstairs obediently. The breakfast table looked the same as
it always did in the brown dining room where a pair of full-rigged ships
lurched in their separate gales on two walls. The far end of the
damask-covered table was cut off by an opened newspaper, surely read
this morning from habit rather than for news value since it could hardly
have been of the day’s vintage. Behind it emerged the habitual sound of
the Doctor discreetly clearing his throat.

While I tried to eat an orange cut as though it were a grapefruit, the
lovely contralto voice of the lady of the house served as an obbligato
to the quiet ministrations of the maids. Had I been warm enough during
the night? We must remember to send a telegram to my family later in the
day. Did Chicago always have snow at this time of the year?

Halfway through an ample British breakfast the newspaper came down.
“You’re not dressed for church,” the Doctor said as his son appeared.

No one had yet mentioned Merry Christmas, and no candles or holly or
decorations or special treats were in evidence. His sister had finished
breakfast long ago and already she was on her way to join the choir in
which she sang. Then slowly, by listening and saying nothing, I began to
realize that it was not Christmas at all in this house—nor perhaps
anywhere else in Halifax. It was Sunday—the most important day in the
week, and in no respect different from the Sundays before and the ones
sure to follow.

My face probably gave me away. “We’ll open our parcels tomorrow,” his
mother explained. To the Doctor she said as he left the room, “Are you
going down to Windsor to see poor Mrs. Brett tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes . . . yes,” he replied. “If I’m spared and well.”

When he had gone she caught my eye and smiled. “He means, you know, if
the wrath of God doesn’t alight on him first.”

“I’ve heard that all my life,” his son added. “Whether the occasion in
question was a few hours or a few years hence. But every time he says it
he thinks what it means and means what it says.”

“Let’s not keep him waiting,” his mother said. “You know how your father
hates to be late for church.”

As I went upstairs to put on a dress sufficiently subdued to be
considered suitable for churchgoing I thought how everyone else in the
world who loved Christmas would be having gifts to open this morning
. . . unless they’d already had them last night. At home the lights of
our blue and silver tree would be on and tissue paper would be piling up
on the living-room floor. Everyone besides Mother would be waiting for
the best moment of all when she unwrapped that token of our love which
every year we attempted to encompass in a material thing, and every year
failed to approximate. And all the time Mother would be watching
anxiously lest someone be disappointed or someone have fewer packages to
open than anyone else. Telegrams would be arriving, and boys with
flowers, and friends would be calling to add their verbal wishes to the
happy confusion.

The sun had disappeared by the time we walked down Spring Garden road
and turned right at Barrington Street to cross to old St. Matthew’s
Church. There were subdued greetings to friends in the form of nods as
we became part of the flow of humanity that was drawn through the opened
Gothic doors, and a few discreet glances were sent in my direction. Then
we were being ushered into the old box pew belonging to the family. The
Doctor entered last and, once in, the door at the end of the pew on the
center aisle was closed behind him.

Everything inside this high, oblong edifice seemed the color of oak
except the wine-colored cushions on the pew benches. This was no
cathedral or imitation cathedral. It was pure Scottish kirk. A balcony
ran the length of each side and across the back, and high above the
pulpit hung a rose window. On a level with the congregation, facing
toward the organ console at the center, were the choir stalls; and on
either side of the console, like graceful parentheses, were stairs
leading to the pulpit, which was wonderfully large, suggesting somehow
the conning tower of a ship.

The beautiful tones of the organ swelled into the farthest corners of
the church. As the pews filled he leaned toward me and whispered that
all the heads between us and the pulpit had been the same for as long as
he could remember, except that they had grown taller with the years, or
changed color, or wore different hats. Even the hats hadn’t changed
much, he added.

The music receded to an undertone and the minister came in quietly from
a door at the right, mounted the stairs to the pulpit above the organ,
and all but disappeared from the eyes of the congregation as he sat
down. He rose to announce a hymn, the assembled voices sang richly with
enjoyment in the word of the Lord, the offertory was given with
solemnity, the choir added its anthem of praise, and then the minister
rose once again to announce the text of his sermon in a round Scottish
voice. As though at a signal, the head of every _pater familias_ at the
end of each pew found the support of an arm, which in turn was rested on
the side support. And there the heads stayed until the sermon was over.

Unfamiliar with the Calvinist doctrine or the tenets of the Presbyterian
Church, I found myself less interested in the theology expounded than in
the qualities and characteristics evident in this people who still
believed in the imminence of a God they could fear perhaps more easily
than they could trust. Far up toward the front of the church were two
marble plaques, one on either wall, containing on their carved faces the
names of every minister who had preached from this same pulpit since its
erection in 1752. One of them was the great-grandfather of Grover
Cleveland. And somewhere along the line were practical divines who had
seen no reason why the ample basement of this old church should not be
used by those in need; as a consequence, it was rented for many years to
respectable merchants who needed it badly—to store their wine.

According to the standards of beauty in churches I have known in the
United States, this one was solemn and depressing for all its dignity.
Yet it found no need of bingo parties or drives for membership to
maintain attendance at its services. On the other hand, some of our
finest American churches would appear to these people to be nothing but
exhibitions of interior decoration, wholly unrelated in their eyes to a
place of worship.

The Doctor was following the lesson in his Greek testament without
ostentation and also without being observed by the big-voiced minister
who seemed in no doubt of the impressiveness of his own words. The
mortarboards of the choir were tipped at various angles, but the faces
under them wore identical expressions. Of them all, his sister’s was
certainly the most beautiful and intent. So had the forefathers of this
congregation sat here and listened, taking comfort from the Doctrine of
the Elect and from the sense of unity with neighbors, even as they had
done before that in the Highlands of Scotland.

The sermon ended, backs were straightened, throats were cleared in
unison, another hymn was sung, and the service was over. Out on
Barrington Street the outpouring members of the congregation mingled
with those coming from mass in St. Mary’s across the way, and the day
continued dark and dreary.

One-o’clock dinner was the same Sunday dinner that is served wherever
the Union Jack flies: roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes
and unflavored peas or beans. No trimmings or fancy business, but the
best beef in the world and the crustiest Yorkshire pudding. And as
regular a part of the meal as brown gravy came a discussion of the
sermon and its shortcomings. This was followed by a detailed discussion
of friends and acquaintances and town characters, about whom a
prodigious number of minor facts seemed to be at everyone’s finger tips.
Those engaged in the conversation would have been hurt to hear it called
gossip, for it was never malicious comment—merely the considered right
of all Scotsmen to sit in judgment on their fellows, as their neighbors
were undoubtedly at the same moment judging them.

After dinner the Sunday ritual continued on its way. An hour or two of
reading, but no knitting or listening to radio programs or playing of
games. I couldn’t be sure whether these activities were forbidden or
merely considered undesirable. At three o’clock a walk was in order,
with overshoes and stick and Sunday muffler, and at four everyone was
gathered in the library again, ready for the usual Sunday tea guest.
This day it happened to be a famous Canadian radio commentator. At six
there was a request—after the departure of the guest—for the son of
the house to play a few psalm tunes. And so the lovely old melodies were
repeated once, twice, even a third time to please the Doctor. “God of
Bethel, by whose hand” . . . his sister was called to sing them in her
clear soprano . . . ending with the family favorite, “Martyrdom.” At
seven they were back at St. Matthew’s for the evening service, this time
minus me. A cold supper awaited their return, and by ten-thirty the
house was quiet and everyone was once again in bed.

I look back now on those Halifax Sundays with admiration; for, if they
bred small dependence on God in the children of the house, they at least
taught discipline and respect for the wishes of one’s elders, and that
particular Sunday gave me an insight into the heart of Halifax as
nothing else could have done.

Of what importance the disappointment of one individual like myself
because Christmas signified something quite different here than it did
to me? When I realized that nearly all Nova Scotians are descended from
people who were kicked out of homes and a way of life they loved very
much—Empire Loyalists, Highlanders, the few Acadian French—I began to
realize, too, why their forefathers had been unable to celebrate such
traditional days as this with any enthusiasm or pleasure. It’s all very
well for those of us who have grown up in the United States to keep the
colorful traditions of our grandparents. Those grandparents didn’t
arrive in our country with heavy hearts and the unshakable burden of
failure and despair. One behaves in these things as one has been taught.
Race memories are long, especially with Celtic peoples, and Nova
Scotians don’t celebrate such days as Christmas with joy and gladness,
because Christmas for their forefathers was only a day of sad memories
and longing for the old country and dearly loved members of the family
left behind. What are a few wrapped-up gifts to assuage these hurts?
Gifts they exchange, to be sure, but rather absent-mindedly.

I have told you about this Christmas day in Halifax not that anyone
should feel other ways to be superior, nor even to pity Nova Scotians
because they can’t have the kind of fun we do on such a holiday. They
don’t want that kind of fun; it would be inimical to their natures. They
behave as they do because they _like_ it that way. Bless them, it’s easy
to make such generalizations. If you knew them as I do, you could see
them as individuals of strong character and marked personal traits, on
any one of whom a generalization would evaporate like mist at noon.

From the days when Halifax first became a place for the curious to visit
and then return home to write about, the effect it has had on visitors
has never been negligible. Charles Dickens was delighted because the
town turned out in his honor and waved flags and gave him fine meals,
though I doubt if he knew just how unusual such a spectacle was. Halifax
is polite and punctilious; but through the passing decades it has found
practically nothing to bestir itself over, being convinced always (as an
inheritance from England) that a show of public emotion is excessively
bad taste. During the war of 1812 when the little _Shannon_ came up the
harbor with her prize of war, the _U.S.S. Chesapeake_, in tow, the whole
town turned out and lined the shores and let itself go in lusty cheers.
But, on the whole, Halifax has witnessed too many disasters to be moved
by intermittent trivia.

In a small volume published in New York in 1859, called _Acadia; or, A
Month with the Blue Noses_, one visitor to Nova Scotia managed to reveal
an acuteness possessed by no chronicler who has since tried to put the
province between the pages of a book. I should like very much to have
known Mr. Cozzens, for he also had an infallible sense of humor. You can
see what I mean, if I let him speak for himself.

“‘And this is Halifax?’ said I, as that quaint, mouldy old town poked
its wooden gables through the fog of the second morning. ‘This is
Halifax? This the capital of Nova Scotia? This the city that harbored
those loyal heroes of the Revolution, who gallantly and gayly fought,
and bled, and ran for their king?’ . . .

“It was an inspiriting morning, that which I met upon the well-docked
shores of Halifax, and although the side-walks of the city were neither
bricked nor paved with flags, and the middle street was in its original
and aboriginal clay, yet there was novelty in making its acquaintance.
Everybody was asleep in that early fog; and when everybody woke up, it
was done so quietly that the change was scarcely apparent. . . .

“The city hill of Halifax rises proudly from the wharves and shipping in
a multitude of mouse-colored wooden houses, until it is crowned by the
citadel. As it is a garrison town, as well as a naval station, you meet
in the streets red-coats and blue-jackets without number; yonder, with a
brilliant staff, rides the Governor, Sir John Gaspard le Marchant, and
here, in a carriage, is Admiral Fanshawe, C.B., of the _Boscawen_
Flagship. Everything is suggestive of impending hostilities; war, in
burnished trappings, encounters you at the street corners, and the air
vibrates from time to time with bugles, fifes and drums. But oh! what a
slow place it is! Even two Crimean regiments with medals and decorations
could not wake it up. The little old houses seem to look with wondrous
apathy as these pass by, as though they had given each other a quiet
nudge with their quaint old gables, and whispered: ‘Keep still!’

“And now, after taking a look at Dalhousie College with the parade in
front, and the square town-clock, built by his graceless Highness the
Duke of Kent, let us climb Citadel Hill, and see the formidable
protector of town and harbor. Lively enough it is, this great stone
fortress, with its soldiers swarming in and out like bees, and the
glimpses of country and harbor are surpassingly beautiful; but just at
the margin of the slope below us, is the street, and that dark fringe of
tenements skirting the edge of this green glacis is, I fear me, filled
with vicious inmates. . . .

“But if you cast your eyes over yonder magnificent bay, where vessels
bearing flags of all nations are at anchor, and then let your vision
sweep past and over the islands to the outlets beyond, where the quiet
ocean lies, bordered with fog-banks that loom ominously at the
boundary-line of the horizon, you will see a picture of marvelous
beauty; for the coast scenery transcends our own sea-shores, both in
color and outline . . . and as we walk down Citadel Hill, we feel
half-reconciled to Halifax, its queer little streets, its quaint, mouldy
old gables, its soldiers and sailors, its fogs, cabs, penny and
half-penny tokens, and all its little, old, outlandish
peculiarities.”[5]

Cozzens came to love Halifax in the end, too; but he saw straight all
the time he was there, and he managed to capture his impressions in
classical prose. Apparently one war is much like another in this port.
Perhaps that is why, when a conflagration starts, Halifax is less
surprised than any other place on the globe. She knows, before anyone
tells her, precisely what her role is to be.

I have never known a place that managed to maintain so balanced a
tranquillity without going to sleep in the process. When it does bestir
itself over something, it’s nearly always something quite unimportant.
But let Cozzens take it again.

“Halifax was founded, so says the _Chronicle_, on the eighth of June,
1749, by the Hon. Edward Cornwallis [not our Cornwallis], and the
’Alligonians in consequence made a specialty of that fact once a year.
And to add to the attraction, the Board of Works had decided to lay the
corner-stone of a Lunatic Asylum in the afternoon; so there was no end
to the festivities. And, to crown all, an immense fog settled upon the
city.

“When we arrived upon the ground, in the rear of Citadel Hill, we saw
the outline of something glimmering through the fog, which Robert said
were shrubs and which I said were soldiers. A few minutes’ walking
proved my position to be correct; we found ourselves in the centre of a
three-sided square of three regiments, within which the civic
authorities were loyally boring Sir John Gaspard le Marchant and staff,
to the verge of insanity, with the Address which was to be laid at the
foot of the throne. Notwithstanding the despairing air with which His
Excellency essayed to reply to this formidable paper, I could not help
enjoying the scene; and I also noted, when the reply was over, and the
few ragamuffins near His Excellency cheered bravely, and the band struck
up the national anthem, how gravely and discreetly the ’Alligonians, in
the circumambient fog, echoed the sentiment by a silence, that, under
other circumstances, would have been disheartening. What a quiet people
it is! As I said before, to make the festivities complete, in the
afternoon there was a procession to lay the corner-stone of a Lunatic
Asylum. But oh! how the jolly old rain poured down upon the luckless
pilgrimage! There were the . . . Army Masons, in scarlet; the African
Masons, in ivory and black; the Scotch-piper Mason, with his legs in
enormous plaid trowsers, defiant of Shakspeare’s theory about the
sensitiveness of some men, when the bag-pipe sings i’ the nose; the
Clerical Mason in shovel hat; the municipal artillery; the Sons of
Temperance, and the band. Away they marched, with drum and banner, key
and compasses, Bible and sword, to Dartmouth, in great feather, for the
eyes of Halifax were upon them.”[6]

Dozens of Nova Scotia’s lovers have tried to reproduce Halifax as they
found it, but nothing has ever touched that scene for timelessness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Halifax is distinctly two places, two kinds of people, two modes of
life, two points of view. Both groups of people recognize each other
with no trouble at all and accept the fact that their customs and
manners are poles apart, even as their activities never mix in the realm
of society. Nevertheless they live within constant sight of each other,
and they are so interdependent as to seem one to the outsider. Their
very differences serve to become accentuated by the proximity, but the
tolerance with which each group views the other is magnificent . . .
until someone who doesn’t understand the code tries to live in each of
the two worlds. Even the father of a future queen couldn’t get away with
it.

First, of course, there were the army and the navy; and even as the
distinction between officers and men is sharp and unquestioned, so too
was the distinction in the town between gentry and workers. For many
years everyone had to live within the palisades together for safety
against Indians, so one street contained homes of government officials
and wealthy merchants and another contained the meaner dwellings,
differentiated from the former only by size and lack of ornament. When
the town expanded slowly and moved outside the walls, another street
beyond existing ones would be opened for finer houses; and fairly soon
the workers needed more room, and they took the next street, and that’s
the way it went.

As a consequence, old Halifax today is an unbelievable mixture of slums,
homes of the proper, brothels, and manses. All ladies of Halifax seem to
know without question which thoroughfares are out of bounds when they
have errands away from home; and I doubt if they so much as turn their
heads to look down a street of near-tenements on their way to the next
block, which may be the Main Street or the Belgrave Square of Halifax.
South Park Street, for instance, begins at the base of Citadel Hill,
runs parallel to the Public Gardens, picks up a parklike mall, and then
changes its name to Young Avenue as it supports the homes of some of the
wealthiest citizens of the town before it ends at the gates of Point
Pleasant Park.

Only one block behind it, nearer town, is Dresden Row, which starts out
by giving its address to a manor once occupied by a bishop of the Roman
Catholic Church. Then it drops rapidly in stature as it fronts a funeral
establishment, and finally gives in entirely and becomes a street of
mean, ugly cracker-box houses adorned with chocolate-colored paint
outside and bedraggled window curtains within.

Spring Garden Road is one of the main thoroughfares in the South End,
leading from Barrington Street across town until it changes its name to
Coburg Road and ends at a club driveway on the Northwest Arm. At its
beginning it supports St. Mary’s Cathedral on one side and on the other
the century-and-a-half-old garrison cemetery, succeeded by the Court
House and the Nova Scotia Technical College. Yet Grafton Street runs
right into it, as though to deliver to the Court House door with equal
good humor the Negroes, Chinamen, East Indians, and whites which it
houses indiscriminately.

Every seaport and every capital is like this, but nowhere else in the
world does each side of the social order have such ample opportunity to
see and rub shoulders with the other. Because the streets are
contiguous, schools are nearly all a fair mixture of children of the
well-to-do and children of the very tough. But the very tough are only
physically so, and far less vulgar than they might otherwise be, while
the well-to-do accept the principle of democracy without question and
without too much ingrowing class consciousness. Each kind respects the
other, and they meet on equal terms whenever they are thrown together in
work or in such institutions of democracy as legislative assemblies,
playgrounds, schools, or public meetings.

And because this is a place where political equality is taken for
granted, the poor rarely seem to envy the rich and, in turn, those with
money tend to conceal it. That is why an Englishman or a Scotsman who
comes to live in Nova Scotia is able to understand it perfectly, while a
European can’t touch the people and can’t understand it at all. Modern
Europe has fed on the baroque in manners as well as in architecture, and
nothing could be so meaningless as baroque in Nova Scotia.

In the beginning, of course, the services were overbearingly snobbish,
and their behavior was imitated to a degree by the rest of so-called
Halifax society. Only two generations ago the daughter of a famous
singer whose statue was raised before La Scala in Milan was snubbed in
Halifax by officers of the garrison because her family were considered
to be entertainers. Eventually, however, from having no interest
whatever in the province outside the military zone, the men of the
services were seduced by this seaport and began to identify themselves
with it.

On the occasion of the garrison’s famous regimental smokers, held
periodically before 1914, a custom typical of the town became an
established habit. Hogsheads of rum punch in great quantities were
provided to enliven the evening’s entertainment. Then at midnight the
doors were opened and an invitation was delivered to come and get it.
For hours before, all the teamsters and dock hands and roustabouts in
town were lined up outside waiting. When the last of the rum had
disappeared they all, presumably, went home merry, the fishermen no less
than the Colonel himself.

It was Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent, who broke the worst of the
garrison snobbery. When he was sent to Nova Scotia to represent the
Crown as governor of the province, he was given the customary fanfare,
obeisance, and top rank as leader of local society which usually goes
with this office in all provinces of the Dominion. Doubtless in those
days, even as in Ottawa today, one’s social status was infallibly
governed by the kind of function to which one was invited at Government
House, beginning at the top with private dinners and ending with fairly
inclusive garden parties.

But this particular representative of the Crown upset all standard
formulas in Halifax, for he brought with him as his mistress a beautiful
young French widow whom he had met at his last post in the West Indies.
The first function at Government House to which the pillars of Halifax
society were invited after his arrival presented a dilemma never
encountered there before or since. To be received by the Creole mistress
of a member of the royal family meant throwing overboard every carefully
nurtured principle of conduct by which the town had learned to govern
its affairs.

Some families went and were received, and some families refused the
invitation. But those who refused were promptly blacklisted by this
representative of the King, and so the sheep found themselves separated
from the goats by royal edict. No one was really comfortable until the
Duke of Kent was recalled to England six or eight years later to take up
his more public duties. Halifax society returned to its simple unity
once more; but his sojourn left its mark in more ways than a few, not
the least of which is the inability of Halifax to be surprised by
anything any more.

In spite of the fact that this city, like all capitals, is dependent
upon the surrounding country for its sustenance, Halifax more than most
contains a proportionate blending of all the elements of the province
within itself and so has become in a true sense its core. It is the
center of importing and exporting, and Canada’s principal open seaport
through at least a third of the year; it is the seat of government and
the center of professional life; it is also the terminus of a
transcontinental railroad. The rest of the province may talk about its
past like an antiquarian, but Halifax is history always in the making.
The creator of the modern British navy, Lord Jackie Fisher, was once
stationed at Admiralty House in Halifax; so were any number of famous
men of the British fleet. In five wars Halifax has been a vital link in
the empire and an indispensable gateway through which the wealth of the
new world has flowed to the old.

But, like England itself, Halifax remains unconscious of being history,
even as she never loses sight of her prime function in the pattern of
the empire as a whole. Through the years this colorful harbor has been
crowded with privateers, captured pirates, famous admirals and their
flagships off to battle or home with victory, interned ships of war like
the Confederate cruiser _Tallahassee_ that escaped one night through
Eastern Passage, and prizes of war like the frigate _Chesapeake_
captured after a duel off Boston. It is this endless pageant rolling
through the years that gives Halifax her unquenchable sense of duty and
responsibility, an underlying mood in peace as well as in war. It also
keeps her face turned forever east instead of west.

-----

[3] William Lawson Grant, _The Tribune of Nova Scotia_. Glasgow, Brook &
Co.

[4] _Ibid._

[5] Frederic S. Cozzens, _Acadia; or, A Month with the Blue Noses_.
Derby and Jackson. (1859).

[6] _Ibid._


                             ROUTES 1-2-3-7

    _Halifax_ . . . population until 1939 was approximately 65,000.
    During the war it has doubled. The city was named for the
    incumbent Earl of Halifax when it was founded, and that family’s
    title is derived, in turn, from the city of Halifax in
    Yorkshire.

    Places of particular interest to visitors are the following:

    _Public Gardens_, at the corner of Spring Garden Road and South
    Park Street, opposite Lord Nelson Hotel. First laid out in 1753,
    and maintained by funds bequeathed for the purpose. The Gardens
    cover seventeen acres and contain beautiful specimens of trees,
    flowers, rare plants, and waterfowl. Band concerts are given
    here at regular intervals during the summer months.

    _Northwest Arm_, at the western edge of the city. This is an
    inlet from the sea which is two and a half miles long, bordered
    on either side by sloping hills covered with estates, small
    homes, and clubs. It is the chief playground of Halifax during
    the summer for bathing, sailing, canoeing, and competitive
    sports.

    _Point Pleasant Park_, at the foot of Young Avenue, is a natural
    forested area extending to the edge of a bluff that overlooks
    Halifax harbor. It is reserved by the British government as an
    area for defense, but it is leased to the city. Motorcars are
    not allowed within the gates; but footpaths cover it in all
    directions, winding their way beneath the ancient trees.

    _Ashburn Golf Course_ and _Gorsebrook Golf Club_ each cover
    eighteen holes and admit visitors for reasonable fees.

    _Citadel Hill_ is the site of old Fort George. A motor road
    circles its summit, and the best view in Halifax can be found
    there at any hour of the day. Given a choice, stay up near the
    top from the last ten minutes of sunset through the following
    half-hour of dusk in order to watch the lights come on across
    the Stream. The old town clock just below was constructed in
    1802 at the order of the Duke of Kent, to remind Haligonians of
    the virtue of keeping appointments on time.

    _St. Paul’s Church_, at the end of the Parade on Barrington
    Street, is the oldest Protestant church in Canada, built in
    1750. Its first organ, now replaced, was taken from a captured
    Spanish vessel brought into Halifax as a prize of war. The walls
    of the church are covered with commemorative tablets which
    contain the names of many illustrious figures in British
    history, and vaults below the church hold their remains.

    _St. Matthew’s Church_, on Barrington Street near Spring Garden
    Road, has a type of interior rarely seen in the United States.
    It has been described in the text.

    _St. Mary’s Cathedral_ (Roman Catholic) and _All Saints’
    Cathedral_ (Anglican) are modern. The first is on Spring Garden
    Road and the second off South Park Street.

    _Dalhousie University_, on Coburg Road, was founded in 1818 and
    first occupied the building at the end of the Parade, opposite
    St. Paul’s. It maintains faculties of arts and science, law,
    medicine and dentistry, and schools of engineering, commerce,
    fisheries, and pharmacy, as well as a public-health clinic. The
    university was endowed with customs duties collected in Castine,
    Maine, when that portion of the Maine coast was occupied and
    governed by a British military and naval expedition from
    Halifax, between 1814 and 1815. It is said to be the first
    university in the world founded free of clerical patronage.

    _The Public Archives_ of Nova Scotia are housed in a stately
    building on the university campus. They contain a valuable
    collection of documents, pictures, prints, ship models, and so
    on, illustrating the history of the province. This display in
    the main showroom is open to visitors every weekday.

    _The Dockyard_, on Barrington Street North, built in 1759 and
    remodeled since, contains relics of great interest; but this is
    military territory during time of war, forbidden to visitors.
    Captain James Cook, the famous discoverer, was stationed here to
    superintend the erection of the first buildings.

    _Provincial Museum_ is housed in the Nova Scotia Technical
    College on Spring Garden Road. It contains an extensive
    collection which covers the natural resources of the province,
    as well as some objects of historic interest. Visitors are
    admitted without fee.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Province House, Halifax]

    _Province House_, on Hollis Street, corresponds to a state
    capitol in America. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful and
    certainly one of the most interesting buildings in Nova Scotia.
    This is where the Legislative Assembly sits, as well as the
    Legislative Council, more or less analogous to our House of
    Representatives and our Senate except that the Council is
    appointed and not elected. Only the Legislative Assembly has
    direct political power.

    The entrance to the building is approached through a graveled
    courtyard inside iron railings, where the massive arches of the
    foundation may be seen. On the inner wall a tablet marks the
    site of the first printing press in British North America,
    established in 1751, on which Canada’s first newspaper was
    published.

    Portraits of famous sons of the province hang in the Council
    Chamber, but the most beautiful room in the building is the
    Legislative Library, with its gallery, alcoves, and enormous
    Palladian window. Old charts that Nelson used are kept here.
    This was at one time the Court Room and the scene of many famous
    trials which arose from incidents of dueling to pirates brought
    to justice. It is also the room in which Joseph Howe made his
    famous self-defense for libel.

    _Hydrostone District_, a portion of the city at the north end in
    the vicinity of the Narrows, so named because the buildings here
    were made of cementlike material fashioned of local sand. This
    is the part of Halifax that was laid waste by the terrific
    explosion which occurred on December 6, 1917, when the French
    munitions ship _Mont Blanc_ rammed the Belgian relief ship
    _Imo_. _Fort Needham_ was then on this site, and not only was
    the fort shattered but the bluff on which it stood was leveled.
    Two thousand persons were killed, six thousand wounded, and ten
    thousand made homeless in a blast which caused $35,000,000 worth
    of property damage. It has been described in the recent novel
    _Barometer Rising_, written by a man who lived through the event
    as a boy. Halifax comes alive in this book, and remains
    unforgettable through it.

    _Sword and Anchor Inn_; _Lord Nelson Hotel_; _Nova Scotia
    Hotel_.




                                   V
                             _MANY HAVENS_


From Halifax to Yarmouth, a distance of some two hundred and twenty-five
miles by paved highway, the Atlantic shore of the province falls away in
a southwesterly direction as far as Shag Harbour, and then rises
northward again past the Pubnicos and Argyles to reach the town named
for the seaport of Yarmouth in England.

This is a coast as serrated and frayed as though it had been clawed by
an animal, where short rivers run quickly from the height of land in the
center of the province to the sea. Hundreds of harbors and bays and
small inlets poke their way inland to form anchorage for fishing fleets;
and thousands of islands hug the coastline, taking the brunt of Atlantic
storms to shelter harbor mouths. Forests crawl down from the heights as
close to the coast as the winds will allow, and most of the rivers
produce fertile soil along their banks.

But on the very edges of this land, where it is scrubbed endlessly by
the sea, the bones of the earth stand gray and bare, whipped by spray
and salt winds the year around. It is here that Nova Scotia most nearly
resembles the Hebrides. This formidable grayness of granite and sea fog
can appear to the city dweller unendurably bleak and harsh, to the
farmer useless, to the seaman cruel. To the artist, however, it is noble
in form and line, and perhaps he alone is capable of appreciating the
unending drama of color changes played on these splendid rocks when a
fine day affects them as technicolor does an otherwise ordinary film.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

South Shore Harbor]

The main highway makes no attempt to encircle the bays, but skirts their
inland reaches in a fairly direct line. Off this road, however, run many
projections which reach out for the remote coves and fishing villages on
the coastal extremities, some well-graded dirt highways, others little
more than cart tracks in which rocks protrude like nuts on cake icing.
Many of them, like the road from Halifax along the edge of the harbor to
Portuguese Cove, Ketch Harbour, and Sambro, are only partially indicated
on the map, yet any one of them will repay a thousandfold the physical
inconvenience they may cause in transit.

I decline to contemplate what this coast would be like if it lay within
a day’s drive of any American city, so much does it have to offer the
country-hungry city dweller. The state of Cape Cod during a Fourth of
July week end would be only an approximation. So far humanity has not
despoiled it. A handful of travelers find their way each summer to these
small communities for the purpose of observing the people and the
scenery, but no one has yet used any part of it for tourist bait. When
the stranger arrives he is welcome, but nowhere will he find a sign or
an indication that his money has been expected any more than his
presence.

With all its physical deficiencies, the road to Portuguese Cove is my
favorite in the whole of Nova Scotia. I suppose I feel as I do about it
because it was here, on picnic afternoons, that I first began to
understand why Nova Scotians love their province with a passion
unmatched in Canada. It is easier, of course, to feel an intense loyalty
to a place small enough to be encompassed by the human mind than to a
political unit the size of Nevada or Illinois. But Nova Scotian devotion
is intensified by the fact that poverty has taken the place of onetime
prosperity here through no fault of the people themselves. Human nature
always tends to love best the mistreated member of a family. And there
is no way to wiggle out of an acknowledgment that Nova Scotia received
the dirty end of the stick when Confederation took place in British
North America and power became concentrated in the triangle formed by
Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.

Within an hour’s ride of Halifax (better get back to scenery) there is
one of the most remarkable combinations of sea and sky and earth I have
ever encountered. You can have all the lofty mountains in the world, and
all the nerveless lakes, and I’ll never make a sound like envy. But when
an ocean meets land that rises sharply to resist it—the way it does in
California and Dalmatia and on this coast in Nova Scotia—I won’t trade
it for anybody else’s favorite spot on the globe. There are rocky
promontories here high enough to make a man feel small or tremendous,
according to his way. When you stand on one of these lofty ledges where
one can look across an expanded bay to a far shore, or out to sea with
no land closer than a European beach, puny troubles cease to exist and
the ultimate drama of conflict is here in the endless fight of the sea
to beat down these immovable granites.

It was all so casual, the way someone suggested on a fine August morning
that the day was the kind for picnics. No one in Nova Scotia ever
praises his own land overmuch before a stranger; it isn’t seemly, for
one thing, and, for another, he couldn’t bear to promote a disagreement.
“We must take you down the South Shore sometime,” they had said. But I
still had much to learn. From the tone of their voices I assumed the
South Shore was like a maiden aunt’s hobby—one noticed it periodically
out of courtesy. When I remember now that I even slipped a book into the
pocket of my coat, that first time we set out on what I took to be a
dutiful venture, just in case! . . .

A tea basket had been packed in true English-hamper fashion with a
thermos of boiling water, another of milk, a package of tea, another of
sugar, a plentiful supply of thin bread-and-butter sandwiches, sultana
cake as an added treat, and the requisite number of cups and spoons. No
elaborate equipment of utensils for cooking over an open fire was
included, nor any of the picnic foods Americans love and everyone else
abhors—such as hot dogs and onion-covered hamburgers and salads and
buns. This kind of expedition in Nova Scotia was primarily for the
purpose of enjoying scenery; food was considered only a sociable
addition, not intended to detract from the main event.

After picking up his sister and two amenable friends we set off on the
road that skirts the far side of the Northwest Arm and continues down
the edge of the peninsula to end at Cape Sambro. We passed the Memorial
Tower; ran along behind summer homes in the Boulderwood section; pushed
the nose of the car over a hill and past the quarry from which the
building stones of Dalhousie had been taken; and then went over a
causeway and past Purcell’s Cove, where everyone in the community is
said to carry the same name. Another and steeper hill gave us wider
views across the harbor; we wound through jagged boulders and scrub to
York Redoubt; and then we found ourselves directly over Meagher’s Beach
lighthouse (better pronounce that Marr’s), with a marvelous view of
Halifax spread out like a shield and shining in the sun.

For a short way we passed no one and overtook no one on the road. A flat
stretch along the edge of an escarpment, with a fort on our right, led
us toward Sandwich Point, and again we felt compelled to stop and
acknowledge the view. McNab’s Island extended itself at the mouth of the
harbor in line with the tides, and Devil’s Island, a spit off the far
end, sported a gleaming lighthouse. Full in front and projecting off
McNab’s stood Thrum Cap, seeming to float like a disembodied spirit of
innocence and beauty, pretending to know nothing of the succession of
ships lured to destruction on its treacherous reach.

Then the road dropped down a gully in the moorland where great tors
sprawled around on a carpet of tough, low-growing bracken and
bunchberry; and finally we descended into a new world, centuries distant
from Halifax though it was marked only seven miles on the map. We left
the car and started down a slope covered with partridgeberries and small
springy plants that formed a carpet like deep-piled broadloom the color
of absinthe. And there were no other human beings within sight or
screaming distance. A place on the cliff where the ground leveled off
was chosen for settling the motor rugs and baskets. After that no one
spoke for many minutes.

This is the part of Nova Scotia where the great glacier left the most
vivid traces of its journey, for it scraped its way right down to the
rocks in many places and left so little earth that for some distance
inland vegetation is as rare as butter in London. The exposed backs of
the boulders that hold off the sea are like sleeping dinosaurs that once
dropped with exhaustion when a herd was marching, and never woke again.
When gales rise during the autumn, and blizzards blind everything in
winter, enormous combers come in over these granite tors and explode
high on the land with a roar like doomsday, and the wind drives the
spume inland for nearly a mile.

But on this afternoon the whole world was tranquil and the sea merely
rubbed gently against the base of rocks far below, splashing and
crooning with its own syncopated beat. The backs of the rocks—and, mind
you, they vary in size from yard-wide stepping-stones to chunks the size
of limousines and Anderson shelters—had dried in the sun to the hues of
squash and henna and tobacco juice. No picture of the Nova Scotia coast
made either with words or with a camera can indicate anything closer to
reality than a shadow unless it manages to portray the rich, glorious
contrasts between these wonderful iodine-stained rocks edged with
churning white foam and the turquoise-blue water stretching off to an
aquamarine horizon.

Far away to the right, like an exclamation point, Sambro Light was just
discernible—the last sight of Nova Scotia for ships bound from Halifax
for the old world and the first sight of land for ships coming in at
night, when the beam reaches them seventeen miles at sea.

“Can you see that rotting hulk of a foundered vessel . . . way down
there?” he asked. “It went onto the rocks in a storm, but the crew saved
itself by a breeches buoy.”

“And has the wreck been lying just like that, on its side, ever since?”
I said.

“Storms break most of them up eventually . . . unless they’re dangerous
to other shipping. Then they’re blasted out and hauled away in pieces.”

“Don’t start telling her how gibbets used to hang along here with
pirates in chains,” said the friend who was making tea.

“The gibbets weren’t here. They were on Meagher’s Beach,” he said.

“A natural enough place for them, if other pirates were to be warned
off,” his sister added.

“Like the scarecrows in our cornfields?” I asked. But the simile seemed
to carry little significance to them.

“Come on,” his sister said, with a tactful change of subject. “Let’s
gather periwinkles and mussels. I’m sure Dorothy has never tasted them.
We can make a fire of dry bracken and boil them in this tin the cake
came in. And I saw a field of blueberries a little way back near the
road. We might take some home.”

So the afternoon moved on slowly, as though reluctant to end. The book
which I had brought as insurance against boredom was forgotten. I tasted
freshly boiled periwinkles for the first time, pulled gently from their
coiled shells on the end of a pin. I helped gather fat blueberries from
a mauve-tinted field until all the cups and thermos bottles were filled.
And I swam in delicious salty sea water in a nest of rocks where the
tide had left it to be warmed by the sun.

The wind came up at last and the sun dropped behind our shoulders,
leaving the sky a fusion of color like a Disney fantasy. In all the
world there was no sound for us except the rubbing of the waves as they
tilted back and forth against the granites. Even the beating of our
hearts was swallowed by their rhythm as we lay still on the cliff and
watched a day go out in glory.

In the years since, I have known many days in Nova Scotia that followed
the same pattern. Last summer there was a Sunday afternoon near the
fortifications at Chebucto Head when we were watched through strong
glasses by a soldier while we watched two partially submerged submarines
show only their periscopes as they made their way toward the Stream; and
a day at Terence Bay, where we hired a rowboat that stank of fish in
order to reach a secluded cove for our picnic; and mornings at Prospect,
where the boulders have been hurled around by storms like office desks
in an earthquake; and always, sooner or later, memorable hours at
Peggy’s.

Peggy’s Cove is an indentation of the larger St. Margaret’s Bay, the
first sizable harbor below Halifax. It is a survival of another era,
this Peggy’s Cove, where small houses perch precariously on the backs of
great rocks and the fishermen who live in them somehow manage to survive
because they are sufficient unto themselves. They make their own boats
and tackle, keep a few cows on the sparse vegetation, grow potatoes
wherever there is enough soil to hold them, and know nothing and want
nothing of the cities. Every day they go out where the fish are running
and every night they return, letting their small boats drift in easily
past the lighthouse. But whenever they beat back to harbor after a storm
they realize that their skill in sailing and their honesty of
craftsmanship which constructed the boats they man have been in large
part responsible for their preservation.

In no time at all Peggy’s Cove is going to be spoiled, for already the
tourists have found it. First it was known outside only to artists who
stayed there for weeks at a time, living frugally with one of the
fishermen’s families. But when the work of the artists attracted
attention in large cities, their subject became a matter of interest,
especially to those who will always try to experience personally what an
artist or a writer has recreated through the medium of his imagination.
So the road to Peggy’s Cove will doubtless soon be a paved highway, save
the day.

Below St. Margaret’s Bay the next and widest indentation on the South
Shore is Mahone Bay, so extensive that it contains nearly four hundred
islands of all sizes. It also shelters that community of beauty and
virtuosity called by the unpretty name of Chester. Anything more unlike
the origin of its name in England would be difficult to find, for this
Chester is as fresh as angel cake. Nor is any other village in the whole
of Nova Scotia less related to the countryside around it. This is
frankly a summer resort and it pretends to little else. It was founded
by pre-Loyalists in the middle of the eighteenth century; but once it
was discovered by Americans a century and a half later, it was dropped
by Nova Scotians and the Americans have been left alone to do with it as
they will.

Chester, as I have said elsewhere, is the kind of place you think about
when you’re riding to work on a summer subway or staring out an office
window moodily wondering why men are so dumb as to stay in cities
through humidity and brassy noise and ninety-five-degree heat. Chester
is all green and white and ocean-blue and it smells of briar roses and
bunchberry and blue-eyed grass. Cape Cod summer homes and cottages
nestle cozily against the green-haired bluffs and look in all directions
over a harbor dotted with small bits of evergreen-furred land. There is
excellent fishing and hunting in the neighborhood, and no better
yachting anywhere than in and out of these islands at the head of Mahone
Bay.

Chester is beautiful naturally as well as architecturally. It exudes
wealth and leisure. Its ways are rich American and not at all Bluenose;
and, consequently, Nova Scotians are a trifle uncomfortable in its
midst, much as they might be if they were sitting in someone else’s
living room which was filled with their grandmother’s prized pieces of
furniture, acquired by their present owners at a bankruptcy sale.

Two kinds of Americans are to be found in Nova Scotia: those who come to
see during a summer holiday and go away again and those who own land and
return year after year. The first group exerts little influence on the
life of the province, and can usually be distinguished from Nova
Scotians who are back from the States for a holiday only by a difference
in manners. (Any Nova Scotian, for instance, would prefer to stop his
car and even stall his engine rather than edge another car out of the
way in order to beat it to a crossing or a light.)

The second group of Americans exerts even less influence on the
province. They have bought one of the most comely spots on the Atlantic
coast and turned it into an American colony, and now its spiritual
isolation from the rest of Nova Scotia is complete. And yet it is the
one place in all Nova Scotia where my husband’s tastes and my own
coincide without a gap, though our reasons for liking it so much are far
from identical. When the war is over—_if_ we win it—I shouldn’t be
surprised to find us building a Cape Cod cottage there ourselves one
day. But the cottage will not be started until just the right boat has
been acquired first. For who could think a roof over one’s head as
important as happy sailing?—or so reasons the Bluenose half of our
ménage. In the meantime . . . there is still a war.

Grover Cleveland’s brother saw Chester once upon a time and then found
he could be satisfied nowhere else, so he built a home in the
neighborhood and his relatives are still living there. At least two and
maybe more presidents of American colleges own white clapboard homes on
these cliffs that overlook skimming sailboats and handsome yachts. Thus
Chester is part of the United States in spirit, and yet it remains
practically unknown below the border. Owners of property in this haven
don’t put up signs to point the way or raise billboards to advertise its
charms because they don’t want it overrun with the excrescences of
popularity and mass enthusiasm. They prefer beauty and peace, in other
words, to notoriety and crowds. It would seem as though all of them were
holding their breaths in fear of an invasion of this paradise, which
doubtless accounts for the fact that precious little in the way of
super-hotels can be found here for the itinerant tourist; and a cold
shoulder is fairly often turned to the newcomer, for—who knows?—he may
be a public-relations expert in California clothing.

Nova Scotians never advertise Chester, any more than the Americans do;
but it’s because they never think about it. Someday, perhaps, they will
buy it all back again.

The principal point of interest for tourists in Chester is near-by Oak
Island—apparently the only one of the four hundred in Mahone Bay not
covered by spruce—where an extensive mining operation has been going on
in one form or another since 1796, at an approximate cost of a quarter
of a million dollars. It was in that year that three young hunters on
this mile-and-a-half-long island found a derrick made of a ship’s block
hung from the limb of a giant oak which stood some fifty yards from the
shore. And beneath the block they saw a wide depression in the ground.
Whether this began the legend that the bulk of Captain Kidd’s large
treasure was buried here, or whether the discovery of the young men only
substantiated what they hoped to find, is not known. They went back to
the mainland to get help; but no one would return with them to Oak
Island because it was thought to be haunted, so they got shovels and
went back alone to find out what lay beneath that depression.

Boys in those days probably knew the tale of Captain Kidd as well as
boys in this day: how he was an extensive landowner in New York in the
year 1697—and nearly fifty years old—when he was commissioned by King
William III to act as a privateer to help the British free the Red Sea
of pirates; how his crew mutinied and forced him to turn pirate himself
and prey on legitimate commerce; how he finally returned to Long Island
from the West Indies and gave himself up, believing he would be freed of
the charges against him, but was sent to London for trial instead; how
he offered, before he was hanged in 1701, to tell where an enormous
cache of gold was hidden in return for his life; but, his offer not
being accepted, the secret was never revealed.

Ten feet below the surface on Oak Island the three boys came upon a
layer of oak planks and at twenty feet they discovered a layer of
charcoal and a second plank flooring beneath. At thirty feet down they
hit still another flooring of oak planks; and so they continued to a
depth of ninety feet, each flooring being covered with a different
substance—such as charcoal, spruce, a matting of some kind of tropical
fiber, and the last one putty.

They didn’t, of course, manage all this in one afternoon, nor even in a
few months. Two of the boys married and went to live on the island, and
a doctor who attended the birth of one of their babies was first able to
organize help for them. By the time a depth of ninety-six feet was
reached, water rushed in from an unknown tunnel and the pit became
flooded to a depth of sixty feet. The boys became old men and died
without getting below the water barrier; and their sons and their sons’
sons kept on trying, each generation getting more scientific in its
approach to a solution of the problem.

In 1849 the search was renewed, and then it was found that the beach in
all directions around the pit was underlaid with a sponge of eel grass
and tons of cocoanut fiber which had been packed among well-placed rocks
and boulders. Apparently this had been devised to hold water from the
tides as a catch basin from which to flood the pit by way of five
well-constructed ditches. By the time this discovery was made, the funds
of the group working on the mystery were exhausted and the enterprise
lay dormant until 1899.

Once more a company was formed, and this time barracks were built on the
island for a hundred men, including the mining experts who were employed
on the task. By means of a drill a depth of one hundred and fifty feet
was reached in the pit. An oaken chest was struck with this drill, and
it was believed to be filled with loose coins and metal bars. One bit of
parchment was brought up that proved under examination to contain a
fragment of writing. And beneath the chest a substance was struck that
was said (after laboratory tests were undertaken) to be man-made cement.

But in spite of engineers and pumps, water still flooded the pit and
nothing larger could be brought to the surface than a fine drill would
carry. So once again the project was abandoned, and two questions
continued to stump everyone who thought about Oak Island. Who had buried
the gold, first; and, even more important, how had they expected to get
it out again themselves?

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

At Ingonish Ferry on the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island]

In 1909 still another company was formed for the purpose of attempting
to bring to the surface the hidden treasure. This time such well-known
individuals as Albert Gallatin, Frederick Childs, and Franklin D.
Roosevelt were involved in the proceedings. Deep-sea divers were used,
but to no avail; so the engineering experts went back to drills, and all
the samples brought to the surface were tested by credited laboratories.
By this time a belief had gained stature that the pit might contain the
crown jewels of Louis XVI, since it was known that one of Marie
Antoinette’s ladies in waiting who escaped the guillotine had been
traced to Louisburg in Cape Breton.

But, like all the others, this expedition folded and moved out, too. And
for another thirty years Oak Island was quiet and undisturbed.

In 1928 a New York engineer happened one Sunday morning to read the
story of the previous attempts to reach this treasure on an island off
the coast of Nova Scotia, and he became fascinated with its
possibilities and implications. He made careful investigations of the
work already carried out, and then he began to travel over the world in
a hunt for clews and information. In an English library he finally came
across old charts known to have been the property of Captain William
Kidd. At the bottom of one of these charts was a legend in code that no
one had ever managed to decipher.

Then he sent a photographer by air to make pictorial maps of Oak Island,
and when they were finished he found that the topography of the island
tallied almost in every detail with the Kidd chart. In a series of three
articles published in 1939, _Popular Science Monthly_ told this story
and reproduced both the charts in question and the photographs taken of
Oak Island. Even a layman could be excited by the similarity between the
two.

Friends joined the New York engineer to buy the entire southern end of
Oak Island where the pits are located, and once more, in 1939,
paraphernalia was transported there for the purpose of trying to solve
the old puzzle of how to drain the pits in order that further work of
excavation could be carried on. This time compressed-air drills and
high-speed electric pumps were to be used, and men were employed who
turned upon the project the sum of their scientific knowledge and
experience.

With the help of a surveyor, numerals in the legend at the bottom of the
chart were found to correspond to marked stones on the island, which in
turn were found—when bracken and undergrowth had been cleared away—to
form a large triangle which pointed directly to the money pit, and
distances between the stones tallied precisely with figures in the
legend.

There seems no longer any doubt that Captain William Kidd was the mind
behind this ingenious scheme, or at least that he knew its secret. But
that he buried the treasure with any hope of retrieving it himself is an
open question. Doubtless he simply enjoyed leaving a riddle to confound
mankind, and the offer made on his way to the gallows was a calculated
part of it. There exists a peculiar kind of genius in the world that
derives great satisfaction from trying to fool humanity in order that
history can record what a wonderful man this was. Or perhaps Kidd merely
entertained a desire to perpetuate himself in order to plague other men
and so pay them back for their injustice.

Whether the old coins and bars of gold will ever amount to a fraction of
the money expended, if and when they are finally brought to the surface,
is no doubt a secondary consideration of this last group of men who are
trying their skill at outwitting the seventeenth-century pirate. To
succeed where so many others have failed would be its own reward. In the
meantime fishermen on the mainland are more than willing to rent their
boats for the pleasure of tourists who want a look at the workings
around the money pit, though such visits are discouraged by the
Americans in charge of operations on Oak Island and no one is permitted
to explore the excavations. It would seem they are really confident of
being on to something this time.

Nova Scotians elsewhere in the province, if they ever think about this
enterprise at all, merely shrug their shoulders. It has never been their
lot to find treasure of any description, and they don’t expect it to
appear on their doorstep now.

Some twenty-five miles south of Chester Basin lies a seaport with a
population of little over 3,000 and a fame that rides the seven seas.
This is Lunenburg, one of the tightest and most perfectly integrated
communities in the whole of North America, and I wouldn’t trade it for
any six other prettier towns with romantic ideas. Lunenburg is romance
in fact, but no one could be less self-conscious about it than the
inhabitants of the place.

It was named for Lüneburg in Hanover; but, like so many Nova Scotia
names, its spelling got changed because people had little time to read
and write in the days of its founding, and ideas were communicated
chiefly by sound. George I of England, who was also Elector of Hanover,
established this community of Swiss, Hanoverians, and Huguenots from
Montbéliard, to offset the Roman Catholic French elsewhere in the
province. Their chief concern was to be agriculture and feeding the
garrison in Halifax.

In 1848 the community was increased by a group of Germans from Baden who
came here to escape the revolutions in Europe. Some of the descendants
of this mixture of peoples have moved along the coast as far as Mahone
Bay, Bridgewater, Lockport, and Port Mouton, but all of them are known
throughout the province as Lunenburgers.

For years and years they were farmers and nothing else, making good use
of the fertile soil along the banks of the La Have River to grow a
variety of vegetables and especially cabbage. Though this coast of Nova
Scotia is as different as could well be imagined from the parts of
middle Europe which were their original homes, they settled down on it
with fortitude and common sense. Those who came from Switzerland and
Baden had probably never been to sea in a boat as far back as memory
lasts; but within a few generations these Lunenburgers were building and
manning their own fishing schooners, and they were soon to become famous
around the world as the finest fishing sailors afloat.

They are incredibly practical people, with no vision or imagination or
brilliance. They are immoderately prosperous—more so than any other
group in the province—and, unlike everyone else in Nova Scotia, they
don’t emigrate. They marry largely among themselves; they are thrifty,
never in debt, have no desire for show, and remain intensely honest and
plain. Certainly they are the most tolerant people in the whole of Nova
Scotia. Though the Germany from which most of their forebears came has
changed out of all recognition, these people have changed less in their
personal qualities than any other group of settlers in the province
. . . except in this transference from farming to fishing as a major
occupation.

Generation after generation the sons and daughters of each family follow
the same pattern; and they speak of being “on the land” or “on the
water,” according to which mode of livelihood is theirs. Politics and
social affairs, except local events within their own community, hold no
interest for them whatsoever. Thus they have produced no statesmen or
intellectuals. Only Captain Angus Walters among them, skipper of the
famous _Bluenose_, is known outside the province by name, and he is
noted for winning every competition in which his ship has taken part. So
he may easily be considered the master of Atlantic sailing. Lunenburgers
have never considered these competitions as international in character,
since most of the rivals of the _Bluenose_, and especially the _Gertrude
L. Thibaud_ of Gloucester, were manned almost entirely by Nova Scotians
regardless of the flag they sailed under. Captain Walters is given honor
by his people, but rather as someone they like than as an international
hero. Sailing with them is a daily business, not a sport.

In Lunenburg nothing matters much but the harbor, and nothing matters in
the harbor but the ships. The town is well sheltered at the end of an
extended bay, but it could never become a great world port because of
its physical shortcomings. Until recently it sheltered the finest fleet
of sail to be found anywhere, but now the Diesel engine has superseded
the sound of flapping canvas as schooners start off for the Banks.

One must read _Captains Courageous_, I suppose, to find the best word
picture of the life led by these Banks fishermen. I can watch the
leather-skinned old men sitting in the sun mending fish nets in
Lunenburg and tell myself that each of them has known half a century of
the most incredible danger and hardship a man’s trade could impose. But
the reality of those dangers never manage to take a recognizable shape
in my mind. Yet they loved every minute of it, and wouldn’t have traded
places with one of my Illinois farmers for anything on earth. Their
world has always been one of good, strong, wet smells—brine and fresh
cod livers and smoke from the galley; and good water sounds like the
screech of herring gulls waiting for fish guts, and waves lashing back
from the prow of their boats, and rubber-booted feet on wet decks. The
dry smells and sounds of a Middle Western farm would be meaningless to
them, from the odor of a dusty barnyard to the sound of meadow larks and
threshing machines and even frogs croaking at night in a pond.

The Grand Banks are words I have always known as a single name, but
their location and even what they actually comprise were not only
unknown to me but of no interest . . . until I began to listen to old
gaffers in Nova Scotia talk of days when they first went banking in the
“wessels,” and later chanced to encounter the crews of several Banks
schooners on a day when they were fortunate enough to be ashore. After
that I looked into the subject privately, unwilling to admit once again
that I could be happily ignorant of a matter as well known to Nova
Scotians as . . . as the ways of trains are to me.

The Grand Banks, I discovered, is or are a submarine plateau with ridges
of varying depths which lie about fifty miles east of Cape Race,
Newfoundland, and extend for some three hundred miles in length and two
hundred miles in width. The Gulf Stream, I also learned, moves along the
southern and eastern edge of the Banks, but most of this plateau lies in
the path of the Labrador current. And that is why fishing in this area
is done in almost continuous fog, with icebergs and transatlantic
steamers covering much the same territory, too. These Grand Banks—many
of the shallower ridges have their own individual names, but I do well
to understand something of them as a whole—are just about the most
important region for codfishing in the world, and that is why
approximately a hundred thousand fishermen spend the major part of their
lives putting out trawls and dragging them in again in this section of
the ocean.

We know that French and Portuguese fishermen were in the habit of
crossing the Atlantic to fish on the Banks before North America was
settled, and so it is easy to see how the German farmers knew about the
finny wealth to be found there and why they decided to try their skill
as fishermen after they had been in Nova Scotia about a hundred years
and had lost their natural distaste for the sea. That they succeeded so
well is not surprising as much as it is exemplary, for remember—these
people have always been unimaginative.

Lunenburg is a town in which nearly every householder is called
“Captain,” which means that he is the master, and perhaps the owner
also, of a Banks schooner. They are big, horny-handed men with gruff,
guttural voices which can be heard in an Atlantic gale from the wheel to
the foretop of a driving schooner. They walk heavily, with a rolling
gait; they eat enormously through endless solid meals of meat and
potatoes and cabbage and cheese. They like to drink rum, though it has
no more apparent effect on them than beer has on an ordinary man; for
they are seldom drunk. Lunenburgers mind their own business, and their
thrift is a virtue without suggesting meanness; for no people outside
Cape Breton can be more generous in the entertainment of strangers.

Although no one to any man’s knowledge can still speak German in
Lunenburg, and none would dream of calling himself a German, they still
speak English with a dialect and an accent of their own. Ten years ago
when rum-running was the second major activity of the place, it was not
uncommon to hear a Lunenburg captain assert that he had “dree wessels in
da wum whoa.” So a walk down the main street can be a lesson in
philology and the history of words.

“See those two names on that chandler’s shop?” he indicated for my
attention the first time he took me to Lunenburg. “Isnor and Whynot. You
drop the _t_ in pronouncing the second name. Now look across the street.
There’s a grocer named Eisenhauer and a hardware merchant named
Whynacht. Isnor and Eisenhauer are the same name—or were originally.
Just a difference in spelling. And the same with Whynot and Whynacht.”

“And I suppose Whynacht was once the German word for Christmas . . .
Weihnacht,” I said.

“Yes . . . of course.” His attention was caught by the set of some sails
beating into the harbor. Sunlight spangled the water and threw points of
golden fire into our eyes. I wanted to know more about those names.

“Why did they make all the changes in spelling?” I persisted. “And if
they were going to make them, why not all agree?”

“The changes were begun a long time ago by the one race that can’t
pronounce anything the way it’s spelled—the English. That final German
_cht_ has always stumped them. And I suppose these people keep the
various spellings now to distinguish themselves from each other.”

“I should say it happens to be a good symbol of the Lunenburger’s
adaptability, too,” I added.

“They’re a wonderful people,” he said. “Look at the muscles on those
fellows straightening out the tackle over there. Some people in Nova
Scotia say none of us should be called Bluenose but these fishermen.
That’s nonsense, of course. But these people are certainly more colorful
than any of the rest of us.”

“Even than a Highlander in kilts, marching to the sound of bagpipes?” I
laughed up at him.

“Well . . .” Modesty and pride were doing battle within him again. At
such a moment I sometimes think I like him almost more than any other
time . . . until common sense manages to beat both emotions aside. “You
don’t see kilts in Nova Scotia any more. Not even on troops of the
Highland brigade, except for dress occasions,” he said.

“You always see girls dressed in tartans and sporrans and everything
doing Highland flings whenever Nova Scotia is presented on paper for
people who don’t know anything about it,” I said.

“Humpf,” he replied. “So you do.”

The subject died right there. I knew well enough how much the Highlander
hates to be made to appear picturesque and romantic through a display of
racial traditions that are dear to him.

The town of Lunenburg is very like Gloucester, Massachusetts, except
that it lacks anything similar to Gloucester’s old colonial houses. In
Lunenburg the standard design for home architecture is the packing-case
house. Its life centers on the wharves and docks, its streets are narrow
and quiet and often nearly empty, and the whole place crawls up and down
the hills on which the town is built. There are any number of chandler’s
shops, so much more engaging than standardized grocery and dry-goods
stores; but there are no modern hotels and no remarkable restaurants.
Homes are the core of Lunenburg society, and the wharves are the center
of its business life.

Over it all are the smells of the harbor, not of rotting fish, because
the cod are cleaned and salted down long before they reach port, but
mostly of the materials used to build and calk ships—tar and oakum and
ships’ keels drying in the sun.

South of the tree-shadowed, small-manufacturing town of Bridgewater,
which stands at the head of the Lunenburg road, the main highway crawls
inland, hugged by dark brooding forests of spruce and hemlock. Every
little crossroads village one meets along here looks like the one before
and the one ahead, but each boasts a name not intended to be forgotten.
There is Conquerall, Italy Cross, and Brooklyn. Liverpool is the place
where records of tuna fishing are broken. Here many of the townspeople
have names like Standish, Bradford, Brewster, and Allerton, representing
at least twelve of the men who put their signatures on the famous
_Mayflower_ compact; for Liverpool was settled about half and half from
Plymouth and Cape Cod both before and after the Revolution.

Crystal-white beaches outlined by evergreen forests and washed by icy
surf emerge into view in the neighborhood of Port Mouton, and then along
come the Sables, and Little Port Hebert, and six towns on Jordan Bay
that were afraid to be themselves—for their names run from Jordan Falls
and Jordan Falls Station to East Jordan, Jordan Bay East Side, Jordan
Ferry, and finally, in a burst of fine imagination, just Jordan Bay.

And then comes the mouth of the Roseway River, and Shelburne at the head
of its lovely harbor. Over this weary old town brood the creaking echoes
of old clipper ships tugging at their wharves; and behind the
paint-peeled grayness of its houses lie tales of glory and despair,
covered with dust. Or so it was until a couple of years ago when
somebody in a naval control room put a finger on this almost-forgotten
spot on the map, and with that single movement brought it to life again.

At the time of the American Revolution, Shelburne was nothing more than
a gradual slope of forested land rising to a plateau overlooking one of
the finest harbors in the world. One day in 1783, practically between
sunrise and sundown, it became a village of 5,000 inhabitants, with
another 5,000 added in a month or so. By 1808 only 300 people were left
in houses along its dusty streets; by 1818 it was dilapidated and
deserted; and by 1848 it was a prosperous, growing shipbuilding center
with lively wharves, a shifting population, and a commodious academy to
uphold its original cultural ambitions.

In the intervening century it has again dwindled in population to next
to nothing. The last time I saw it, in 1936, it gave me a sensation
analogous to walking through a disused cemetery crowded with famous
names on tombstones.

Most of us have come to know more than we used to about the Tories and
Loyalists and their activities in the thirteen colonies during the
Revolution. We know that New York held out as a refuge for wealthy
aristocrats who wanted none of the rebels and revolutionaries. And
doubtless these people were all convinced—as they went on with their
balls and soirées and flirtations—that the rabble would be put down
sooner or later.

The end of the war must have come as a shock to them, and even more so
the command which ordered them to get out of the country and leave their
belongings behind them. In those days one could say simply “get out” and
know there were plenty of places such proud beauties could go.

So off they sailed, carrying their bitterness and pride with them. Some
of them went to the mouth of the Saint John River, some to the Annapolis
Basin to set up a new town at Digby and join the pre-Loyalists along
Minas Basin; one shipload was landed at Guysborough north of Halifax,
and two ships carrying five thousand persons each headed for the
well-known but entirely unpopulated harbor which was eventually named
Shelburne to honor the incumbent Secretary of State in England.

Besides these Tories who sailed from New York there were also disbanded
soldiers and many black servants and slaves, but the bulk of the
contingents were supercilious and self-righteous aristocrats who looked
down upon the pre-Loyalists they found already well established in Nova
Scotia. To do their predecessors justice, the pre-Loyalists also looked
down upon the newcomers from the vantage of years of hard work.

“The influx of Loyalists which began in earnest during the early winter
of 1782-83 was clearly a blessing to Nova Scotia, but hardly an unmixed
one,” says J. B. Brebner in _The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia_. “New
hands for the conquest of the region . . . British Parliament would be
generous in their support . . . vacant lands could be sold, domestic
markets created . . . enterprise stimulated. But the newcomers were a
proud people, legitimately for their voluntary sufferings or less justly
in cases where the affiliation had been accidental or compulsory. They
held themselves to be more cultivated, superior socially and materially,
and above all, more loyal than Nova Scotians could possibly be. For the
future, therefore, there was the sad, angry prospect of welding or
blending two tough, tempered metals—the iron smelted and wrought from
New England ore in the conquest of Nova Scotia’s sustenance and the more
polished steel carried into exile by the victims of a civil war.”[7]

Those in authority worked hard to settle the newcomers, building rude
huts to carry them through the first winter, and Shelburne, as one
example, became larger than Quebec and Montreal combined. The first few
years went well enough, each family on a grant of land donated by the
British government and each group receiving provisions and a stipend for
other needs. Lumber was easy to obtain in Shelburne and houses were
built with graceful lines, very like the homes these people had owned in
the colonies. They began to cover the slope all the way from wharves and
sheds to the plateau, and they were built with sufficient intervening
space to give elbowroom and as much privacy as anyone was likely to
desire in a wilderness. Even a town square and public buildings were
taken into account, and finally Negro slaves and servants were settled
at Birchtown at the head of a separate inlet of the harbor.

When every family had a roof over its head, and the first hard winter
was over, a few enterprising souls began to think about building ships
as a means of transportation, for Shelburne’s only communication with
the rest of the province and the world was by sea. But the majority of
the settlers were strangers to manual labor, both by temperament and by
experience. Servants became independent in this new land where it was
necessary for every man to look out for himself. And then the British
government stopped its free supplies and withdrew its protecting troops
from Nova Scotia, except for a small garrison in Halifax. The people of
Shelburne were on their own, and the going was far from good.

Finally, as though to try them without equivocation, a terrible storm
swept the Nova Scotia coast about a decade after the settlement was
born. It wrecked the wharves and all the shipping in Shelburne harbor,
destroyed stores, and caused an unbelievable amount of damage. What had
been built with so much hardship must now be redone as though it had
never been.

But Shelburne was unequal to the task. A few families stayed, and by so
doing earned more than they were ever likely to receive. The majority
began quickly to look for other and easier places to live. Men and women
who had been determined to remain under the flag and rule of Great
Britain now called themselves beaten and returned to their old homes in
New York and Pennsylvania. Some moved on to other parts of Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick. Shelburne became an empty vessel, a snakeskin shed in
the spring.

Its finely proportioned houses stood gray and empty; its climbing
streets were silent. The hardy ones who stayed on tried to rebuild the
shipyards and wharves, gaining courage and fortitude as they lost
resentment. And finally one of their sons learned to build sailing ships
so well and so beautifully that he became known to the ends of the earth
as the designer of the fastest windships afloat, and the town itself was
eventually dubbed the “birthplace of yachts.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Donald McKay was an artist. The world called him a genius, but he would
have been embarrassed to claim any such epithet for himself. In his own
eyes he was simply a designer of sailing vessels.

He was born at Jordan River near Shelburne in Nova Scotia in the year
1810, the second child of a large family. He learned all there was to
know about building ships as a matter of course. What else was there to
do or talk about or learn in Shelburne? Ships of every description
sailed in and out of this harbor, and it was a natural place for a boy
to play. He watched cargoes of West Indian merchandise unloaded and
listened when sea captains told yarns of faraway places bathed in hot
sun. His dreams were filled with the graceful sway of tapering masts,
studding sails, threads, and blocks and figureheads.

No Scottish father ever stands in the way of a son’s advancement, even
though it takes the boy from home at an early age. So Donald left Jordan
River with his parents’ blessing at the age of sixteen when he was
offered an apprenticeship in the New York shipyards of Isaac Webb, Brown
and Bell. He worked very hard there with nimble fingers and an eager
mind. And when he was twenty-six years old he became a master
shipwright. Then he went to Newburyport, Massachusetts, to work in the
yards of John Currier.

The first ship constructed solely on his design was the _Courier_ of 380
tons. Her rapid runs in the Brazilian coffee trade between New York and
Rio won the favorable notice of shipping men, and the name of her
designer was marked in their minds. She had gone down the ways one year
after the partnership of Currier & McKay was formed in 1841. Two years
later the partners separated, and then the shipyards of McKay and
Pickett went into operation in Newburyport.

It was about this time that Enoch Train, a Boston shipbuilder and
merchant, decided to commence operation of a regular packet line between
Liverpool and Boston. He went to McKay with the proposition that he
build a packet for this line, and within an hour of their meeting a
contract was signed. The result—the _Joshua Bates_, which was launched
in 1845—pleased Train enormously. After that he met little opposition
in persuading McKay to open his own shipyards where he could build
packet ships for Train and as many vessels for other firms as he could
handle.

So at the age of thirty-four Donald McKay put into commission his famous
yards at East Boston.

During the next five years he designed and built five packet ships for
Train and twelve ships for other lines, and all of them were admired in
every seaport where they dropped anchor. When his _Stag-Hound_ was
launched in 1846 she was the largest merchant ship yet built. In the
year 1851 alone, the McKay shipyards launched thirty-one California
clippers; and it was in this year that the _Flying Cloud_ went down the
ways. When she made the passage from New York to San Francisco around
Cape Horn in eighty-nine days, a record was established which has never
been surpassed by a sailing ship.

Keen rivalry developed about this time between the British and American
clippers in the China trade, and one of the greatest sports of the day
in shipping circles grew out of wagers on the relative speed of favorite
ships. Those designed by McKay invariably stood high in the betting.

About this time, too, Donald McKay married a Boston girl whom he
continued to love and admire all his life. He sent for his parents and
established them in a home of their own in East Boston, and set up his
brother Lauchlin—who had been trained at the United States Naval
Academy—as captain of his _Sovereign of the Seas_, which had gone into
service in 1852.

In 1853 McKay launched the four-masted bark _Great Republic_, built for
the booming Australian trade. She weighed 4,555 tons, the largest
clipper ever built, and became at once a marine sensation. On her first
voyage to London she made the run from Sandy Hook to Land’s End in
thirteen days, and later she was used for rushing British troops to the
Crimea. A year later McKay built three more of his famous fleet of
clippers, and one of these, the _Lightning_, established a day’s run of
four hundred and thirty-six miles.

Then came the Civil War, and the McKay shipyards began to turn out boats
for the United States government—an ironclad monitor, the _Nausett_;
two wooden gunboats; and a sloop-of-war. After that the day of the
clipper ship began to wane; and no one had yet been able to challenge
the skill and imagination of this Nova Scotian, whose intuitive
perception needed no formal education for ripening. In all, he designed
and built forty-two vessels—among them the swiftest and most beautiful
ships that ever carried sail.

In 1877 McKay retired to the farm he had bought at Hamilton,
Massachusetts, and there he died at the age of seventy-one. He would
have been immensely surprised had anyone been able to tell him that his
bust would be enshrined at the Louvre in Paris or that his designs would
forever be the admiration of all naval architects. As a designer he won
fame and glory with his full-rigged, narrow-beamed clipper ships; but as
a Nova Scotian he was a person of simple, charming manners that played
no small part in this memorable success.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Today Shelburne is a boom town once again. Saws buzz, hammers spit out
their tattoo, and no one knows where any more newcomers can be housed.
From lumber to boxes, sails to spars, marine engines to oars, and from
yachts, schooners, rowboats, and dories to slim corvettes, the town is
building things of urgent need in a world at war. Once again ships have
brought an influx of Americans—and trains have brought them, too, this
time—all on business for a friendly government. As quickly as keels can
be laid and superstructures finished, the Royal Canadian Navy is on hand
to take command of the vessels. And contingent with all this activity
has gone on the unpublicized building of a naval base.

One day not so very long ago a famous yacht, bearing the name _Potomac_
on her stern, slipped quietly into Shelburne harbor. Everybody in town
knew she was there, and when they read in the papers how the big cities
were speculating as to the whereabouts of the rendezvous being held by
Churchill and Roosevelt somewhere in the North Atlantic, they said
nothing at all about their visitor until after she had slipped quietly
out of the harbor to pick up her famous charge and take him to
Washington again.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Fishing village on South Shore]

Between Shelburne and Shag Harbour at the extreme southern tip of the
province the land is wild and rocky and desolate, broken only here and
there by very small villages that seem to cling to life through
determination rather than hope. Thousands of crates of blueberries are
shipped from this region to the United States every year, and little do
the individuals who smack their lips over blueberry pie and huckleberry
muffins in Cleveland or Baltimore or Chicago think of these marshy
patches between lichen-covered rocks where the berries grow succulent on
their prickly bushes.

There are many cairns and markers at intervals along this forbidding
coast to show where attempts were made to colonize or start a settlement
in the misty past. Like so many other parts of Nova Scotia, this, too,
seems to be fifty per cent. past and ninety per cent. future.

But there are many places along here, such as Barrington Head, where
continuous settlements have been maintained. In 1775 New Englanders
attacked the Acadian village at this spot and razed every building,
slaughtered the livestock, burned the crops, and carried off the
inhabitants to Boston. Then English settlers came from Cape Cod and
Nantucket in 1761 and they managed to hang on because no one had any
desire to carry them off. Their Old Meeting House still stands as the
oldest Nonconformist church building in Canada. By 1829 Barrington was
served by the Reverend Gavin Lang, who produced two distinguished sons
for the church—one of them gave him two still more distinguished
grandsons, a former Moderator of the Church of Scotland and the recently
resigned Archbishop of Canterbury, Gordon Cosmo Lang. Such developments
are taken for granted by everyone in this province except surprised
Americans, who find it difficult to credit that a people would be so
reluctant to boast when they have so much to brag about.

In Newfoundland one hears much about “outports”—by which is meant tiny
fishing villages clustered on rocks and capes, generally without roads
and always solitary. In an outport the living is poor and hard to get,
and the life of the people incomprehensible to a city dweller. In an
outport democracy is absolute, and would be so even though the
government of the country to which it belonged was a despotism, because
there is often no money at all in such a village. The community is
self-sufficient because it must be. The villagers may own a few motors
for their boats—particularly of recent years—but the boats were made
by their own hands and the engine obtained by bartering fish. Their
clothes may come from the nearest general store, but the purchase is
nearly always made without money.

In Nova Scotia there are not many outports left except on the South
Shore, where there are still a few. Towns like Lunenburg and Liverpool
are in no sense outports. Herring Cove has the appearance of one, but is
not because it is too close to Halifax and the men can always earn money
as longshoremen. Peggy’s Cove survives as a perfect example of what an
outport used to be like, though its character has been largely lost with
improved transportation and the coming of tourists.

Today it is only on the dots of rocky islands sprinkled along the South
Shore that real outports survive. On nearly every island large enough to
maintain human life there are small, isolated communities of descendants
of shipwrecks. Some are considered to be the offspring of pirates, but
how the forebears of most of them reached their present location is a
matter of tradition and legend. Most of these islands are known to the
rest of the province by name only: Ironbound, Seal, Tancook, the
Tuskets, Sable Island, the Pubnicos, and hundreds more no one thinks
about at all. Each settlement has a different inheritance and is often
the result of a mixture of various seafaring races. Some of the
inhabitants of these islands have never seen a city or a motorcar, never
seen an electric light except on a passing steamer; and certainly some
have never seen a dollar bill. How they manage to live is a matter of
wonder, since their relation to the rest of the world is practically
nonexistent. But the color they lend to the Nova Scotian scene is
unquestionable in the eyes of the outsider, once he hears about them.

Of them all, Sable Island is perhaps the most astonishing. (And it’s not
to be confused with Cape Sable Island, which is highly civilized.) It
lies eighty-five miles off the Nova Scotian coast in the direct path of
vessels on their way to and from American and Nova Scotian ports. It is
a sand bar twenty miles long by less than a mile wide, and its long
underwater tentacles of sand, which are covered by terrible tide rips
and swirling currents, have lured hundreds of ships to destruction.
Moreover, it is covered a good portion of the time by some of the
densest fogs in the North Atlantic, and always it is outlined by the
foam of heavy breakers.

Once upon a time there were no lighthouses on it, no lifesaving
stations, and no barracks where salvaged victims of shipwrecks could
live and recuperate until they could be removed to the mainland. It has
always been inhabited by a herd—or many herds—of wild horses, but no
one knows where their ancestors came from nor how long they have been
there. Once upon a time, too, it was inhabited by pirates and wreckers
who built bonfires on the sands to lure ships to their destruction. And
then jewelry and other articles of great value would appear in the
markets of Halifax which were known to have come from these wrecks.

The island is now under the control of the federal government and no one
is allowed on it without an order from Ottawa. Clara Dennis tells many
stories about the island and her visit to it in her book _Down in Nova
Scotia_, but I like best the one about the problem of the animals.
Someone sent some rabbits to the lighthousekeepers and the rabbits
multiplied until they were more than a nuisance, but along came a horde
of rats from a wreck and they ate all the rabbits. To rid the island of
the rats someone sent a load of cats and the cats did their appointed
job well, but in time they, too, multiplied prodigiously and became
fierce and unmanageable. So dogs and hunters were sent to rid the island
of the cats, and that did it and all went well . . . until more rabbits
appeared, and multiplied, and so on. This time a white owl, according to
Miss Dennis, flew over the island, spied the rabbits, and went off to
tell about it. A whole flock of white owls returned and in no time at
all the rabbits were gone, this time for good.

In 1900 the government provided for the planting of some eighty thousand
trees and plants and shrubs on Sable Island, but it was of no use
whatever. The endless winds killed them all; and so the bar of sand
remains skin-bare and hummocky out in the ocean, growing smaller year by
year as the waves pull more of the sand under water. Its menace grows,
too, as its size decreases, and the time will come when there will no
longer be room enough on the island for the lighthouses and other
government buildings. But the submerged sand bars covered with heavy
cross seas will still be there, reaching out for helpless ships blown
off their course by a storm.

From Shag Harbour five lighthouses are visible at night, and a score of
small islands that serve as headquarters for extensive lobster fishing.
On Seal Island there is a lighthouse, a wireless station, and a
lifesaving station, aside from the animals that have inspired its name.
Crews of countless topedoed fishing vessels were landed there during the
first World War. Mud Island has its own legend of a “petrified woman”
who was found in a shallow grave where she had been buried for thirty
years, her body intact and lifelike but turned to stone. Cape Sable
Island is one of the largest along the Stone Shore. It was founded by
Quakers from Nantucket who were whalers, and it now has three small
towns, three lobster canneries, a thriving business for retired seamen
in the construction of model fishing smacks, and a large shore fishing
fleet from which boats may be hired for sport. One or two of the smaller
islands are considered to be particular beauties because the inhabitants
have become inbred through generations and communicate with each other
in a language of their own.

Off Wedgeport are the Tusket Islands, where world records in tuna
tonnage have been established. Nova Scotians find it difficult to think
why anyone wants to catch these monsters which most of them still call
albacore, because they are considered inferior food. But since Americans
continue to come here for that express purpose, accommodations are made
to please them and some of the world’s finest fishermen are on hand to
show the way to the best tuna grounds. Beginning early in July the
blue-fin tuna feed in large schools among these islands, dropping down
on the powerful ebb tide with the Tusket rip—a six-knot tide stream
about a mile wide. Thousands of tuna weighing up to nine hundred pounds
may be seen in this tide rip, feeding on herring and mackerel. Any
sportsman who chooses to fish in the vicinity has some amazing records
to match, such as the 1939 catch record of forty-one tuna that totaled
18,624 pounds—all taken by rod and line.

What the people who live in this part of Nova Scotia manage to do in the
seasons when there are no lobster pots to set, no fruits to pick and
send to the United States, no tuna running, no cod to clean and lay out
in flakes, and no Americans arriving in need of guides is difficult to
imagine. Maybe they just sit and think about what a strange place the
rest of the world must be, without all the advantages their kind of life
affords.

This is a world of shipmasts stabbing at the sky, angular gray roofs of
fish barns and fishermen’s houses, undulating horizons that cut off the
interior, and always the pulsing sea. The inhabitants of all these towns
of the South Shore are accustomed to endless physical labor, and through
the years they have become vigorous and tough. If a political or
economic union should ever come about through joint action of the United
States and Canada, no part of the Dominion would be more favorably
affected than Nova Scotia; and no part of Nova Scotia would deserve the
fruits of such a union more than these people of the South Shore, who
would doubtless still manage to do everything for themselves since that
is the way it has always been with them.

-----

[7] Reprinted from Brebner, _The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia_, by
permission of Columbia University Press.


                                ROUTE 3

    _Halifax_ . . . road to Herring Cove, Portuguese Cove, Ketch
    Harbour, and Sambro leaves Route 3 on far side of Armdale
    Bridge, running left along western side of the Northwest Arm.

    _Beech Hill_ . . . this is a district half a dozen miles out of
    Halifax where a road leads off to the left for Prospect and
    Terence Bay, both fishing villages worth a visit. From Shad Bay
    this road also leads along the coast to Peggy’s Cove.

    _Ingramport_ . . . the French Village road branches off before
    reaching here, leading to Hackett Cove, Indian Harbour, and
    Peggy’s Cove—the latter about seventeen miles from the main
    highway.

    _Hubbards_ . . . a summer resort for Halifax residents, popular
    because of its sand beaches but not because of the bear hunting
    which is said to be abundant in the neighborhood.

    _Chester_ . . . this village is situated on a peninsula at the
    head of Mahone Bay. Aside from Americans, it seems to be
    renowned for scallops, game hunting, and excellent yachting. The
    town is also filled with old houses of historical—if very local
    historical—fame.

    _Swedish Inn: Quarter Deck._

    _Mahone Bay_ . . . population 1,065. Derives its name from the
    French word for a low-lying boat which was used by the pirates
    who operated from the small islands in this bay. The most
    exciting moment in the history of Mahone occurred during the War
    of 1812 when an American privateer, which had come into the bay
    for the purpose of raiding whatever shipping it could find, was
    chased by a British man-of-war and found itself unable to
    escape. The American vessel (its name was _Young Teazer_, by the
    way) was captained by a deserter from the English navy and,
    rather than be captured and hanged, he threw a torch into the
    powder magazine and blew _Young Teazer_ to kingdom come.

[Illustration: _Canadian Pacific Railway_

Looking across Lunenburg Harbour, Nova Scotia, from the golf links to
the town. Lunenburg is the home port of the “Bluenose”]

    _Lunenburg_ . . . population 3,000. Home of the greatest
    deep-sea fishing fleet in North America. Blue Rocks, five miles
    down the shore, and The Ovens, twelve miles away, are both worth
    a visit, the former having been painted by innumerable artists.
    St. John’s Church was founded by Royal Charter in 1754; it
    possesses communion vessels presented by George III, as well as
    a Queen Anne pewter chalice. The choir wears scarlet cassocks by
    right of this Royal Foundation.

    One of the town’s most renowned sons is Morris Wilson, President
    of the Royal Bank of Canada and former head of the British
    Purchasing Commission in the United States.

    At present the Norwegian Naval Service maintains headquarters in
    Lunenburg as a training base. Several hundred men are housed in
    a large barracks and dining hall called Camp Norway.

    _Bridgewater_ . . . population 3,300. Built in 1812 on a
    forested hill overlooking the LaHave River, a good salmon
    stream. A collection of sea curiosities, old coins, Indian
    relics, and possessions of some of the first settlers are on
    display in the museum in the Town Hall. This is a large
    lumber-shipping center, and it also manufactures building
    material, gas engines, and by-products of vegetables and fruits.

    _Brooklyn_ . . . the Mersey Paper Company, Ltd. turns out 75,000
    tons of paper from its plant here every year, on which are
    printed some of New York’s largest newspapers. It would be
    interesting to know who changed the original Indian name of this
    place to its present one. Family resemblance to the home of the
    Dodgers is slight indeed.

    _Liverpool_ . . . population 2,700. Situated on the Mersey
    River, from which nearly five hundred salmon were taken by
    angling in the space of ten miles during the 1940 season.
    Liverpool privateersmen made a great name for themselves at the
    beginning of the nineteenth century. The schooner _Liverpool
    Packet_ alone captured more than a hundred American vessels on
    the coast of New England in the first nine months of the War of
    1812.

    In the autumn there is excellent shooting of seafowl here, and
    in the summer there’s fine bathing—at least, the beaches are
    fine; but the water is good and cold. And then there are always
    tuna fish in the harbor; the largest blue-fin tuna ever taken by
    rod and line, weighing 956 pounds, was brought to gaff here.

    _White Point Beach_ . . . the lodge and cabins on this beautiful
    pine-backed beach are comfortable and attractive in the best
    American style for holiday resorts. Golf, tennis, archery,
    aquaplaning, bathing, boating, canoeing—oh, yes, and
    fishing—are provided for guests.

    _White Point Beach Lodge_

    _Port Mouton_ . . . is a fishing village spread around a harbor,
    famous chiefly for its white sand beaches. In the near
    neighborhood is the Wobamkek Beach Golf Club, where the game is
    played on white sand with a red ball and the hazards include
    sand hills, dunes, and pits. If you lose the ball there is
    always a marvelous view of the harbor and distant islands. Its
    name dates from the day in 1604 when a sheep was lost overboard
    during a stop here by DeMonts. But the English couldn’t
    pronounce mouton, so they call it Ma-toon’. Yes, they do!

    _Shelburne_ . . . population (before 1940) 1,500. The town is
    full of cairns and commemorative tablets, and at the drop of a
    ration card visitors will be shown an antique fire engine of
    English manufacture which is said to be the only one of its kind
    in Canada. It was built in 1756. No one needs to point out the
    hundred-year-old wells in the middle of several streets, which
    still provide good water. McNutt’s Island, at the entrance of
    Shelburne Harbour, holds one of the oldest lighthouses in Nova
    Scotia and it is a favorite place for picnics, reached by
    motorboats from the town.

    Many descendants of the Negro servants of early settlers of
    Shelburne still live at near-by Birchtown. There were at least a
    thousand of these slaves; one man brought fifty-five alone.

    _Barrington Head_ . . . this district is developing rapidly as a
    site for summer homes and hunting lodges, for it offers sea
    bathing on a two-mile beach, yachting, and salmon and trout
    fishing. Deer hunting and blue-winged duck shooting may be found
    in the vicinity. The town itself still resembles Barrington in
    Massachusetts. Aside from its renowned clergyman who begat
    renowned clergymen, it can also point in its ancient burying
    ground to the grave of the grandmother of the author of “Home
    Sweet Home”—John Howard Payne.

    Barrington Passage, not many miles away, is the home of a large
    number of men who work as crew members on yachts during the
    summer and return here to spend the rest of the year.

    _Pubnico Head_ . . . the name is derived from an Indian word
    meaning “land cleared for cultivation.” The residents are
    chiefly descendants of pre-Loyalists who came here before 1771.
    In near-by West Pubnico, Middle West Pubnico, Lower West
    Pubnico, Middle East Pubnico, Centre East and Lower East
    Pubnico, the inhabitants are Acadians descended from many of
    those who found their way back from New England after 1755, and
    they are today concerned principally with fishing and mixed
    farming.

    _Argyle_ . . . there are four kinds of Argyles in this region,
    which has rugged scenery somewhat like the Scottish Highlands.
    The Tusket Islands lie offshore. From Central Argyle through the
    Pubnicos the land east of the highway is a twenty-mile-wide
    strip of wilderness composed of timber, bogs and barrens, lakes
    and streams. It is a natural home for fish and big game, but
    there are no roads or habitation in it of any kind.

    _Chebogue Point_ . . . this district commands a wonderful view
    over the Atlantic and the Tusket Islands. It is a farming
    settlement, founded by _Mayflower_ descendants, and there are a
    number of old sea captains’ homes with widows’ walks and cupolas
    on the roofs. Between Yarmouth and Chebogue—during certain
    weeks each summer—banks which line the roadside are covered
    with blue lupin, spread from garden seed first brought from
    Holland. It is a sight worth driving a long distance to see.
    Among the records cherished in Chebogue is one which indicates
    that Paul Revere—the same one—was initiated here in the second
    degree of Masonry in 1772.

    _Yarmouth_ . . . see Chapter VI.




                                   VI
                          _FARMERS UNDER SAIL_


The oily waters between Cape Fourchu and the mainland of Nova Scotia
rise easily up and down the great Fundy tides; and Yarmouth climbs up a
hill to peer out beyond them, with a look of aged memories and sights
unseen by the present generation in its eyes.

Top-heavy white steamships arrive at the Yarmouth docks every morning
from Boston and go back again at night; coaches of the Canadian National
Railway are backed onto the pierhead to wait for passengers whose
destination is Halifax; limousines and station wagons get trundled out
of the bowels of the ship to be ready for their owners as soon as the
customs men have been satisfied. A few small sailboats wander over the
surface of the yacht harbor like heedless babies, and several coastwise
fishing vessels skulk in the lee of smelly piers. A mongrel dog follows
a boy wearing a too-big cap as they make their way to nowhere in
particular; and a pair of oxen with bent heads and cloven feet amble up
the road with a load of cleaned cod in the gawky wagon behind them,
ignoring the excitement they cause among passengers newly disembarked
from “the Boston States.”

Up on the hill stand fine old houses, proud of their high ceilings,
mahogany furniture, porcelain treasures brought from the Orient, and
widows’ walks around their roofs. To them, the puny activity going on
below is of no moment and no account. They remember how it was so short
a time as fifty years ago when this was a seaport known around the
world, when famous windjammers and the men who sailed them were equally
proud as they moved out into a scudding breeze past Yarmouth Light on
ventures that took them wherever wealthy cargoes and men’s imaginations
called.

Today Yarmouth sits quietly forgotten, like a rusty swing in a disused
playground. The seafarers who made of this a salty, worldly-wise port
have left it long ago for wider adventures—or moved into the houses on
the hill. Visitors who come and go think they see a quiet town
half-hidden beneath clouds of green treetops; but unless their ears are
able to catch the timeless echoes of creaking masts and flapping sails,
they have known it not.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Curing Cod]

It is easy enough to observe rotting piles under old wharves and think
only of the unfamiliar and distasteful smell of curing fish, if one has
never heard of the onetime importance of these same wharves and the
beautiful barkentines and clipper ships that berthed beside them. Most
of us see lush farms around the town, with stone fences and pure-bred
cattle and hedgerows of hawthorn and even water meadows; but few of us
understand why the people who own these farms have tried to make this a
patch of old England in a new world. We drive quickly by the fields of
blueberries and strawberries and think nothing of the speed with which
these same berries will be picked and transported to Boston and New
York, to appear on dinner tables almost overnight. Everything looks
summer-still and careless here now, after the noise and heat of American
cities left behind, and the whys and hows and whens of Yarmouth seem
unimportant because its capacities for providing amusement appear
slight.

Acadians lived here first, but they were thrown out by a band of New
Englanders who arrived in a boat one night and proceeded to burn their
houses and crops, slaughter their cattle, and carry every human being in
the place off to Boston. And then a few years later some families from
Yarmouth, Massachusetts, came to take over the Acadians’ farms, naming
the settlement after the place they had left. In another two years they
were joined by eighty more colonists from Sandwich, Massachusetts, all
part of the pre-Loyalist movement that was taking place throughout Nova
Scotia.

These Puritans were hardworking, sturdy individuals, imbued with a will
to accomplish whatever they set out to do. Before long they had the
farms producing again, houses built and furnished with the work of their
own hands, and then they began to venture from their farmyards onto the
sea—just far enough to catch fish to supplement their farm-produced
food. Since the fish were found in abundance and it took very little
time to catch them, not much time was spent on the water. Their spare
hours were devoted to improving their living conditions.

And it was the same along this whole Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia.
Wherever there was arable land, men settled in small groups and built
homes and farmed as well as they were able. The acreage they tilled was
never extensive because the forests and inland hills always cut them
back and kept them close to the sea, but they managed a fair living and
each community kept itself together as a closely knit unit.

Eventually, of course—because the water spread out before them as their
only highway to other parts of the province, as well as to the rest of
the world, and the forests provided abundant wood—they began to build
small boats. Like their brothers and cousins left behind in America,
they were of a breed that found it difficult to stay in one place for
long.

It is one of the phenomena of the new world that within a generation
they became nearly as skilled on the sea as they were on their farms. In
fact, the men of Nova Scotia came to know about ships and the sea in the
same way that Americans know about engines and automobiles today.

Once they had learned to build small boats for themselves on the banks
of creeks and streams where the forest was on one hand to provide timber
and the sea came up the rivers at high tide to help in the launching,
they began to let their imaginations run to larger boats with two
masts—just to see what could be done with the tools and the materials
they had mastered. With all his faults and virtues, the Yankee—and
these were all Yankees who happened to be living just north of New
England—may be credited with inventiveness and ingenuity beyond all
other men.

Only two years after Halifax was founded, a brig was built there with
slave labor; and by 1798 the largest ship yet built in Nova Scotia was
sold to Great Britain for use in her war with France. It probably
weighed only a few hundred tons; but it must have proved its worth, for
that sale encouraged other men to try their hand at this new craft. It
was another forty years, however, before ships with wooden hulls and
square-rigged sails were built on any notable scale anywhere in Canada.

As so often happens with Nova Scotians, they seemed slower in getting
under way with this industry than other North Americans; perhaps their
Yankee inheritance had become thinned out. But their staying power
proved far greater. The world learned to distinguish between Canadians
from the region of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and
Maritimers—as the inhabitants of the three provinces of Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island are called. Finally every craft
built in one of the Maritime Provinces became known as a Nova Scotiaman,
or a Bluenose, because the dominant characteristics of the men who
sailed these ships were those of the farmer-skippers who had emerged
from innumerable inlets and coves on the Nova Scotian coast to master
the finest fleet of sailing vessels known to man.

When I first lived in Nova Scotia I was confused by the familiarity with
which every man and boy talked about these square-rigged ships. Not only
have they disappeared from the seas, but I had barely heard of them. Oh,
well . . . I knew there were packets before the kind of steamships I
crossed on to Europe, but I wasn’t sure how long before. Yet every man
and boy in Nova Scotia can tell you instantly if a painting of a clipper
is true or false by the set of her sails in relation to the direction of
the wind and the size of her wake. They judge all seagoing craft
(according to sail spread and the way they ride the water) as I judge a
streamlined car, and their disgust with a sloppy job or a display of
poor seamanship is comparable to the distress I feel whenever I see a
fine car mishandled.

They mention famous old ships by name and with an affection not to be
compared with our distinction between a Packard and a Plymouth. Each of
those individual ships, it seems, had a personality and characteristics
of her own, and I’m sure the discriminating displayed far more
partiality than seasoned travelers of our day showed for the _Aquitania_
or the _Rex_ or the _Lurline_.

All the words they used in talking about their favorite clippers were
strange to me, too. Once I heard the Doctor name every one of the dozens
of visible parts in a painting of the _Flying Cloud_—all for my
benefit—but he might have been speaking Chinese for the little I
understood. Do you suppose, fifty years from now, motorcars will seem as
much of a curiosity to our grandchildren?

Not long ago I came across two books with provocative titles, _Wooden
Ships and Iron Men_ and _In the Wake of the Windships_, written by a man
who understood well what he was talking about. From him I have learned
more than I ever guessed there was to tell about the subject. If, in the
following pages, I lean heavily on Frederick William Wallace for facts
and figures, I trust my appreciation for the work he has done will
compensate in some degree for my indebtedness. Let me quote a page or so
to give a taste of the beauty of these terms which I still only
half-understand.

“A gray day in high Southern latitudes, with the sunlight veiled by
slatey clouds, reveals the sea rolling in huge cresting undulations to
the urge of a bitter wind. Snugged down to four topsails, braced sharp
up, with canvas distended iron hard and full to the pressure of the
breeze and with running gear blown off in great bights to leeward of her
swinging masts, a rusty-hulled iron barque with ‘Liverpool’ on her stern
is plunging and rolling to the westward with chill water cascading over
her decks and sluicing out through scupper-hole and clanking wash-port.

“The seas south of fifty are lone waters. The mate of the Liverpool
barque scanned the wide horizon with eyes watering in the nip of the
chill wind and his roving glance was arrested by the sight of a pearly
gleam of white sail showing against the black murk to windward, where
night was receding before the pale dawn. Brightening at the sight of
another craft in these desolate wastes of ocean, the officer scans the
stranger through binoculars and remarks to his captain: ‘An American, I
think, sir, and coming along fast. He’ll pass up pretty close, I’m
thinking——’

“The other senses the thought in his mind. ‘Aye . . . get out the flags.
We’ll ask him to report us.’

“Within half an hour, with the squalls of wind hounding her along, the
stranger came storming up out of the west into plain sight. She was a
big ship—a wooden three-master, black-hulled, heavily sparred, and
deep-laden—and she was forging through the long green seas with yards
almost square and royals and cross-jack furled. The white welter under
her bows told of the speed of her onslaught through the water, and the
great arcs into which the foot of her bellying sails were curved
betrayed the tremendous urge of the wind in their woven fabrics. She
rolled steadily, revealing her coppered under-body in a wet gleam of
verdigrised green one moment, and when she listed to port, her
white-painted stanchions and rails, scrubbed decks, and a poop largely
filled by high cabin houses.

“A man was scrambling up her main-rigging. The watchers saw him gain the
royal yard and run along the foot-ropes of the spar. Loosened canvas
bellied forth as he cast the confining gaskets off, and while the sailor
clambered up to the eyes of the rigging to overhaul the gear the yard
was hoisted and the sail sheeted home and set in a manner which savoured
of the smartness of a man-o’-war. This exhibition of sail-carrying in a
heavy breeze, the well-set and well-trimmed sails and yards, the
faultlessly stayed masts, and generally spotless appearance of the big
ship evoked two kinds of comment from the Liverpool vessel’s
_personnel_. The master and mate murmured admiration: ‘A down-east
Yankee, sure enough. They put the crews through their paces on those
packets.’ The men in the Britisher’s fo’c’sle voiced other opinions: ‘A
damn nigger-drivin’ Yankee where they works the soul-case out of the
hands and lets you rest when you’re dead.’

“A ball of bunting went up to the stranger’s monkey-gaff. A jerk on the
flag halliard broke the spun-yard stop, and, instead of the Stars and
Stripes, the red ensign of the British Mercantile Marine flew snapping
in the breeze. ‘She’s an English ship!’ piped an apprentice-boy on his
first voyage. A sour-visaged Aberdeen carpenter favoured him with a
commiserating glance and growled: ‘English ship? A lot you know about
it. She’s a Bluenose.’ . . .

[Illustration: _Mary Van Nest_

Bringing salt from the Indies—the James E. Newsom, Lunenburg]

“This was in the middle ’seventies, when the Maritime Provinces of
Canada built, owned, and operated a mighty fleet of merchant sailing
ships. In 1878, Canada ranked fourth among the ship-owning countries of
the world with a flotilla of 7,196 vessels aggregating 1,333,015 tons.
They were wooden ships and driven by sail, but during the half-century
between 1840 and 1890—the era of the British North American
‘windjammers’—they captured a huge share of the world’s carrying trade
and built up a reputation for smart ships and native-born seamen that
was a legend in nautical history and fo’c’sle story for many years. Like
the great ship in the incident which opens this account, a little
company of ship-builders and sailors resident on the shores of the
Atlantic coasts of Canada created a mercantile marine which burst into
ocean commerce, made history and drew the admiration of seamen, and
thence vanished into the mists of oblivion.”[8]

At first the small sailing ships built in Nova Scotia were used to carry
lumber and fish—the chief exportable products of the province—to the
West Indies, and they returned with molasses, rum, salt, sugar, and
mahogany. For the most part, in those early years, the sloops and
brigantines in this trade were owned in Great Britain.

But gradually the small ships were sent farther than the West Indies for
more valuable cargo, and within an incredibly short space of time their
worth became known throughout the entire shipping world. Unlike American
and British ships, they were made of soft woods, chiefly tamarac or
larch, plus juniper, cypress, and eventually spruce when the tamarac
gave out. Compared with the thin flanks of steel-constructed ships,
their timbers were enormous and their planks exceedingly thick. They
were braced and reinforced and bolted by iron or copper, and yet storms
broke them to pieces and their life at best was never more than three to
ten years.

A few of the vessels built in the small shipyards around the coast were
based upon designs sent out by British owners; but most of them were
constructed from miniature models made by the foreman in charge, and in
later years by retired sea captains who know from practical experience
the value of their own designs.

In every cove and inlet, blocks were laid near the water. Then the
backbone of the vessel—the keel—was put together out of huge trees,
sawn into timbers, and the sound of adzes, hammers, and axes rang from
the echoing hills beyond. A sternpost and a stem were erected on the
keel and fastened securely with iron bolts; strengthening timbers were
added; various frames were completed; and then the planking was begun on
the inside, to protect the frame from cargoes. Then decks were laid.
After that the vessel was planked on the outside, seams were calked to
make them watertight, the rudder was hung, deckhouses were added,
blacksmiths got to work on their particular jobs, and finally the ship
was painted. Then she was ready for launching. The ways were greased,
blocks were knocked out from under, and if all went well she slid into
the water at high tide as expected. After that spars and rigging were
added and she was ready for her first run, mastered by a local Captain
who took his brothers and nephews to sea to teach them how to captain
other boats for themselves some future day.

By 1840 the number of ships launched in Nova Scotian waters increased
quickly, and at the same time their size began to expand. Now they were
owned by their builders who operated them as an investment, rather than
putting them up immediately for sale. In this, Nova Scotia differed
markedly from both New Brunswick and Quebec in the years when the
shipyards of the latter two provinces were turning out tonnages
comparable to the launchings in Nova Scotia.

It was during these early days that the White Star flag became known on
the high seas, after the first ship was built for that line in Saint
John in 1852. The Cunard brothers of Halifax turned from their invested
interest in whale fishing and began to commission vessels for their
growing fleet of cargo and passenger ships. And the first ship to fly
the flag of the famous Black Ball line of packets was Canadian-built.

Soon the vessels owned by Nova Scotians began to embark on larger trade
with Great Britain, returning now with produce from England’s steel
mills in ballast. But the keels of the real Bluenose fleet had yet to be
laid.

In 1848 hundreds of American vessels were withdrawn from trade in order
to hurry them around the Horn to California, and Canadian ships were
suddenly in great demand. Speed and greater speed in sailing time were
essential requirements, and so a new type of ship was designed with this
factor in mind—the clipper. Ships began to sail from Yarmouth for
California loaded with building material, and then they were sold the
moment they reached San Francisco. But when more gold was discovered in
Australia in 1851, the real boom in Canadian shipbuilding was on. It was
also helped not a little by the sudden need for transports to carry
troops to the Crimea in 1853, when speed again was the first essential.

Few real clippers were built in Nova Scotia; but the cargo vessels owned
and operated in the province made profits and more profits, and each
year the number of ships which remained in Nova Scotian ownership after
their launching increased. In every little shipyard on Minas Basin, in
Pictou County, and in the vicinity of Yarmouth, a flotilla of Bluenose
ships was growing.

No little responsibility for their eventual renown and success depended
upon the character of the men who manned them. They were tough,
courageous, intrepid, and skillful, and their nerve was without limit.
They broke records and were stopped by nothing on land or sea, and if
they feared anything it was God alone. They became known as ruthless and
cruel, too, but generally only to sailors who were themselves lazy and
ill equipped for their work.

Rough manners and no quarter to mistakes have always been the way at
sea, because in this life men face two elements both of which are
enormously powerful, both unpredictable. A yard carelessly set may give
at the crucial moment of strain and the result be a ship piled up on a
lee shore. A second’s hesitation in answering the word of command may
result in the loss of a mast. And besides these general dangers there is
at sea always the moment of surprise, particularly in typhoon and
monsoon latitudes. To run out along a topgallant yard, swaying wildly in
a rolling sea and whipped by a fifty-mile-an-hour squall, with the
temperature somewhere below zero and rolling clouds of snow hiding the
moon, requires a degree of nerve and hardihood as difficult for us to
envisage as it would have been for our grandfathers to picture a boy
capable of diving a bomber down through a barrage of flak at five
hundred miles an hour.

Three factors combined to make the sailing-ship master a terror to many
of his crew. First of all, the life was lonely and hard. The master was
under full responsibility for months on end, a solitary figure who could
never venture into conversation with his crew or even with his officers
for fear of undermining discipline.

Secondly, during the days of the clippers, America became a haven for
all the penniless unemployed in Europe. Few of the men trying to get out
of these old countries had money to pay for their passage, so they
pretended to be able seamen in order to fool a mate into signing them
on. And once on board a sailing ship a loafer could not be dismissed and
sent back.

The owner of a public house in an Irish port became world-famous for his
ability to get passage for immigrants. After he had set a bull’s horn on
a table in his parlor and marched his applicants around it three times,
he would then produce these men to an unsuspecting mate with the
information that they were prime seamen for they had been thrice around
the Horn. As much to discourage the practice of such fraudulent signing
of articles as anything else, the mates of both Yankee and Bluenose
ships drove these inexperienced men as though they were the prime seamen
they professed to be. Some of them were driven over the side as a
result.

The third factor making for hard and cruel discipline was the necessity
for speed if the voyage was to be profitable. Those of us who look at
paintings of clippers roaring along with royals and topgallants swelling
under a storm rarely realize the hardships caused when ragamuffins were
driven aloft by the mate’s belaying pin to sheet those topsails home and
keep them set. A good crew never minded this, such as a navy crew
sustained by the pride of the service. But crews in the forecastles of
the clippers and windjammers were usually the scum of the earth, dragged
out of ginshops and dives from the Ratcliffe Road to Madras, shipped
drunk, often criminal, sometimes threatening mutiny.

One of my husband’s forebears, both a Bluenose master and a merciful and
decent man, was nearly murdered off Jamaica when a carelessly articled
crew threatened mutiny. In a sequence of events as dramatic as _Treasure
Island_ the cabin boy got wind of the plot in time, and the master made
port suddenly before the crew could act. Since there was no wireless in
those days, the lives of everyone concerned rested on the respect and
fear in which officers were held.

Some Yankee skippers were thought extreme because they were in the habit
of shooting their men off the yards if they wanted them out of the way.
British marine law was too strict to allow this, but actually the main
difference between Bluenose and English ships seems to have been a
greater physical strength behind the boot of the second mate in the
former.

An old Nova Scotia skipper with a voice like a foghorn, a giant in his
eightieth year, once said in my hearing, “Discipline? Depended on a man
himself. I never used any gun. I never used any belaying pin. Never had
to.” He doubled up a fist literally the size of a small ham. “That was
plenty,” he said.

This particular man made a fetish of discipline, and it was said of him
that he had driven his own apprentice son overboard. I never managed to
ask him if the story were actually true.

Sometimes a skipper was plain bad, and the result was a hell ship.
Seamen were paid off only at the end of a voyage, and these captains
acquired a sinister reputation for making life so unbearable for the
stiffs in the forecastle that on a long voyage they sometimes went over
the side before port was reached, or deserted at a port of call. The
skipper then pocketed their wages. At least one house in the Annapolis
Valley—like the mansion of a robber baron—has been pointed out to me
with the remark that it was built on money made in this way.

Nova Scotia seamen were respected as much as they were feared, and
foreigners never loved them. Along with all their other faults and
virtues they seem to have been overly shrewd and overly clannish. No one
denies that Bluenose skippers were hard and drove their men, since they
knew their success depended not only on speed but on the profits
returned to the owners of their ships. But tradition likes now to recall
the worst of them, whereas on the whole they were just and honorable
men.

I have always remembered a story told by a master-mariner reminiscing on
his first voyage. The ship was a three-master, and it had made a great
run to Bristol from Halifax. On the way one man had fallen off the
fore-topgallant yard and crushed his skull on the deck. Since they were
fairly near land he was not buried at sea. Another member of the crew,
an Italian, got fresh with the skipper and he was flattened with a
belaying pin. Just as they entered the river a third man was discovered
drunk after rifling the rum stores, and in trying to get beyond reach of
the mate he fell down a hatch and broke a leg.

As soon as the ship was made fast at its Bristol wharf the crew went
ashore. The skipper, unseen where he was standing on deck, overheard two
English seamen on the dock, watching this particular ship tie in. “Fust
it was some dago with a cracked skull come off that ’ell ship,” one
said. “And then they carries off a bleeder with ’is leg broke. What
next?”

“Blimy!” said the other. “’Ave a look! If it ayn’t a bleedin’ corpse.
That bloody Nova Scotiaman been in port ’arf an ’our an’ three bleedin’
bodies been took offen ’er.”

“That’s a Bluenose skipper for ye,” said the first.

Between 1860 and 1870 Yarmouth, alone, added 105,000 tons of shipping to
her fleet—104 barks, 37 full-rigged ships, and scores of brigs,
schooners, and brigantines. In them all, the main idea was to carry
cargo and make money for their owners. During the 1870’s Nova Scotia
forged ahead to become the leading shipbuilding and ship-owning province
of Canada. Discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in the early Seventies gave
another impetus to ocean-carrying trade, and scores of Bluenose vessels
freighted petroleum across to Europe.

In the year 1874 Nova Scotia reached her peak, when she had 3,025 craft
registered on her books, with a total tonnage of over half a million.
This amounted to one and a quarter tons per capita, surpassing any other
country in the world. The year 1878 was the peak for Yarmouth, when
there were 152,515 tons of shipping on her register alone and her fleet
consisted of 297 vessels of all kinds—this in a town with a population
of 7,000! Its only rival was Windsor, at the head of the Annapolis
Valley.

And then one day it became known that the first transatlantic passage
under steam had been made by the _Royal William_, a ship of Scottish
design produced by skilled French-Canadian workmen and launched at
practically unknown Cape Cove on the Gaspé Peninsula. Almost overnight
tramp steamers began to take over cargoes from wooden sailing ships. By
1879 the new iron barks of Great Britain were driving the windjammers to
longer voyages with cheaper cargoes which were not perishable or easily
damaged. Insurance rates on softwood ships rose and an A-1 rating become
increasingly expensive for them to acquire, since cargoes no longer paid
for overhauls.

Moreover, in that same year, 1879, thirty-one vessels of Yarmouth
registry were lost, laden with valuable cargoes, and twenty-six widows
with ninety-nine children were left mourning in Yarmouth County.
Suddenly Bluenose owners began to sell their ships, mostly to
Norwegians. But the more stanch believed they could still make wooden
ships pay in competition with steel hulls and steam propulsion. By the
early Eighties the number of windjammers being built were considerably
less, but their tonnages were higher; small shipyards in Nova Scotia
went out of business, leaving the chief activity to yards in Yarmouth,
Windsor, and the upper Minas Basin area.

By 1885 the end was near. Wallace says: “Larger ships could be built of
iron or steel; their cargo capacity was much greater by reason of
lighter framing; they were granted a much higher classification by
Lloyd’s and other societies; their insurance rates were lower and repair
bills less.” And they could outlast any softwood ship if given proper
care. So it was iron hulls, not steam, that killed the square-rigged
wooden sailing ships of Nova Scotia. In 1885 Yarmouth added the first
iron sailing vessel to her home fleet.

The last of the Bluenose windjammers was the _Calpurga_, built at
Maitland on Minas Basin in 1890. She was made of spruce, with iron and
copper fastenings, and she weighed 1,406 tons. By 1913 water was seeping
in through her planking, according to Mr. Wallace; but pumps kept her
fairly dry, and in 1914 she carried a load of lumber from Digby to
Buenos Aires in fifty-seven days. When the first World War broke she
took a load of deals from Halifax to Great Britain and returned for
another load, but she never made her home port again. Heavy weather
struck her off the Irish coast and she simply couldn’t take it. When she
foundered she was the last Canadian-built square-rigger of large tonnage
still registered in the Dominion.

With the loss of wooden ships the life of the famous farmer-skippers
narrowed precipitately. Some of them transferred to British-owned
vessels; but most of them retired to farms, and their influence in Nova
Scotia became negligible. So they have remained a people apart, as much
as anything else because of the antipathy in nature between these men of
Yankee inheritance and the Highland Scots who emigrated to Nova Scotia
in numbers during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Highlander
can never appreciate or greatly respect the Yankee’s eye for a quick
profit and his relative lack of pride in being a Nova Scotian, while in
turn these onetime New Englanders consider the Scot unenterprising and
slow-witted. Thus Yarmouth and Cape Breton lie at two extremes of a
small province in more ways than one.

All such generalizations fall down when they are tripped, however; for
one of the most famous of Nova Scotia’s skippers was Captain George
McKenzie, called the father of Nova Scotia shipping because he built and
operated superior ships when other builders in the province were
constructing inferior craft only to be sold abroad. In his story is
typified all the best of both breeds of men, the Yankee and the Scot,
who combine in the eyes of the world as a Bluenose, even if sharper
distinctions are still kept between them at home.

                 *        *        *        *        *

George McKenzie was a pure Highlander, and he lived in Pictou on the
Northumberland Strait. He was the sort of boy who never became tired and
always seemed to have an answer when other people got stuck and didn’t
know what to do next. Whenever accidents happened, it was George
McKenzie who was called to figure out a remedy after others had given
up. Once when he was still a lad in his teens a vessel in Robert McKay’s
shipyard got stuck in the ways. McKenzie was sent for, and McKenzie
managed to get it floated. As a result of this he was promptly made
foreman of the yards.

When he was twenty-three, in 1821, he built a forty-five-ton schooner
with another boy; and then he sailed her to the West Indies, even as a
modern American might buy a lot of secondhand automobile parts, put them
together, and then drive the result to California and back. After that
there wasn’t anything else he wanted to do except make ships and sail
them.

By the time he was thirty-one he was captain of a brig owned by his
brother-in-law, carrying timber to Glasgow. When no one else dreamed of
taking vessels as large as this one up the shallow Clyde, he thought
nothing of it and navigated the narrow river to dock with ease at the
Scottish city.

Ten years later George McKenzie opened his own shipyards at New Glasgow,
beginning with the construction of small craft; within fifteen years he
was turning out some of the largest and finest ships to be sent down the
ways in the whole province. And he continued to go to sea in them from
time to time.

“He was the beau ideal of Nova Scotia seamen,” Wallace says. “When he
first went to sea, the good old ‘safety-first’ custom of taking in the
light sails at night was regarded as prudent seamanship, and ‘snuggling
down’ hours in advance of a threatening freshness of the breeze bespoke
the careful master-mariner. But McKenzie changed all that in the ships
he commanded. He hung out his canvas to the last minute and drove his
ships under all the sail they could carry, night or day, storm or shine.
But he was such a good seaman that in all his voyaging he never lost a
man overboard.”[9]

The story is told of his leaping into the water of Savannah harbor one
time when one of his men fell overboard, although he couldn’t swim a
stroke. Bluenose sailors never could, for they believed they were safer
if they clung to a floating spar in case of accident or shipwreck than
if they struck out under their own power and tried to swim to shore.
Anyhow, McKenzie managed to hold on to the drowning man until they were
both rescued. In emergencies he used his imagination, a quality given to
Highlanders in abundance and doubtless of more value in a master than in
one of his men.

One time McKenzie arrived back in Nova Scotia after everyone thought he
had gone down with his ship. To celebrate the occasion the workers in
his shipyard decided to gather up his friends and hold a parade. So they
formed a procession, with a piper to lead them off, and they went to
meet the stagecoach which was bringing him from wherever his ship had
docked. When he saw the demonstration, the brusque old Highlander gave
no sign that he was pleased, though inwardly I know he was bursting with
emotion, and he bluntly ordered them off with the statement that they
were “a lot of damned fools” and making a fuss over nothing. George
McKenzie and my father-in-law would have understood each other with no
trouble at all.

Another time, when he was bringing a ship home from Liverpool, his
brother died a few days out of port. Instead of turning back or burying
him at sea in the customary fashion, Captain McKenzie ordered the ship’s
carpenter to make a coffin and line it with lead. When it was finished
he filled the coffin with rum and deposited his brother’s body in it.
And so it was embalmed and carried back to Pictou to be buried properly
in the place where he was born.

Wallace goes on to say of him: “Captain McKenzie might also be credited
with founding that famous school of Nova Scotian seamanship which
demanded that a master and mate be able to accomplish whatever comes
before them. This school required of its graduates that they not only be
good seamen and navigators, but that they combine the abilities of
ship-carpenters, sail-makers, riggers, stevedores, and ship’s agents
while afloat. And one of its prime teachings was the inculcation of
obedience and smartness into such crews as the ship might get. . . .
This was no kid-glove curriculum, but it produced men who could sail
anything, anywhere; who made passages and kept a ship looking ‘spruce’;
who made money for themselves and their owners, and who could tame the
ugliest and most villainous of sulky and mutinous crews and make them
jump on the word of command.”[10]

I can’t help wondering if George McKenzie really enjoyed politics when
he got himself elected to the Nova Scotia Legislature at the age of
fifty-seven. He stayed in it for eight years, so he probably didn’t mind
so much; certainly he managed to win the admiration of Nova Scotia’s
most prominent politicians.

In 1865 he built his last ship, the _County of Pictou_, when he was
nearly seventy. He visited the yard every day and watched the process
carefully, and none of the men at work on the vessel dared make a
mistake, for they knew he would see it and shout in a tone of voice that
brooked no answer.

When McKenzie died in New Glasgow in 1876, happily soon enough to miss
the rapid decline of his great era, the Honorable William Stairs of
Halifax said, “He had, of all the men I have known, the greatest power
of inspiring men with his force. It never troubled him to find a man;
_he made men_. . . . He was a man who believed in men. He trusted them.
He had great talent for any extra work that was beyond common men’s
apprehension.”

And still another Member of Parliament added his praise: “He did things.
He never advertised himself. In business he was universally trusted. His
spoken word was as good as his written bond. His credit was good on both
sides of the Atlantic. In all the ports of the world where his ships
dropped anchor, the initial letters ‘G.K.’ on his house-flag were a
sufficient passport among the merchants.”

                 *        *        *        *        *

Since the disappearance of the windships, Nova Scotia has never been
really prosperous, and the most ambitious of her sons have emigrated
almost as a matter of course. Nova Scotia has been almost the only
province of Canada constantly and fully to realize what a tragedy the
passing of the merchant marine of British North America was for the
nation as a whole. No community whose people sail the world for a living
can ever become too set in its ways, and neither can a nation under the
same circumstances. But ever since the last decade of the nineteenth
century the central government of Canada has been railway-minded, not
ship-minded. Only after the depression of the 1930’s has the wisdom of
this policy been called into sharp question; for the prairies have not
become prosperous, as everyone expected they would when the railways
made them accessible for emigration, but rather have poured their wealth
into the banks and mortgage companies of Montreal and Toronto.

Now, however, under the impetus of a second world war, Canada is making
a desperate effort to create another merchant marine. There are signs
that Canadians at large have been awakened to the potential in the Nova
Scotia seafaring tradition. There are still prime seamen in all the
little ports of this province, and now that the Canadian government has
set out to train a new navy she has at her disposal thousands of the
best sailors to be found anywhere. A permanent naval college has been
set up temporarily in Halifax, and that port is now thronged with
sailors wearing the uniform of the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer
Reserve. So it is inevitable that with the shrinking of the globe Nova
Scotia is destined to fill again her old role of bastion of the North
American continent. Neither naval bases nor air bases recently
established are likely to be abandoned when peace treaties are signed.

Beyond the military question, however, there is still another
possibility for Nova Scotia. Able men are even now working to try the
possibilities of transforming this province into another peacetime
Norway. They hope to persuade Parliament Hill in Ottawa that Nova Scotia
must live as nature designed her, by and on the sea, so that she may
become once again the sea carrier of the world’s goods. Government
subsidy, providing not only a naval college but also a school for master
mariners and making possible the construction of merchant ships on a
large scale in her numerous harbors, can restore prosperity to Nova
Scotia and insure its permanence as a useful unit in the larger economic
and political pattern of the whole Dominion—in fact, of the whole
world.

The tradition is already there; it has never died. There are many signs,
apart from the feverish activity of war industries and defense projects,
that a renaissance is close at hand.

-----

[8] Frederick William Wallace, _Wooden Ships and Iron Men_. Hodder and
Stoughton.

[9] _Ibid._

[10] _Ibid._


                             ROUTES 1 AND 3

    _Yarmouth_ . . . population 7,055. Information and travel
    literature may be obtained from a branch of the Nova Scotia
    Information Bureau which is located on the Eastern Steamship
    Line wharf. Motorboats are available for excursions to the
    Tusket Islands and for deep-sea sport fishing. Yarmouth Golf and
    Country Club is open to visitors.

    On exhibition in the Yarmouth Public Library is a stone,
    weighing about a quarter of a ton, which was found at the head
    of a cove in Yarmouth harbor in 1812. The characters inscribed
    on it have been identified as Norse.

    There are fish-curing plants in Yarmouth, as well as machine
    shops, woodworking plants, foundries, and factories which
    manufacture berry crates, fish boxes, staves, and building
    timber.

    Eastern Steamship Lines have one sailing a day each way between
    here and Boston. Passenger fares are $10.00 and cars are $12.00,
    one way. Yarmouth is also the terminus of the Dominion Atlantic
    Railway, a branch of the Canadian National Railway which runs
    from here to Halifax. Trains connect with arriving and departing
    boats.

    _Lakeside Inn._




                                  VII
                        _TIMBER, GOLD, AND FISH_


During thirteen hours of each day the ferry crosses from Halifax to
Dartmouth every fifteen minutes, charging seven cents a passenger now
instead of threepence as it did in 1752. Dartmouth is to Halifax what
Oakland is to San Francisco, or Hoboken to New York. No matter what the
circumstances of its growth or accomplishments, the ferries will always
seem to begin and end in Halifax; and the smaller town across the Stream
will have to rationalize its position to be free from an overwhelming
sense of inferiority. The main attraction in Dartmouth, even as in
Hoboken and Oakland, is a superb view of the city across the way.

Unfortunately for themselves, far too few visitors in Halifax take the
trouble to cross on the ferry to the other side of the harbor; the road
out of Dartmouth north along the shore of Halifax and Guysborough
counties is not paved, and it seems quicker to reach wherever one is
going by some other route. So this north shore has become one of the
least-known parts of the province, to Nova Scotians as well as to
outsiders.

The Doctor used to say occasionally that it was a pity Halifax hadn’t
been built on the Dartmouth side of the Stream, his reason being that
the view would have been so much better from over there. But obviously
he was thinking of the view of Halifax as he knew it, so the comment was
never answered by anyone in his family. Dartmouth itself could hardly be
called either pretty or particularly interesting. Once upon a
time—twice upon a time, in fact—it tried and failed, and since then it
has been content to go unnoticed.

The first time it made a try for fame was about thirty-five years after
the founding of Halifax, when a group of Quakers in Nantucket who were
also whalers were persuaded to settle on this northwestern shore of
Halifax harbor in order to organize the whaling industry for Nova
Scotia. They were given land and monetary allowances, and boats were
built for them—all through the kindness and farsightedness of the
resident governor. But when the home government in London heard about it
they said “What’s the idea?”—or words to that effect—and told the
Governor of Nova Scotia to obey orders rather than exercise his
imagination, and leave the whaling industry to New England because who
wanted it anyway.

So most of the Quakers went back to Nantucket; but some of them stayed,
and there are still a few members of those original Quaker families in
Dartmouth today. Instead of being a fishing port Dartmouth has
factories—factories that turn out such products as rope, dry ice,
sugar, carbonic-acid gas, skates, and molasses. And about five miles
down the harbor there is a very large oil refinery owned by the Imperial
Oil Company, surrounded by a community which is actually a suburb of
Dartmouth—called Imperoyal.

The second time Dartmouth made a try for fame was in the 1860’s, when a
sizable engineering feat in the form of a canal across the province to
connect the Bay of Fundy with the Atlantic ocean was completed. It was
no inconsiderable undertaking; for it began near Dartmouth in the
extensive chain of Waverley Lakes and ran through the Shubenacadie River
to its outlet in Cobequid Bay at Maitland, where the tide sometimes
rises to a height of seventy-five feet. Its object was to bring produce
from the farms along Minas Basin and the Annapolis Valley for
transportation out of Halifax as well as for consumption within the
province, for there were no railroads across the province in those days.
But only a short time in operation was needed to prove that it would
never be a commercial success. So it was abandoned with as much
enthusiasm as it was begun, and only the remains of old locks are
evidence now of its intended function.

Scores of streams rush down from the heights in the middle of the
province to lose themselves in the Atlantic along this north shore. The
map looks as though it had been clawed, as it does on the south shore,
and a debris of paper scraps in the form of innumerable islands have
been left along the coast. The rivers that serrate the country in this
part of Nova Scotia are long ones and short ones, crooked ones and
whimsical ones, and rivers with a single, straight purpose. Some of them
get lost in lakes and come out at strange angles, some have gained fame
because of things that have happened on them, and plenty remain to be
named by someone who cares enough to rescue them from nonentity.

The good gravel highway meets each stream casually and crosses them all
in turn, winding in and through the rocky forests that crowd the shore
and taking its time over proper views and vantage points. Sometimes it
straightens out as it goes through a small farming area such as
Chezzetcook, or the lovely Musquodoboit Valley, and then it crawls back
among the timber or feels its way along the outlined shore of generous
harbors.

Three things of importance happen in these two counties of Halifax and
Guysboro: lumbering, gold mining, and the manly sports of fishing and
big-game hunting. There is a great deal of commercial fishing, too, of
course, and some mixed farming; but the greatest activity is centered in
the cutting and shipping of pulpwood. All this country is hirsute with
beech, birch, ash, and maple, as well as with pine, spruce, and hemlock.
New growth comes to take the place of cutover patches quickly, so the
supply of timber seems inexhaustible.

The first discovery of gold in Nova Scotia was made at Tangier, beyond
Ship Harbour, by a moose hunter in 1758, but it was another hundred
years before gold was mined seriously in the province. Since then
millions of dollars’ worth of the yellow stuff have been taken from this
area alone, but it has always been expensive to extract from the earth
and expensive to ship out. More than several paying mines have been left
idle as the price of gold ore dropped on the open market.

The best known of the Nova Scotian gold mines are those at Moose River,
simply because the ears of the world were turned in this direction not
so many years ago when radio transmitters were set up at the scene of a
cave-in for the sole purpose of giving the curious a play-by-play
description of rescue operations. The prominence accorded this
near-tragedy can be credited only to the fact that it occurred at a
moment when nothing of greater import was holding the attention of
thrill seekers.

Tragedies have always been taken as they came in this province. So Nova
Scotians could see small excuse for the holiday atmosphere created by
American radio companies on their back doorstep, and their resentment
was not mitigated by a realisation that this particular tragedy was
being dramatized for outsiders chiefly because it happened that two of
the three men caught by the cave-in were owners rather than workers. It
was too much like having strangers listen with avid curiosity to the
transmitted details of one’s uncle’s funeral. When at last two men were
brought to the surface alive, along with the body of the third who had
died shortly before food was lowered to the hole where they had been
trapped for eight days, only Nova Scotians found nothing surprising or
noteworthy when the very tired crowd assembled at the scene of
operations began spontaneously to sing the Doxology.

Beyond Sheet Harbour the road skirts Beaver Harbour; misses West Newdy
Quoddy; and eventually reaches Ecum Secum Bridge by way of Necum Teuch,
which seems as apt a point as any to diverge long enough to talk about
Nova Scotian place names. This is one of my favorite subjects, no matter
what anyone else happens to be talking about.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Nova Scotians use many phrases and idioms in their ordinary conversation
which I found bewildering when I first lived among them. Presumably they
spoke the same language I did, except for a difference in accent and
intonation; but as often as not the words we used, though they were
spelled the same, meant entirely different things. So I derived an
unquestioned secret sense of compensation—after being told by a
dignified Scotsman with a private sense of humor that Americans were
queer people—when I heard him talking about such places as Stewiacke
and Ecum Secum without ever guessing how funny he sounded to my American
ears.

When I spoke of a woman with fair hair as a blond, I discovered that I
was at the same time repudiating her character and appearing cheap
myself in Nova Scotian eyes—or ears—because the word “blond” seems to
have a moral overtone with many of them. When my husband and I were
invited “to share the odd joint” for Sunday dinner it took me time to
realize that we were being invited to partake of a meal centering around
a leg of lamb. And more than once during the course of such a
meal—where no finer lamb is served anywhere in the world—I was made to
realize that it was _my_ table manners which were peculiar.

Most Nova Scotians follow the English habit of holding their forks in
the left hand and their knives in the right throughout the main course.
Tines of the fork are pressed into the plate for anchorage, and then a
generous mouthful gets assembled on the back of the tines . . . first a
piece of meat, then mashed potatoes, then some peas smashed down into
the potatoes, and finally—if the fellow is skillful—a bit of jelly,
thus making of each mouthful a cross section of the whole course in
miniature. It’s really marvelous the way they can do it, and then get
the whole assembly into their mouths without accident.

You can see how it was that my shifting of the fork from left hand to
right each time I cut my meat looked strange and even silly to them.
Likewise the fact that I preferred the distinct flavors of meat and
vegetables and condiments, taken in separate bites, seemed to them
peculiar if not sensual, on a par with the Chinese belief that textures
of food are as pleasurable as their flavors. The fact that I was
accustomed to a great variety of vegetables, prepared in many different
ways, was considered luxurious and perhaps even decadent. To me it
seemed obvious that their partiality to those few vegetables like peas
and cut beans and cabbage is based upon the fact that these adhere most
easily to mashed potatoes.

Who was right and who was wrong? There was no question about it. I was
wrong, for my ways were a silly American innovation; theirs were an
inheritance from generations of aristocrats. I ought to have been
willing to call it a draw, and let them continue to eat as they pleased
so long as no one watched whenever I carried a forkful of peas to my
mouth in my own fashion. But I wasn’t. Instead, I managed to be
half-resentful of every well-meant criticism of my habits, not realizing
that criticism of small things is as native to these people as kidding
is to Americans.

There are many unfair generalizations made about Nova Scotians—not
least among them my own—which are in truth applicable to a portion of
the population only. Those individuals who live in the province and
don’t eat in this British fashion will perhaps forgive me. They have
watched it often enough in the homes of the cultured to know what I’m
talking about. There is no question, however, about the statement that
every Bluenose, without exception, wastes no time weighing the rightness
or wrongness of any of his own habits or convictions. From the day one
is born until the day he dies he knows he is right. It makes me verdant
with envy. Differ among themselves they may, and do; but if the matter
in question involves a divergence in point of view or taste between a
Nova Scotian and someone from outside, the other fellow is wrong—and
that ends the matter. Any attempt at argument or persuasion is a waste
of time; it merely sends the outsider further beyond the charmed circle
into the limbo where people reside who don’t measure up to Bluenose
standards.

It’s a stubborn wall for anyone unfamiliar with Nova Scotian traditions
to attempt to climb. I kept trying to find a door somewhere in the wall
which I could persuade them to unlock and let me in. Eventually I
convinced myself that the beauties on the other side were hardly worth
the effort. Why couldn’t they do a little climbing of their own mental
wall, and meet me halfway?

Why should they? They liked it where they were; it was I who wanted very
much to be admitted. And then one day I awoke to a realization that the
wall had disappeared. I don’t know how or even when. It simply wasn’t
there any more.

If I had married a different sort of person, someone who couldn’t see
both sides and explain each to the other, I should probably have
embalmed my early resentment and kept it for a private monument. Of all
the Nova Scotians I know, he comes nearest to recognizing the validity
of another point of view—partially because he has lived in a wide
variety of places and partially because both nature and training have
made of him a fundamentally reasonable man. Essentially, however, he
remains a loyal Bluenose, convinced in his heart that the Nova Scotian
way is best. Nor could I wish him otherwise. There is immense comfort in
being forgiven by him for a Yankee inheritance which he is willing to
admit is hardly a personal responsibility. And being loved by his
charming family gives me a sense of achievement in direct ratio to the
uneasiness their province caused in me during those first years when I
realized what it meant to be a Nova Scotian’s wife.

But somewhere a long way back I was talking about names of villages
along the north shore and thinking how much I should prefer not to live
in a place called West Newdy Quoddy, regardless of how fine the people
in it may be. After that I meant to talk about Nova Scotian place names
in general, since I love their inconsistencies and strange rhythms, and
they account in large measure for my frequent outbursts of affection for
the province.

To begin with the word Canada—it can be translated back into the Indian
_Kannata_, meaning “a collection of huts,” or it can be translated
direct from the Spanish to mean “a glen” or “an open valley.” Scholars
haven’t yet agreed as to its origin. In spite of its similarity to the
Spanish, the first explanation carries logic. The name Nova Scotia is
simply New Scotland in Latin. Acadie is a French paraphrase of the
Micmac _kade_ or _akade_, meaning “the place of” or “the region.” It is
the same as the Malacite Indian word _quoddy_, which is common in New
Brunswick in names like Passamaquoddy. Acadia is, of course, the English
version of Acadie.

But the most fascinating aspects of the place names of Nova Scotia are
based not on their direct evolutions but on the mixture of their
origins. So far as anyone knows, the Norse were the first white men to
land on these shores; but they left no traces of their visits in
Scandinavian appellations. The Bay of Fundy comes from the Portuguese
_fondo_, a name commonly used by European fishermen in the sixteenth
century to describe this funnel-shaped arm of the sea. Another version
of its origin is the French _fendu_, meaning “split,” but I’ll take the
first. And the Basques left a memento of their visits in the name of at
least one island off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia—Baccaro.

[Illustration: _Mary Van Nest_

Highlands of Bras d’Or]

When the French settled in the new world they gave their own
designations to some places; and in others they kept the Indian names,
changing spellings in the latter to suit themselves. Thus Louisburg was
named in honor of Louis XIV, and Boularderie Island in Cape Breton was
called after a French officer who was its proprietor. But Lingan Bay is
a vulgarization of _L’Indienne_, while Arichat, Aspé, and Canseau are
French softenings of the Indian words _nericka_, _achepe_, and _kamsok_.
Bras d’Or is French for “arm of gold,” but it was first spelled Labrador
and it’s pronounced like the last two syllables of that word.

And then along came the British to change the French words. Canseau was
pronounced the same but spelled Canso, and Aspé was changed in spelling
to Aspy. Les Mines, which the French had named for the veins of copper
found at Cap d’Or near Grand Pré, was changed to Minas because that’s
how the English pronounced it. Bedeque in Cape Breton was pronounced as
the French would have it, with accent on the second syllable; but the
English proceeded to spell it Baddeck. Mira with a long _i_ and Gabarus
Bay with a long _u_ (also in Cape Breton) are English corruptions of
Miré and Cabarrus, names of a French officer and a French trader. And
Cape Breton itself is pronounced by the English (and everyone else in
Nova Scotia now) as though it were spelled Kay Britain, with the first
word swallowed quickly.

The Micmacs of Nova Scotia are a branch of the Algonquins; but their
names seem to have reached common usage through a happier evolution than
the Indian names in other parts of the country, chiefly because of their
transition through French into English. Acadie is lovely both to eye and
ear, whereas _akade_ is not. Wherever it occurs in Nova Scotian place
names, this word assumes the French form—such as Shubenacadie from the
Micmac _segubunakade_, which means “the place of the groundnut.”

The third group of names in the province, aside from a few isolated ones
such as Lunenburg, are distinctly British and these commemorate
commanding officers, places in the old country, or members of the royal
house or the home government who were supposed to be honored by such
remembrances. In this classification fall such names as Halifax,
Windsor, Cornwallis, Lawrencetown, Liverpool, Sherbrooke, Shelburne, and
so on. The last town, incidentally, began as Port Razoir—named by
DeMonts, I think. The English pronounced this Port Rosea and then
eventually changed its spelling to Port Roseway. After that they gave it
up entirely and started over again with Shelburne. To commemorate Lord
Shelburne, then Secretary of State in Great Britain.

As for the nickname _Bluenose_ itself, the last person to tell you why
he is so called is a Nova Scotian. It happens not to be a name most of
them care for much, and so it is seldom used within the province by
those who have a right to claim it. Nova Scotians appear to feel no need
of such a colorful epithet to indicate their conscious unity of spirit.

But those who may only look on from the inferior position of having been
raised in some other part of the world have called the Nova Scotian a
Bluenose for generations, though the origin of the term is confused by
conjecture. Some insist that it comes from the kind of potatoes grown in
the province, shaped like a human proboscis and unmistakably blue at the
tip. Others believe it to be an outgrowth of the fishing trade, and the
natural resulting color of the noses of fishermen from icy North
Atlantic winds. Certainly the famous Lunenburg schooner derived her
title rather than originated it.

My favorite version, however, is the one given me by Sir Charles G. D.
Roberts. He claims that a famous Nova Scotia privateer in the War of
1812 had a cannon in her bow which was painted bright blue. She made a
great deal of money for the province by intercepting United States
vessels, and she was called the “blue nose” by those who had occasion to
keep out of her way. So the name became associated in the United States
with Nova Scotians. Later, in the days of the windjammers, it became a
forceful title wherever it was heard around the world, used either as
epithet or as compliment.

The _Official Nova Scotia Tour Book_ lists many place names of the
province, together with their pronunciations and original meanings. With
permission I have condensed this list to one suitable for my own uses,
incorporating pronunciation indications which will correspond with the
American habit of doubling consonants at syllable breaks, instead of
throwing consonants onto following syllables.

That’s another interesting thing I learned in Nova Scotia—why, in the
United States, we make the word “very” sound like ver-ry, while the
British make it sound like ve-dy. It’s because they throw all consonants
onto following syllables—thus, ve-ry—and the word has to come out with
a world of difference in the sound. We say prog-gress, unless we know
better, when it should be pronounced pro-gress with a long _o_. One of
the most commonly mispronounced words in the United States is
“Warrshington.” Try leaving the _sh_ for the following syllable—so,
Wa-shing-ton—and there’ll be no trouble with it again. If only I could
think of a way to stop anyone, ever again, from saying Amurrican! I’ve
never heard a single soul in the whole of Canada express resentment
because the United States has taken unto itself the name of the whole
continent; what they do shudder at is the way we have managed to ruin an
otherwise beautiful word.

But back to Nova Scotia and an indication of how to pronounce (according
to the inhabitants) some of the names you are most likely to run into on
a map of the province.

Antigonish      An-ta-go-nish’      (Micmac: “the place where branches
                                      were torn off trees by bears
                                      gathering beechnuts”)
Baddeck         Buh-deck’
Beauséjour      Bow-say-zhoor’      (French: “a good place to stay”)
Beinn Bhreagh   Ben-bree’a          (Gaelic: “beautiful hill”)
Blomidon        Blom’a-dun          (Portuguese: a navigator’s name)
Boularderie     Bull’a-dree         (French: an officer’s name)
Chedabucto      Shed-a-buk’toe      (Micmac: “running far back”)
Cheticamp       Shed’ee-cong        (French: “camping ground”)
Cobequid        Kob’a-quid          (Micmac: “end of flowing water”)
Ecum Secum      Ee’kum-see’kum      (Micmac: “red bank”)
Gaspereau       Gas’per-o           (French: “alewife,” a fish)
Grand Pré       Gron-pray’          (French: “big meadow” or “prairie”)
Ingonish        In-go-nish’         (Portuguese: a surname)
Jeddore         Jed-door’           (Corruption of Theodore)
Kennebecassis   Ken-na-ba-cas’sis   (A river in New Brunswick)
Lochaber        Lokh-aah’ber        (Gaelic: a place in Scotland)
Louisburg       Lew’is-burg         (English pronunciation)
Meagher         Marr                (An Irish surname)
Merigomish      Merry-go-mish’      (Micmac: “place of merrymaking”)
Meteghan        Met-tay’gan         (Micmac: “blue stone”)
Miramichi       Meer-a-muh-she’     (A river in New Brunswick)
Mount Uniacke   You’nee-ack         (Another Irish surname)
Musquodoboit    Mus-ka-dob’it       (Micmac: “rolling out in foam”)
Nashwaak        Nash’walk           (A river in New Brunswick)
Necum Teuch     Nee-tum-taw’        (Micmac: “beach of fine sand”)
Petitcodiac     Pet-a-ko’dee-ack    (A river in New Brunswick)
Petite Riviere  Pet-teet’ra-veer’   (English pronunciation of the French
                                      “little river”)
Pictou          Pick’toe            (Micmac: “big harbor”)
Port Mouton     Ma-toon’            (English pronunciation of the French
                                      word for “sheep”)
Pubnico         Pub’nik-ko          (Micmac: “cleared land”)
Shubenacadie    Shoe-ben-ak’a-dee   (Micmac: “place where groundnuts
                                      grow”)
Stewiacke       Stew’ee-ack         (Micmac: “whimpering as it goes”)
Whycocomagh     Wy-kog’a-mah        (Micmac: “head of the water”)

Names like MacLeod, MacKay, and MacRae are pronounced M’Cloud, M’Kye,
and M’Kray. It chills the heart of every Scotsman to hear them
mispronounced; they’d almost rather see them misspelled in what they
call bastard American versions like McCloud and McCrea. Having preserved
with meticulous care all the traditions and family insignia of their
clans, they find it painful to contemplate the manner in which Americans
can so easily and thoughtlessly change any name spellings, as though
they had no pride in their forebears.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“If I tried to tell anyone at home what this part of Nova Scotia looks
like they wouldn’t believe me,” I said. The Atlantic had come into view
again, jade-blue and cold and relentless, and the road kept it in sight
for another mile.

“Why wouldn’t they?” he said. “It’s not so different along here from
parts of the Maine coast.”

“But they’ve heard a lot about Maine.” I continued to count to myself
the number of turns the road was making in each mile. “They’d never
believe anything so beautiful as this could exist without being
publicized. What Americans haven’t heard about they consider of small
importance.”

“You’re pretty hard on your own countrymen, aren’t you?”

I looked to see if he was smiling, but he wasn’t. Perhaps he was only
wondering about the possibility of meeting a car on any of these sharp
turns. “It’s better for _me_ to be hard on them,” I said, “than for
someone who doesn’t love them so much. Why don’t you put all this part
of Nova Scotia in your next book, so they can really see it?”

He made no answer. We passed a pulp mill and I watched the sulphurous
smoke from its stack making designs against the sky. “I’m going to write
about something I know better than anything else next time,” he said
finally. “One of the most important places in the Western hemisphere
. . . a combination of fogs, ringing bells, ships’ horns, foreign
tongues, ancient birches, glorious—”

“Men?” I interrupted.

I knew this Scotsman disliked being mocked even more than most of his
race, but sometimes the unconscious openings he gave me were too good to
ignore. “Halifax?” I asked, hoping to be forgiven. “Don’t forget the
odor of lime trees in summer. They’re magnificent. And you mustn’t mind
what I say . . . it’s only my perverted American sense of humor. I long
to see that book get written. Nobody’s ever going to understand Canada
until she evolves a literature of her own, and you’re the fellow to
start bringing Canadian novels up to date.”

“Have you ever heard of Country Harbour?” he said, with what seemed an
abrupt change of subject.

“No. . . . Why?” A cloud of white, beating wings hung low over a cove
that was hidden from sight by a turn of the road. The gulls rose and
dropped again, squawking raucously.

“On the Admiralty charts it’s rated the third best harbor in the world,”
he answered.

“Where is it?”

“On this road . . . north of Sherbrooke. Between Liscomb Harbour and
Canso.”

“How do you keep track of all the ‘finest harbors in the world’ in Nova
Scotia?” I said. “Ship Harbour was a beauty when we curved around it
half an hour . . . no, an hour ago. And Sheet Harbour wasn’t so bad,
either . . . except that the country around them all here on the north
shore is pretty naked.”

“Country Harbour’s unsettled, too. But it’s got everything . . . it’s
ten miles long, and it’s protected at the mouth by sizable islands, and
all the battle fleets of the world could shelter in it and still have
plenty of room.”

“Look, there’s another doe,” I said. “How could a man let himself shoot
anything as gentle as that?”

The road took three hairpin turns in succession and we went with it.
When it straightened out again he said, “You’ve never been a farmer.”

“What’s that got to do with Country Harbour?”

“Nothing. Deer have a habit of stripping kitchen gardens, and people who
depend upon their own produce are quite apt to hate them. I hope the
Wentworths won’t mind if we’re late for lunch.”

“Couldn’t we phone them?”

“We’ll get to Sherbrooke in less time than it would take to find a
telephone in this district.”

I studied the broken red line on a map that showed the road we were
following—Harrigan Cove, Moosehead, Ecum Secum Bridge . . . “Here’s a
name I like,” I said. “Marie Joseph . . . sounds lovely when you give it
the French accents. Let’s come back and see what it looks like before we
leave Sherbrooke.”

“I can tell you what it looks like.” He swung the wheel sharply to avoid
a pothole in the road. “A cluster of unpainted fishermen’s houses built
at all angles . . . a few fish barns standing on stilts out of the water
at low tide with barnacles and seaweed clinging to their legs . . . nets
drying in the sun . . . herring gulls still clearing offal from the
beach because the night’s catch of cod was cleaned this morning . . .
stinking boats pulled up to dry . . . and half an acre of flakes lying
out in the sun.”

“Why do they call them flakes? They’re only gutted codfish soaked in
brine and then flattened out to dry, aren’t they? They look more like
dirty yellow shingles.”

“Why do the English call herring cured the same way ‘kippers’?” he said.
“And, anyhow, it’s the racks that hold the cod that are called flakes.”

I waved to a group of men in a lumber camp who were having their noon
smoke before going back to work. Once upon a time, I thought, lumbering
was done exclusively in the winter, and now it seems to be a year-round
process. Better not ask questions about that; the answer was doubtless
simple enough, but sometimes my mind rebelled at too much unrelated
information poured in without regard to proper blending or digestion.

Gulls were swooping and screaming over something they had found on the
beach at Liscomb as we left that village behind and turned straight
north on the last stretch of road to Sherbrooke. The birds were
incapable of making an ugly movement, and with all their flapping of
wings and darting down and soaring again they never collided with one
another. But over everything for miles around their harsh cries filled
the air. How still it must be after they’ve gone in the autumn, I
thought, and how alive and suddenly awake everything must become when
they return in the spring . . . like the response to factory whistles in
a mill town on a winter morning.

I could hear the St. Mary River before we could see it. And then
suddenly Sherbrooke, the chief town in its valley, was right in front of
us, bordering the bank on the other side of the stream. We stopped to
look at it whole before examining its parts.

Sherbrooke is a tight little village, one of the most secluded
settlements in Nova Scotia and also one of the oldest, for it was
established several years before Halifax. There is a post office, a
bank, a general store, a Masonic lodge hall, and a scattering of small
emporiums. A man with a powerful voice could be heard from one end of
the village street to the other if he chose to be. And always through
the town there broods the sound of the river, in summer a gentle murmur
and in the spring, or after a rain, a steady roar as the brown water
drives seaward over its rocky bottom.

The main road crosses the St. Mary to reach the village by a strong,
modern bridge, and on the near side of this bridge—facing the row of
houses on the far bank—is the garden-enclosed home of the most
respected and beloved man in Guysborough County. Next to it is the
white-painted home of his father, who was also a benefactor in the
territory by way of the general store which he maintained for farmers
and lumbermen and of the ships which he chartered to keep it supplied.

Today Sherbrooke seems to be a village chiefly of women, for nearly
every man and boy in the whole district—and on beyond for scores of
miles—has gone to sea or into the army. It is as natural for these
small farmers to go to sea when anyone has need of them as it is for
prairie boys to rush into the air force. And it is equally natural for
the women to carry on alone without them, doing more work and harder
work, though it seemed they had already been accomplishing as much as
human beings anywhere could be expected to do.

Many of the boys who grew up in Guysborough County in other days went
out into the world to find an easier living, and only a few of them
returned. But John Wentworth, the most prominent of them all, the man
whom the whole county still depends upon to understand their troubles
and give them comfort as well as material assistance, has never left
them for longer than it took to represent his people in the legislative
chambers of Halifax. You will understand that John Wentworth is not the
name he is known by, but I regard him too highly to intrude on his
privacy, and he is far too much of a man to be nameless.

In one sense he represents all that is best in the tradition of Nova
Scotia. Probably no one alive understands his province better, and from
this understanding he has been able to acquire an amazingly intimate
knowledge of the rest of the world and its customs. His lumbering
operations cover the forests as far as the eye can see from any hill in
the district; his ships anchor at their own wharves to load pulpwood and
then carry it to foreign markets. He probably knows by name every man
and woman in his county, and no parish priest ever lived who more
diligently or sincerely made it a habit to visit them and understand
their needs. He knows Nova Scotia for what it is: basically a forested
peninsula surrounded by the sea, whose people have salt water in their
blood and the smell of spruce in their hair. And John Wentworth knows
himself as one of them.

As a boy he went to sea, shipping before the mast. He knows all the
hardships and trials of the sea, and all its minor and major cruelties.
He has been shipwrecked, and has clung to rocky ledges for his life, and
survived. But he also knows what it can offer a man and, like any real
sailor, he loves the element which has taught him its power.

When the time finally came to build his own ships, and when he began to
see them slide down the ways, he could say something that few
ship-builders are able to about their craft—that he knew every plank
and spar in their make-up, for the wood in his ships had been grown on
his own land. So intimate still is John Wentworth’s knowledge of his
forests that he knows every inch of their cuttings and new growth, and
as he drives through them he’ll point to a great spruce and say in what
year it will be cut. “Twelve years ago,” he will say, “I first noticed
that tree and I knew it had something in it. So I had it marked not to
be cut, and I’ve been watching it ever since. Someday it’s going to be a
spar.”

Today he is still known as one of the finest salmon fishermen and one of
the best hunters in a province that sets a professional standard in such
matters. But he is also known to statesmen in Ottawa for his sagacity.
In the middle of a war his advice has been sought and his help solicited
in many places, but he seeks no quick road to national fame. His place
is with his people.

To me, one of John Wentworth’s most remarkable characteristics is the
manner in which he carries in his head every detail of a great business
which depends upon an intimate knowledge of forestry, shipping, the
seasonal moods of the weather, the catering for and equipping of great
lumber camps, the peculiar psychology of the men who work in forests and
in ships, the state of pulp markets in the United States and Canada and
England, the delicate balance necessary in handling politicians and men
of affairs, and the general welfare of his entire community. That all
these things are in his head rather than filed away in fireproof
cabinets in the care of secretaries and stenographers makes them no less
available nor less accurate. Yet the most remarkable thing about him is
the fact that it has never occurred to him that he is in any sense
noteworthy. In this, as in so much else that he takes for granted, he is
typically Canadian.

He was sitting one quiet summer evening on the veranda of his big house.
Like everything else he has touched in life, he had built it for
himself. The Halifax paper had just come in, filled with its tale of the
world’s agony. The Russians had fallen back out of Smolensk; the
Japanese were consolidated in Indo-China; the United States was still
mesmerized with its own apathy and Colonel Lindbergh had just made a
speech in Chicago in which he announced that there was no danger to
Americans in the year 1941 provided they minded their own business. John
Wentworth—who was acquainted with the world map in all its details, who
saw the seas lined with the routes of ships and knew how those lines had
been built up painfully and steadily by men like himself all over the
world—knew also, better than he dared say, what the issues were in the
year 1941.

For a long time he was silent, looking out over the St. Mary as it
tumbled eagerly toward the sea after the morning rain. He had always
lived within sight of that river, so close that it had been just
there—and right here—as far back as he could remember. The paper lay
where he had dropped it and no one reached to pick it up. I wondered if
he felt as so many older people do in days like these, thinking each
time they look on a familiar object or tract of land that it may be for
the last summer or even the last time . . . not merely for them alone,
but for everyone else. Was he feeling, too, that the meaning was in
process of being squeezed out of the whole world, just as the Huns and
Goths of old squeezed out the meaning of the ancient world?

Perhaps he was thinking something quite different; perhaps he was far
less conscious than we were of the beating being taken by those things
for which all his life he had stood.

“I’ve been in a good many countries around the world,” he said finally,
talking to himself as much as to us. “I’ve lived for a time in a lot of
cities, too. But I tell you, this valley of the St. Mary River is a
blessed place. Nobody here is acquainted with evil, as you and I have
seen it. There hasn’t been a soul inside our jail for thirty years. No
one is idle here, no one is in debt, and no one is rich.”

He was silent again, and I knew then that we were all thinking, in our
separate fashions, about this place that neither the industrialists nor
the Nazis, neither the sybarites nor the Japanese, had either seen or
heard of . . . and yet great industry and Hitler and luxury and
megalomania, and finally the absolute barbarism of the East, were
destroying its meaning merely by existing. Merely by living, they were
choking its life.

The words of John Donne’s great sermon passed through my mind . . . “No
man is an island.”

He got up slowly. “This has been a blessed place,” he said, and went
inside the house.

                 *        *        *        *        *

One of the strangest myths in the world is that Englishmen run to type.
Of course, of all Europeans the English are the most self-controlled;
but aside from this shared characteristic, they’re as easy to
distinguish one from another as chalk and cheese. I’ve met Continentals
who boasted they could hardly tell one Englishman from
another—something like the way we feel about the Japanese. But what
would they say if they could have met in pairs such individuals as D. H.
Lawrence and T. E. Lawrence, the founder of Burton’s Brewery and Sir
Richard Burton, T. H. Huxley and his grandson Aldous Huxley, the
inventor of Beecham’s pills and Sir Thomas of the same name? Every
generation of Englishmen throws up a remarkably large crop of people who
cheerfully refuse to fit into any traditional environment. Sometimes
their idiosyncrasies make them famous; more often they are merely
unusual, and contented.

It is unusual, for example, to discover in a log fishing cabin in
Guysborough County—so far from any place that it can be reached only by
a two hours’ walk through the woods and a three miles’ row across an
empty lake—verses of poetry written with a carpenter’s pencil in
scholarly handwriting on a wooden wall, and underneath a date—1898.

It was a cool, early August evening and the men were outside on the
porch taking off their waders and gutting the catch of trout. Rain came
down in a monotone on the roof and the whole empty forest whispered with
falling water while I studied the verses in the lamplight. What held my
attention was not so much their quality as the fact that they were there
at all. A second reading showed them to have some quality; at least
there was an exuberant and sophisticated cheerfulness about them, and
the formation of the script gave evidence that the writer had studied
Greek in his youth.

Glennie came in to lay the fire and the voices on the porch rose and
fell again as the door opened and closed behind him. This was John
Wentworth’s hunting lodge on his own island in the middle of his own
lake. Glennie, of the stinking pipe and loyal heart, was caretaker,
cook, guide, and friend. I asked him how the verses got there. The
wrinkles around his cheerful little eyes widened; it was obvious I had
reminded him of something pleasant.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That was Doctor Jenner.” He got up from the hearth
in his stocking feet and peered at the writing on the wall. “I was here
when the Doctor wrote them verses,” he said proudly. “It was quite
awhile ago.”

Quite awhile before I was born. Jenner . . . I had a sharp recollection
of a smooth, moss-covered rock on the edge of a deep, swift pool, of a
trout striking hard just before clouds covered the sun.

“That place where my husband took the four-pounder tonight—that was
called Jenner’s rock, wasn’t it?” I said.

“Why, sure!” Glennie smiled again. “You know, I’ve often thought it
would have pleased the Doc if he could have knowed he was remembered
like that around here.”

His honest, weather-beaten face wrinkled in the lamplight. He was a
shortish man, but his shadow was very big on the log walls. “I often get
to thinking,” he went on, “when I’m alone nights [Glennie was nearly
always alone nights] the way places get their names. A lot of people
like Doctor Jenner must get around—you know, different. And it’s just
natural they should get remembered. Me now . . . I’ve fished and hunted
here man and boy. But rocks and places don’t get named after me. I’d
feel mighty queer if they did, too.”

He sat on the edge of a bunk and began to draw on his heavy hunting
boots slowly. The other men were still talking and smoking on the porch,
wondering if the rain would be over by morning. If it was, the fishing
would be marvelous. And the sunrise would also be fine, for there wasn’t
a factory to smoke up the atmosphere within more than a hundred
miles—if the pulp mills hugging the wilderness along the shore road
north of Halifax could be called factories.

“Who was Doctor Jenner?” I asked.

“He was some kind of an Englishman,” Glennie said. “He never talked
about his folks, but they were pretty important. I found out.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Lived here most of his life. Just about. He was respected, too.”
Glennie went back to the fire.

For an Englishman whose folks were pretty important to be respected
around here argued quite a personality. For one thing, it meant he was
not a remittance man.

“You better ask J. W.,” Glennie said thoughtfully, laying kindling with
care. “J. W. and the Doc used to have a lot of times together.”

As soon as the fire was lighted he put on an oilskin and sou’wester and
went out in the rain with a bucket to draw water. Presently John
Wentworth came in from the porch.

“So you’ve found the poetry?” he said.

I love his way of coming in to one’s thoughts and pulling up a chair,
but always waiting for a signal to continue the conversation. As though,
whenever he felt like talking, it wasn’t worth anyone’s while listening
to what he had to say!

“Glennie started to tell me about the mysterious Doctor Jenner,” I said.
“He talked about him as though he were speaking about a visitor from
another world.”

John Wentworth chuckled. “It _was_ another world to Glennie,” he said.
“And yet Jenner came here for reasons as imperative as . . . well,
whatever motivates the trout that visit the Gaspereau every year. Only
Glennie accepts the trout without question.”

(“And you,” I thought, “whom Glennie has known most of your life, are
respected too, but not considered unusual merely because everyone around
here knows where you were born. They don’t even think there’s anything
unusual in your being asked to advise Dominion ministers.”) “I can tell
from his writing that the Doctor was a man of training,” I said aloud.

“Holy Orders,” Wentworth said. “He was ordained, but as far as I know
. . . that’s as far as it went. His family sent him out to Canada for
his health. You know how they think of it . . . just to Canada, as
though it were a district like the south of France. Or maybe they
thought it was a town. But Jenner thought it was a great place, and he
stayed here so long I fancy he forgot all about his original intention
of being a vicar. The only thing he didn’t like was our shirts. Used to
order them sent from home . . . the most wonderful English shirts you
ever saw, a guinea apiece.”

“Did he die here?” I said.

“No. He moved on finally. Before he left I became very fond of him. But
I was wrong about him when I first met him . . . you can be that way
with Englishmen easier than any other men on earth.”

I nodded and smiled feelingly.

“The first time I met Jenner I was just under twenty,” Wentworth
continued. “I was fit and hard as iron in those days. Somebody came to
me and said there was an Englishman in the village who wanted me to take
him hunting . . . he’d heard I knew the country better than anybody else
in the province. But I simply laughed at the idea. I was getting ready
to go into the woods, all right, for a three month’s stay . . . with a
blanket, a rifle, a hunting knife, and plenty of line and hooks. And I
wasn’t going just for the fun of it. I didn’t want someone tailing after
me who’d be crying to go back the first time it rained.”

“Why were you going into the woods for three months?”

“Because that was the best way to get to know them,” he said simply. “A
lot of people just look at a map and think they know a country.”

The answer to my last question told me all about this extraordinary man
I still required to know. Was it any wonder that both his trees and his
lumbering methods were the best in the province? Or that, when experts
told him his contracts couldn’t be filled, he quietly stuck to his point
and filled them anyway?

“Well,” he went on, while Glennie set about emptying tins of beans into
a large black pot, “this fellow was persistent. When he came around next
day to try to persuade me himself I finally told him if he came with me
he’d travel the way I liked it and live the way I was going to live, or
else go back on his own steam. He decided to go my way and I expected
him to turn on his tracks as soon as we got out of sight of
civilization. But he didn’t.”

I found I’d been sitting motionless so long one foot had gone to sleep.
The men on the porch were still speculating on the weather, and Glennie
was rattling cutlery.

“He was a great companion,” Wentworth went on. “We lived by fishing and
hunting, and we covered every ridge and valley in Guysborough County.
When our boots wore out we shot a moose and made moccasins out of the
undressed leather of the animal’s legs, sewing them together with
sinews. And when we came out of the woods both of us could run the whole
day and think nothing of it.”

“So Jenner decided to stay here,” I said, thinking how often Nova Scotia
has seduced men through the years. The heated beans were sending a good
aroma through the cabin and the men on the porch were on their feet,
knocking out pipes and stacking poles carefully against the inner wall.

“Yes, for a long time,” Wentworth replied. “He used to laugh at himself
and say repeatedly that back in England he’d have to be a millionaire to
get hunting and fishing like ours. But in all the time he spent here he
never tried to be anything but himself, and I wouldn’t say he ever
really became a Canadian. In his own mind he was living the life of a
country gentleman.”

“What did he use for money?”

Wentworth laughed. “He started a drugstore—chemist’s shop, he called
it. And he was good at it, too. That’s why Glennie and everybody else
who knew him called him doctor. I believe he was a doctor, as a matter
of fact—of philosophy, though. I used to hear from him occasionally
after he finally went home. Then I heard he’d died.”

“He seems to have earned his own kind of immortality,” I said.

Wentworth reflected a bit, for words like “immortality” didn’t impress
him much. “There will always be trout in the Gaspereau and, it doesn’t
matter how many wars come and go, they’ll always lie under Jenner’s
Rock, just where he always found them. And no one who ever fishes that
river will ever forget him, if that’s what you mean by immortality.”

“Come and get it,” Glennie said. The men clumped in from the porch in
single file, satisfied with a sense of the goodness of things.

                 *        *        *        *        *

I like rivers better than inland lakes, and I like the St. Mary better
than any other river I’ve ever known. It has character. It knows where
it’s going and nothing interferes with its purpose or deflects it from
its own thoughts. On the way it carries logs and pulpwood, and its
charges are cajoled along over shoals and around bends until it deposits
them in the booms and coves waiting to take them in.

The highway between Sherbrooke and Antigonish follows the whims and
turns of the St. Mary until the first springlike gurglings of its west
branch become lost in the hills north of Lochaber. Its banks are a
mixture of hardwood and evergreen; sometimes they rise to the height of
small mountains and sometimes they smooth out to make farmlands covered
with the green fur of growing grain. There are places in this river
where the water is still and limpid and guileless, there are spots where
it is turbulent and gay, there are other places where it bubbles over
small stones and gurgles to itself, and there are wonderful pools in it
that fishermen love.

Twice a day, as far north as Sherbrooke and beyond, the tide comes up
this channel to make the water level rise and give the river pause in
its restless movement toward the sea. But as soon as the tide starts to
recede the river begins to talk again and sing to itself. On moonlit
nights it is happiest of all, for then it carries a silver reflection on
its back as a dancer carries without cumbrance the swirling chiffon of
her skirts. And the little villages along its banks are like spectators
in a darkened theater, whispering their pleasure quietly each to the
others.

                 *        *        *        *        *

With so much beauty and wealth in large slices, Guysborough County
deserves to be better known than it is. But how many people have ever
heard of Goldenville, and who knows the real story of Sonora?

The second battle of Bull Run was taking place in the United States when
two young girls who lived in Sherbrooke decided to pick blueberries one
afternoon in a patch about three miles from their home. There is no
connection between the two events, unless it was about the war in the
States that the girls were talking when they sat down by the side of a
brook to rest. Or perhaps they were only discussing a friend who hadn’t
been able to accompany them.

“Aren’t these pretty stones?” said one of the girls. “Let’s take some of
them home.”

“They’ll look nice for a border around the pansy bed,” her sister
replied.

Two days later their father saw the stones where they had been dropped
behind the stove in the kitchen, and after examining one rather
carefully he decided they might be more useful elsewhere than in a
flower garden. He put one or two in his pocket when he went into Halifax
next day, pretending he was making the trip for other purposes than to
consult a metallurgist. But when he returned he told his daughters that
their pretty stones were precious gold.

I don’t suppose it was any easier to keep a secret in Sherbrooke in 1862
than it would be today, though the discoverers tried hard enough.
Eventually it leaked out; and before the row of compact little tan
houses on the one street of Sherbrooke had stopped talking about it, a
boom town had risen on the blueberry patch across the river and over the
hill. In no time at all a thousand miners were being employed there at
once.

Of all the gold mines in continual operation in Nova Scotia, this one
remains the largest and most productive; for more of the yellow metal
has come out of it than from all the other mines in the province put
together. It is also the most up-to-date mine in eastern Canada, handled
by an efficient staff and controlled by a company known as Ventures,
Limited. The name of the town which surrounds it is Goldenville—neat,
small, and very clean. After looking at coal mines and other industrial
enterprises which rate themselves by gross earnings, one feels that this
place resembles nothing so much as a stage-set. One thinks of it only,
“Could it possibly be important?”

And then there’s Sonora—seven or eight miles down the St. Mary River
below Sherbrooke, close to the open sea. It is a deserted village of
wooden houses, halls, and shacks—all stained a dark, somber brown—and
the forests crowd against its back. The windows of the buildings are
dead, staring eyes; the place seems cold even during a warm June day.

“Have you ever seen anything, anywhere, before that looked just like
this?” John Wentworth said to my husband. He didn’t reply at once and a
puzzled fold grew between his eyebrows. It was strange to see a Nova
Scotian surprised by anything in his own province.

“Only in Russia,” he said finally. “It haunts my memory, it’s so like
something on the steppes beyond Leningrad.”

“That’s what I wanted to know,” Wentworth said. “Now I’ll tell you about
it.”

Soon after 1918, he said, a group of Russians, headed by ex-officers of
the White Navy of Russia, came here to establish a pulpwood industry.
They spent money profusely, built adequate quarters which doubtless
looked homelike to them, and proceeded to entertain themselves lavishly.
Whole dinners were cooked to order in Halifax hotels and brought a
hundred miles by car for their frequent celebrations. And the
countryside looked on.

For a few years the industry flourished, but suddenly the money was
consumed and no more came to take its place . . . two million dollars,
some said; much more, was the guess of others. Overnight the Russians
disappeared, too, leaving a caretaker and their gaunt, brown buildings
behind. Sonora is utterly quiet at night now—no more revelry and
strange-sounding speech—and only the beacon lights blink on Wedge
Island Rock to warn ships away from the land.

No matter what parts of Nova Scotia one happens to be investigating, so
much history rises to the surface as to make the present seem of small
consequence in comparison. But the stories one hears only add up to the
fact that the future lying in wait for this part of the world will
unquestionably be so vivid as to make history recede and take its proper
place in the background, a prelude to the rising of the curtain.


                                ROUTE 7

    _Dartmouth_ . . . population 12,000. Connection with Halifax by
    ferry.

    _Westphal_ . . . named for a British admiral—a native son of
    this place—who fought under Nelson at Trafalgar as captain of a
    ship of the line. He came back here to die, and is commemorated
    by a plaque set up in his memory.

    A few miles to the north a road leads left to the site of Maroon
    Hall, an old building purchased by the government of Jamaica in
    1796. A colony of fugitive slaves, called maroons, were brought
    here from the West Indies for the purpose of entertainment and
    instruction; but four years later, after considerable trouble,
    the Negroes were taken away and sent to Sierra Leone.

    _Preston_ . . . named for a British captain who was taken to
    Halifax from Boston to keep him from being torn apart after he
    had ordered a guard to fire into a group of rioters in Boston in
    1770. After the Revolution several regiments of disbanded
    British soldiers were settled here, but when their government
    allowances stopped they found it a trifle dull—to borrow a
    British understatement—and drifted on to other parts. Finally a
    group of colored refugees were settled at Preston when they
    arrived in Halifax after 1812; and apparently they stuck, for
    their descendants are still there.

    _Musquodoboit Harbour_ . . . a lumbering, hunting and
    sport-fishing center. This shore is famous for its clams.
    Halifax County produces an average of more than five hundred
    barrels annually.

    _Head of Jeddore_ . . . this is the center of a large pulpwood
    industry. It is also good for deer and shore-bird shooting.

    _West River Sheet Harbour_ . . . a trout and salmon stream
    empties into this harbor, surrounded by famous moose country.
    The groundwood pulp mill of the Halifax Pulp and Power Company
    is located here.

    _Moser River_ . . . a noted trout and salmon stream. Liscomb
    Park Game Sanctuary to the north covers some two hundred square
    miles, and contains within its boundaries typical Nova Scotian
    forests and a network of lakes and streams where moose, deer,
    muskrat, mink, and other animals are abundant. A canoe trip
    through the Sanctuary provides excellent camera hunting.

    _Ecum Secum Bridge_ . . . good big-game territory. This is on
    the Guysborough County line, the second largest county in the
    province. Fish are caught yearly in this county to an average
    value of $620,000.

    _Liscomb_ . . . named for Liscomb House, a Tudor mansion in
    Buckinghamshire, England. The Indians call it “splendid eeling
    place.” Power boats, provisions, guides, and tackle can be
    secured here for deep-sea sport fishing.

    _Goldenville_ . . . a gold-mining town situated on a height of
    ground commanding a wide view of the surrounding hills. Sunsets
    are moments of great beauty here; but the inhabitants like even
    better the knowledge that theirs is a community without flies, a
    statement practically no other gold-mining town can match.

    _Sherbrooke_ . . . from this village are shipped as much as
    40,000 cords of pulpwood in a season. Moose and deer, birds,
    salmon, trout and sea trout, are found here in abundance.
    Fishing begins in the St. Mary River at the tide about nine
    miles from the mouth; pools extend upriver for three miles to a
    two-mile stretch of still water where salmon won’t rise to the
    fly. This is succeeded by five miles of quick water with pools a
    short distance apart. Above this the river branches into the
    East and West St. Mary, both of which have good pools. During
    1940, in the waters between Sherbrooke tide and this river fork,
    617 salmon were taken by angling.

    _Stillwater_ . . . a farming and lumbering settlement on both
    sides of the river, with good salmon pools at the head and the
    foot of this stretch of water. It is also an excellent spot for
    big-game hunting, a fact attested by the many lodges which have
    been built in the neighborhood by wealthy men from other parts
    who could afford to indulge themselves.

    _Lochaber_ . . . named by two Scotsmen who settled the village,
    in memory of a spot they loved very much in the Highlands. It is
    a quiet, self-contained farming community that looks remarkably
    as villages in the valley of the Connecticut River must have
    done a century ago.

    _Fraser’s Mills_ . . . three and a half miles off Route 7. Over
    thirteen tons of fingerlings are handled in the fish hatchery
    here every year and distributed to waters of Guysborough,
    Pictou, and Antigonish counties.

    _Antigonish_ . . . see Chapter VIII.


                                ROUTE 16

    This road cuts across the eastern end of Guysborough County,
    from Monastery on Route 4 to Canso, following the shore of
    Chedabucto Bay for half its length.

    _Monastery_ . . . Trappist monks maintained an institution here
    for nearly a hundred years.

    _Milford Haven_ and _Boylston_ . . . settled by Empire Loyalists
    from Boston.

    _Guysborough_ . . . at the head of Chedabucto Bay. Site of an
    early French fort which was captured by a British general from
    New England and then settled by Empire Loyalists and members of
    the Duke of Cumberland’s regiment, who were given grants of land
    here after 1783. Hay, root crops, and small fruits are grown in
    the surrounding country, and the town is also the seat of lumber
    and pulpwood industries.

    _Canso_ . . . population 1,575. This is the nearest point on the
    mainland of Nova Scotia to the great Atlantic fishing banks. Its
    harbor was frequented by European fishermen and furtraders long
    before there were any permanent settlements in the province.
    Pepperell’s fleet rendezvoused here before it captured
    Louisburg; and Wolfe’s fleet did the same several years later,
    when it sailed to Louisburg to destroy the fortress before
    capturing Quebec.

    Two transatlantic cable stations are located at Canso, carrying
    most of the cable communications between the North American
    continent and Great Britain and Europe. There is also a
    Government Direction Finding Station at Glasgow Head, in the
    vicinity.

    _Dover_ . . . four miles off Route 16. The location of one of
    the first co-operative lobster-canning plants in the province.
    (See Chapter VIII.) _Black Duck Cove_ in the vicinity has a fine
    bathing beach of white sand on which one can wade seaward for
    half a mile before going beyond one’s depth.




                                  VIII
                         _LAND FOR A HERITAGE_


In Ireland one speaks of County Galway or County Down or County Antrim,
and at once a state of mind is provoked by the names which establishes a
complete understanding between speaker and listener as to the kind of
terrain and the kind of people under discussion. In England one says
Cornwall or Kent or Yorkshire, and equally vivid images arise with the
names—of different tones of voice and accent, as well as divergent
scenery and types of people.

It is the same in Nova Scotia. The other provinces of Canada are either
too large or, in the case of Prince Edward Island, too small to lend
themselves to such unified subdivisions. But here each county carries
its own connotations, distinct from the others, and all Nova Scotians
are familiar with them.

Kings County, for instance, is identified with the towns of Hantsport,
Wolfville, and Kentville, and all the small apple-growing villages in
between; Shelburne indicates one of the least-inhabited parts of the
province; Cumberland and Colchester are full of English names and
hardwood forests. And so on with the others, seventeen in all.

When a man says he comes from Pictou he may think he is conveying
information as to the part of Nova Scotia he calls home, but he is also
telling the kind of man he is. And if his bearing indicates that he is a
shade prouder of being from Pictou than from any other part of the
province, few Nova Scotians will question his right to that pride. For
this reason Pictou County is probably the best known by name of all
seventeen throughout the rest of the country.

It is a compact area in the heart of the province, about equidistant
from Cape North and Cape Sable. It is largely cleared land and it gives
the impression of being one continuous settlement. Its coast line lies
along the Northumberland Strait, north of the central spine of the
province. Its hills are low-lying; its resources are varied; and the
rivers that rise in the hills are generous in the way they manage to
drain the red earth, fanning out from the tidal estuaries of Amet Sound,
Pictou Harbour, and Merigomish Harbour. Over it all lies the peace of
abundance.

On the other hand, there is nothing spectacular about Pictou; for the
earth and the sea treat each other lovingly here. Long red-sand beaches
accept the caress of gently lapping waves, and outstretched points of
land free of rocks make coves and harbors for fishing boats and lobster
pots. And the hills keep to themselves, not crowding the shore.

Yet Pictou County has a way of seeming less interesting to visitors than
many other parts of the province, chiefly because of this lack of bold
scenery and crashing surf on Atlantic escarpments. They can probably
forget its charms, too, more easily than anything else they are likely
to see on the whole peninsula, for it has never laid claim to being
picturesque, romantic, or quaint—any more than Iowa does in the hope of
luring us into taking notice of its lovely farmlands. Pictou County
looks settled and comfortable and old. Its houses and barns are rather
like the ones we find in New Hampshire, and one may guess with assurance
that they’re all free of mortgages. One may know, too, that sons and
daughters have gone out from most of them to obtain eminent positions in
the world.

Yet this is one of the most recently settled sections of Nova Scotia.
Its main road is the Sunrise Trail, which runs along the shore of the
strait from Port Philip in Cumberland County to Pictou town; but it
still waits its turn to be paved. The fields are gentle and tamed, with
no ruggedness as far as one can see. The water looks temperate and one
knows this is not a deception; for children can be seen bathing in sandy
pockets of scooped-out coves, content with the lack of waves. From
Caribou River to Seafoam the edge of Prince Edward Island is clearly
visible on fine days as it lifts above the horizon, and again at River
John and at Malagash Station one can see its lavender outline breaking
the sweep of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And the rivers which cut under
short bridges along the road are all clean, with gravel bottoms.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was in 1746, after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces at
Culloden and the end of the Jacobite Rebellions, that the English set
out systematically to exterminate the Scottish clans in the Highlands.
Unlike the English troops of that day, the Highlanders were untamable
and unbuyable; so the English considered it necessary to smash the clan
system, because they knew these Highland brigades and regiments would
follow their chiefs to the ends of the earth if their bagpipes called.
Wearing of tartans was outlawed, many of the clan names were forbidden,
land was foreclosed on the mainland and in the islands, crofters found
they were unable to make a living, and so the political unity of the
clans—or families, as they actually were—was finally broken.

But it is difficult to annihilate a Scotsman and particularly a
Highlander. It is even more difficult to destroy the spirit of a group
of men who are held together by nothing except affection and a loyalty
for one another that is almost religious. The clans—still as
groups—began to search for new homes, but not a single member of any
one of them considered going off to take care of himself alone. It was
their intention to find a place where whole families could settle as
units.

Eventually they were offered the protection of the British fleet if they
chose to emigrate to North America. But the thirteen southernmost
colonies along the Atlantic seaboard let it be known they would give
neither welcome nor room to entire organized groups of Highlanders. So
that part of the new world was closed to them. At last word was received
in Scotland that cheered thousands of hearts. An organization in
Philadelphia was offering a farm lot and a year’s provisions to every
man who would settle on a 200,000 acre grant owned by this company in
the northern part of Nova Scotia. And no one cared if the settlers were
clansmen who brought all their families with them. (Remember the land
boom in Nova Scotia, in which so many Philadelphians participated and
then found themselves eager to get out from under when Ohio was opened
for settlement and promised richer returns?) So the offer was accepted.

It was in 1773 that the first boatload of over two hundred persons
sailed away from the Highlands on a rotten old ship called the _Hector_.
Pipers sent the melancholy strains of “Lochaber No More” after them, and
the old and the ill stood on the shore and cried to see them go. Eleven
weeks later the _Hector_ sailed into the shallow waters of Pictou
Harbour, and a piper who had stowed away in order not to be left behind
waded onto the beach and piped his people ashore.

This was the first purely Scottish settlement in New Scotland; for the
attempted one of nearly a century and a half before had failed, after
leaving with the province its coat of arms, its name, and a royal flag.
Successive shiploads followed the first group after 1773, and each clan
settled in different parts of what are now Pictou and Antigonish
counties. On the _Hector_ were twenty-four members of the clan MacKay,
twenty-one Frasers, nineteen MacKenzies, sixteen MacLeods, fifteen
MacDonalds, fifteen Rosses, ten Murrays, and the rest representative of
twenty-six other clans. Today the name MacDonald is more common than any
other in the province and is found everywhere. But other clan names are
still, on the whole, associated with specified districts. The MacLeods
and MacNeils are found in one place, MacQuarries and Sutherlands and
MacRaes some place else, and so on.

Happy as they were to be here, the first years in this new land were
extremely difficult for those Gaels. They spoke no English and had to
learn a new language. Pictou County was a forest even to the edge of the
sea, and every inch of farmland had to be cleared before it could be
worked. To see it now, one finds it as difficult to imagine how it was
under woodlands as it would be to think of the Wabash Valley without its
grain fields.

Because the Highlanders were the last race to settle in Nova Scotia in
any number, they were forced to take the land that was left. In Pictou
County they have fared well; in Antigonish living has been sometimes
rather difficult; in Cape Breton even beautiful scenery cannot
compensate for the hardships which the Scottish farmers there must
endure. But if life in Nova Scotia has never been precisely easy, it is
still better than the conditions left behind in Scotland; and on the
whole they are a happy people, disinclined to be critical of their lot
in this land of their adoption.

Not that any Scotsman is ever free of complaints. His grumbling,
however, is concerned with trifles that are of no account, and he knows
it. It happens to be the only safety valve he knows. For centuries now
the Scotch have been learning to live with a kind of people peculiarly
unlike themselves, and they have managed the process without rancor on
either side, with a good deal of humor, and without forfeiting respect
on the part of themselves or of the English. If the Englishman of today
has almost completely forgotten the lusty nature of his Elizabethan
ancestry, then the Highlander is willing to try to curb his explosive
nature, too, in order to keep peace.

In no other respect do I admire these people so much as in their
adaptability to the English nature, for it is often inner torture for an
emotional man of the Highlands to inhibit his quick feelings and Celtic
imagination in order to conform to English imperturbability and the
constant cry of “bad form.” But they do conform with grace, just as they
have learned another language and nearly forgotten their own, and the
result has been mutual respect and a lasting friendship. Only—don’t
call the Scotsman an Englishman, please, when you mean to say that he is
a Britisher.

Today Pictou town is filled with lobsters, bridges over the three rivers
that empty into its wide harbor, men with high coloring and long upper
lips, and lots of MacKays and Frasers. It is not a pretty place, except
for its blazing sunsets and bright-eyed girls; but it has a just fame of
its own.

For over a hundred years the old Pictou Academy was the educational
center of a province that has given more professional men of outstanding
ability to the Dominion of Canada than any other. Among the many who
have gone out from this academy to hold responsible positions on the
continent have been eight university presidents, two premiers, two
governors, four judges, and hundreds of teachers, clergymen, professors,
lawyers, and doctors. Today the name of Pictou Academy remains a symbol
in Nova Scotia, a proof to the people that men can rise above physical
hardship and drudgery, beyond persecution and misunderstanding, to take
their place in the long struggle to better and to benefit mankind. The
people of Pictou have a right to be proud.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Antigonish lay flat and green in the stillness of a July Sunday
afternoon. Our car swung off the bridge and turned left onto the main
street, and he took his foot off the accelerator. There were probably as
many as seven other cars of uncertain vintage parked at angles to the
curb along as much of the road as we could see before it turned to get
out of town. All the shop fronts looked the same—dingy brown paint,
windows filled with notices of a week’s run of pictures at the local
movie, an agricultural fair somewhere in the country, a strawberry
social at a church in Merigomish, all backed by an assortment of
fly-specked merchandise. Open boxes of black and pink and orange
gumdrops and brown Tootsie rolls tried to look inviting behind the
windows of the soda-fountain and candy store.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Inside, a girl in a green dress was sweeping Saturday night’s litter
along the floor while she talked to another girl behind the counter
about a dance they had both attended somewhere, sometime.

“Front room or back room?” he said to me as he glanced at a stack of
local newspapers hidden beneath covering sheets of comic strips.

“Does it make any difference?” I said, and went on to the back room to
get away from the dust rolling up from the broom. Three boys of
high-school age sat at one of the two occupied tables, and two girls
with saddle shoes, socks, long bobs, and heavy make-up sat at the other.

“Two cokes,” he said to the waitress.

“It’s my turn to drive now,” I said. “You’ve had it all the way from
Whycocomagh . . . the worst part of that terrible road.”

“Makes the good road on this side of the strait seem super by
comparison,” he said, and went to get one of the newspapers—though he
knew it would feature local accidents and social events, with the war
showing only a poor third on an inside page.

The girls were talking for the benefit of the boys, and the boys were
roughhousing for the benefit of the girls. As soon as one record in the
juke box ended, a nickel was put in the slot to start the machine again,
though sometimes the same piece was played two or three times.

“They look just the same as high-school kids do everywhere on this
continent,” I said. “And they’re talking about the same things.”

“Why not?” he replied, not paying much attention because he had found
what he was looking for in the paper. “They all read the same movie
magazines and copy the same movie stars as closely as they can.”

“Yes, of course,” I mused to myself. “I suppose the movies have done
more to unify this continent than all the would-be . . .”

He continued to read his paper and the youngsters continued to spend a
Sunday afternoon in Antigonish the best way they knew how. Even juke
boxes are the same everywhere now, though the records in this one were
all ancient numbers and rather worn. A name band began to play “Night
and Day,” and the kids went on talking and the waitresses chewed gum and
a brown-necked fellow in a Sunday suit came in to buy cigarettes but
mostly to talk.

Popular tunes are devilish things. I wasn’t sitting in the best hangout
Antigonish affords; I was back dancing in the Empire Room in Chicago’s
Palmer House, and “Night and Day” was our latest delight. That wasn’t so
very long ago in time . . . only a few years. We didn’t look very
different now; we didn’t sound any different (except that I now
pronounced “been” to rhyme with “seen,” and “again” to rhyme with “main”
because this common practice in Nova Scotia had rubbed off on me and I
didn’t mind). We didn’t even feel very different, unless happiness may
be considered a vital thing that grows roots deep and strong for
security, as well as blossoms by which it may be judged on the surface.
We knew about the roots. “Night and Day” . . . we used to find ourselves
humming it unconsciously that spring before we were married, when he had
come to Chicago to spend the Easter holidays and the Doctor and his
mother had taken occasion to stop there, too, on their way across the
country. There was no longer anything to keep us from being married
then, for his first year as instructor in classics in a Canadian college
was nearly over. And yet the Doctor was afraid we didn’t quite realize
the responsibilities we were about to undertake. Did I know what it
would mean to live in a country that wasn’t my own? Did I actually mean
what I said—that if teaching never paid, and it never did, I’d still be
sure it offered a better life for us than a more lucrative job that
would allow no free time for writing?

What a wise and understanding friend the Doctor had always been! Often
I’d found myself afraid of him, because he had grown old enough to care
no longer about hiding his feelings. But once I understood that his
hummpfs and grrumphs were the best he could do in the way of making a
compliment—though they were quite as likely to be used for signals of
impending displeasure—they became easily translatable, even to shadings
of tone.

Somebody put another nickel in the juke box and the record began to
repeat itself once more. I remembered the time when I had first been
made conscious of the wide difference between a Lowland Scot and a
Highlander . . . another of the Doctor’s invaluable lessons. No two
kinds of people who carry the same name could possibly be more unlike
than these two divisions of what is commonly called the Scottish race.
As a matter of fact, they’re not even alike in racial origins; for the
Highlanders are Celts and the Lowlanders are Anglo-Saxons mixed with
some Danish blood. It is the Lowlander who has given the world its idea
of a Scot—close-fisted, ambitious, articulate, and jolly. Highlanders
are only sensitive, prodigal, proud, and dour. Lowlanders have had
nothing whatever to do with Nova Scotia, for they have never immigrated
to it in any numbers and there is hardly a single one in the whole
place. They are in the habit of calling the “Hielanders” barbarians whom
their ancestors rightly chased into the hills and away to the Isles.

With my own Lowland name I found this distinction, which the Highlander
never forgets, difficult to comprehend when I first lived in Nova
Scotia. I remember sitting in the library of the old house in Halifax
the summer after we were married, unprepared for approaching
enlightenment, as father and son engaged in conversation. The Doctor had
been reading and still held the book on his knee, with a finger marking
his place. They were discussing my maiden name, its clan connection with
the Robertsons, and a lot of other things I knew nothing about.

“Anyway, you’re rather glad it’s Scottish, aren’t you?” my husband said,
with a wink at me.

“It’s Lowland,” the Doctor replied in a tone of voice that bestowed no
compliment, and returned to his reading.

His son looked to see if the epithet had hurt my feelings, but so far as
I was concerned its implication was lost. To brighten the subject he
added quickly, with a laugh, “Well, after all . . . one of our most
notable kings was a Duncan, as you remember.”

His father let a silence engulf us, and then in his characteristic
fashion he made a sound half-sigh and half-humpf. “It’s still Lowland,”
he said, not looking up from his book. And the subject was ended with
that conclusion for all time.

“Night and Day” . . . wasn’t there any other record in that juke box? He
folded the paper and got up to leave, lines between his brows as he
thought of the implications of some stupid action in high quarters which
a news report had revealed.

“How much farther is it to Halifax?” I asked.

“About a hundred and fifty miles,” he said. “We’ll make it by six.”

“Do you think we’ll be in time?”

“I don’t know. Mother simply said over the phone that he couldn’t last
long. Best not think about it now.” He held the screen door ajar as I
passed through.

“When it’s over . . . I think you’d better go home for a bit,” he said.

“Home?” I asked. “You mean . . . back to Cape Breton?”

“No. Chicago . . . and Evanston . . .”

“Why?”

We got into the car and I slid under the wheel. He didn’t say anything;
but when I turned the key in the ignition switch he reached out and
turned it off again, and then sat looking at his shoes.

Finally he looked at me with patience and love in his eyes. “This whole
summer—while we’ve been waiting for just this to happen day after
day—you’ve been putting on a show for my benefit, to keep me from
thinking about it. Now it’s your turn to get away for a while. After the
funeral . . .”

“Hush,” I said. “There’s still hope. There always is.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell you. I phoned again when I went to
get the paper.”

“Oh, darling,” It was a relief to cry at last.

For a time it seemed as if I couldn’t stop; but he held me, and then I
tried to be quiet in order not to make it worse for him. I had watched
him through a variety of experiences in the past eight years, but only
then did I realize the invincible strength underlying his nature. I
hadn’t guessed it would be like that, but forevermore I was to take
comfort from the fact that, although small annoyances might cause minor
explosions, no one in the world could be counted on with more confidence
in a major crisis.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think I really must be tired . . . inside.”

He smiled at me then and turned the ignition switch on again. “You can
catch the Ocean Limited by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest,” he
said. “And give them my love when you get there.”

“Won’t you go with me? You need a change, too,” I said, my voice small
and not like itself.

“No. I’ll have a lot to do here to help Mother. As soon as I can I’ll
take her back to Cape Breton and get her busy redecorating the house.
She’ll need something else to think about. Besides . . . I want to
finish half a dozen more chapters before the summer’s over.”

“Yes . . . of course. You won’t let . . . anything . . . interfere with
that, will you?”

The car was carrying us across the French River valley, topping ridges
and sliding down into glens. He waited until I had passed a T-Model Ford
filled with children who stuck out its sides at angles like the legs of
a spider.

“I’ve got to finish it now more than ever.”

“And you couldn’t write if you came with me?”

“You know the answer to that. I tried once to write out of my
experiences in your country and it wasn’t any good. Too many Canadians
have tried to suit their work to the American market, and as soon as
they’ve accomplished it they’ve stopped being Canadian writers. The only
way for me to forget American tastes and points of view is to stay here
and write something true as I know the truth.”

“But you won’t mind if I go?”

“I won’t mind . . . but I’ll miss you.”

The broad white line on the dark curving road kept me from cutting a
corner that I’d have skimmed without a thought if I’d been in the United
States. “You won’t worry . . . about whether or not I’ll ever come
back?”

My voice meant to sound kidding in order to lighten the conversation,
but I should have known better. _Never_ try to tease a Nova Scotian. I
pushed my foot down on the accelerator and the car shot ahead toward New
Glasgow.

“That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself,” he said.

“Darn my Yankee ways,” I replied, wishing there were a couple of fire
engines in my way or a traffic jam to get through. “But I’ll learn
someday.” Anything was better than too much thinking of the immediate
future in store for him. The Doctor had been a vivid character, and the
qualities he represented would never die. But it’s not exactly easy to
be impersonal in the first moments of introduction to death. “It took me
such a long time to get over feeling strange in Nova Scotia, and an
outsider,” I said. “Now I’d like to tell everyone here how much I love
it, but I can’t. If I tried, they’d only think it queer that I ever felt
any other way.”

“There’s a sharp turn beyond that next hill,” he said. “If you’re not
careful, you’ll miss it and find yourself on the road to MacLennan’s
Brook instead of New Glasgow.”

I made the turn properly. “But will you tell me something?” I went on in
pursuit of my own thoughts. “Aren’t women supposed to write books in
Nova Scotia? Or wives? Sometimes—at teas and things—a silence is
wrapped around me after someone has casually mentioned my writing that
makes me feel pretty nearly a criminal.”

“It’s only because they’re embarrassed, my dear. You’ve lived here long
enough to understand that. No one they know has ever done anything that
reached the public eye—not Scottish women, or Canadian women in any
numbers—and they aren’t sure what to say to a person like you.”

“Embarrassed?” I said. “Then we’re all embarrassed. How silly of them
. . . and of me, too. I suppose if I’d only behave in a peculiar manner,
then they’d be able to place me more easily . . . and we’d all be
satisfied.”

“Would you like me to drive now?” he answered.

“No,” I said. “But will you promise me not to become an exaggerated
Scotsman as you get older?”

His hand rested firmly on my knee and every time I took my foot off the
accelerator pedal I felt its pressure and warmth. We reached the top of
a hill where the road was lined with white daisies, and the smoke of New
Glasgow hung still and gray in the distance.

“If you have any idea of not coming back,” he said. “Remember . . . I’ll
come and get you.”

There were strings of coal cars along a track siding; and a cluster of
billboards hung about the entrance to the town, watching for cars in
order to divert the attention of their occupants. A few loafers with
nothing better to do ambled along the back street of New Glasgow, but
otherwise there was no conversation except the singing of telegraph
poles as we left the shops behind and went on to open country again.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Inasmuch as the Highlanders who settled in Nova Scotia tended to remain
in clan groups, it followed that members of such clans as the Chisholms,
McNeils, and MacDonalds, who embraced the Roman Catholic religion, built
their settlements around a parish church. Today Antigonish is
headquarters of the sixty thousand Scottish Catholics in eastern Nova
Scotia. The diocese also includes some Irish Catholics who came to Nova
Scotia in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the potato
famine, as well as a scattering of French-Catholic fishing villages.

If Pictou is the best-known county of Nova Scotia, Antigonish is the
best-known town besides Halifax. The basis of this renown, and the pride
of the parish, is St. Francis Xavier University.

There are some notable Irishmen within the boundaries of this
institution’s activities, but for the most part the staff is Scottish.
When the fire of the Irish becomes mixed in proper proportions with the
practicality of the Scot (but in proper proportions, I repeat) the
result is apt to be an individual or a group hard to beat, discouraged
by nothing, capable of coming through adversity with dreams undimmed and
untarnished. But why limit such a generality? Nova Scotia has always
bred men who were unafraid of possessing convictions of their own.

The red-brick buildings of St. Francis Xavier—known affectionately to
those within and without its walls as St. F. X.—stand solid and
unbeautiful on a rise of ground that overlooks both the town of
Antigonish and the farming country around it. They are set back from the
road a sufficient distance to escape the dust and noise of passing
traffic, but close enough to keep them an integral part of the life of
the town. So they typify the practical outlook of the staff and its
close relationship with the people of the community, a state which has
existed since the university received its charter in 1866 as an
outgrowth of a seminary at Arichat.

Only within the past fifteen years, however, has this
institution—through the work of its Extension Department—become
familiar to more than a handful of people outside the boundaries of the
province. Nor in all this time has anyone responsible for the prominence
of the Department’s activities ever been concerned with publicity or
renown. Today they would seem even to prefer to play down individual
achievements, lest fame outgrow the works upon which it is based. But
their faith in ultimate values and their hope for eventual ends remain
undiminished, and so the Antigonish Movement—as it is known—goes on.

In 1928 the president of St. F. X.—considered by those who know him to
be part saint, part dreamer, part man of affairs—set in motion a survey
of the seven eastern counties of Nova Scotia. The territory was limited
to what might be called their own back yard—Guysborough, Halifax,
Pictou and Antigonish counties, plus three in Cape Breton. The purpose
of the survey was to determine whether or not an extension course of
adult education could be put into effect in outlying communities.
Authorities knew it was badly needed. But could it be made practical in
helping the people with their problems?

In the Maritime Provinces at least eighty-four per cent. of all
employment takes the form of manual labor rather than business
enterprise or pursuit of a profession. In the eastern counties of Nova
Scotia this percentage is even higher, sources of income being divided
mainly among fishing, farming, and mining.

These were the people the university hoped to interest in their project,
for all of them knew the meaning of a low level of economic
independence. And so down to the gray fishing villages that smelled of
drying cod, and out to the farms that smelled of honey and manure, and
into the mines that smelled of coal dust, the men of St. F. X. went to
make their survey and determine the course of their work.

They studied the Folk School Movement in the Scandinavian countries, and
the latest theories and practices of adult education in the United
States; they investigated economic co-operation in England, and branches
of the British Canadian Co-operative Society already established at
Sydney Mines in Cape Breton. The eagerness of people for learning had
already been proved, but the difficulty of getting them to go to school
was recognized as a major problem.

Activity, rather than talk, was to be the aim of St. F. X. Education
must go to the people.

At last the Extension Department of the University was opened, with Dr.
M. M. Coady at its head. In a searching work, _Masters of Their Own
Destiny_, Dr. Coady has outlined the manner in which this Antigonish
Movement was founded on three “faiths,” and how, out of these three
faiths, three lines of action developed.

The first faith may be stated in the words of Father J. J. Thompkins,
one of the initial instigators of the movement: “The time for learning
anything is the time when you need it.” As a correlated line of action,
small study groups were formed among fishermen in outlying communities
to permit them to discuss their needs and decide for themselves what
they wanted to study. Fishing villages, it was found, were the easiest
to organize in this way because the nature of their work had already
given them a measure of unity, and at the same time they were more needy
than the other two groups of workers.

The second faith of the Extension Department was based upon a belief
that economic and social reorganization cannot rise spontaneously from
the people who need it unless they possess adequate understanding of
their relationship to the society in which they live. So experiments in
economic group action were undertaken as a means of proof that such
action could be beneficial. One small community was able to raise the
price it received for lobsters by a high percentage; another built a
community canning factory and made it pay; a third borrowed money and
built a sawmill and was able to repay the loan and show a sizable net
income after a year of operation. Such proofs of the value of study and
co-operation were unquestionable, and the impetus they gave the Movement
carried it forward with swift strides.

The third faith was based upon a conviction that any reconstruction of
the social and economic life of a people, to be effective, must arise
out of a reinterpretation of their common experiences. And so leadership
was not imposed upon groups and communities from outside; it was pointed
out that the more intelligent members of each group must be willing to
place their abilities at the disposal of the slower members.

With such a platform, workers in the Antigonish Movement undertook to
win the co-operation of the people whom they hoped to help—people who
had defaulted on themselves because they hadn’t expended the energy
necessary to change their lot and claim their rights in society.

But the first efforts on the part of the educators were more often than
not bitterly discouraging. “Under the dynamics of the ideas propounded
at these first meetings the people did show some signs of interest,” Dr.
Coady says. “In the most places a few groups would volunteer to take
part in a program of adult education. But to men and women who had put
their school days far behind them the idea was strange and a little
ludicrous, and they did so hesitatingly. No doubt they had some mental
reservations as to the practicability of college professors. The
objectives to be gained through a return to study were so remote, and
the connection between mass enlightenment and the final solution of
seemingly insoluble problems was so far-fetched, that a high pitch of
enthusiasm could hardly be expected.”[11]

On the farms as well as among the fishermen there had always been a
tendency—racial as much as anything else—to accept bad times and do
nothing about it. In the mines there had been a more active discontent,
taking the form of unions, and splits between unions, and militant
communism. It was nearly as difficult to get the industrial workers to
move backward from the far-left position they had taken as it was to get
the farmers to give up their stubborn conservatism. To the miners,
particularly, a consumer-producer program that called for evolutionary
methods seemed reactionary, whereas to the farmers it was nothing but a
left-wing theory of revolution.

“In a democracy,” Dr. Coady goes on to say, “it is the privilege of the
people to work overtime in their own interests—the creation of a new
society where all men are free.” Education, he believes, is necessary in
order that men may learn to think for themselves and think straight. A
man with no education believes he knows why he cannot solve his own
problems, but his reasons are usually unreal. Too few see any
relationship between thinking and the practical affairs of everyday
living. “Devotion to intangibles,” he points out, must be carried over
“from the spiritual to the cultural and economic phases of life.” Men
don’t need to be remade so much as remotivated.

The program of the Extension Department aimed not alone at helping
people to take advantage of opportunities offered but at teaching them
to make new opportunities for themselves. It was quite possible, these
educators felt, for the common man to be not alone a worker but at the
same time a student, a businessman, and an intelligent citizen.

There were discouragements and disagreements and a colossal amount of
apathy to be overcome. Many individuals in authority withdrew support
from the university and prophesied that no good could come of such
liberal policies. But the big-little people stood by, and gradually
began to see the possibilities of helping themselves. The cause of the
Extension Department was given favorable publicity from the outset by
the Halifax _Chronicle_. Within a few years the Antigonish Movement was
being talked about and studied far and wide across the continent.

By the end of five years the progress which had been made stood out
sharply in relief against the gloom that had preceded it. At the end of
ten years there was no longer any doubt; the Antigonish Movement was
credited with having furthered social and economic reform as nothing
else had yet been able to do in this country. It has never attempted to
go beyond its own field, and in that the wisdom of the men behind these
activities reveals itself again.

There are now about a thousand study groups in Cape Breton, Pictou, and
Antigonish counties alone, all serviced by the circulating library of
the Extension Department of St. F. X. Pamphlets and mimeographed
material, as well as bulletins, are sent out every fortnight to each
organized group, giving news relative to local problems, presenting
reviews and digests of current articles that may prove helpful, and
listing the achievements of the various organizations within the
framework of the whole movement.

From the original two credit unions which were put into operation in
Nova Scotia hundreds more have spread across Canada; and there are now
more than a hundred and fifty of them operating within this one province
alone, doing a gross annual business of $1,500,000. From the first
co-operative store established at Canso in 1934, seventy more societies
have been established in eastern Nova Scotia alone. Other parts of
eastern Canada have embraced the movement; and now the whole country
gives indications of being blanketed with consumer co-operative stores,
all based on the Rochdale plan which has been used so successfully by
the Antigonish Movement.

Not only has this co-operation raised the cultural and economic
standards of the people little by little, but it has had a further
practical effect in the establishment of co-operative canning factories
and stores, co-operative marketing of fish and farm products, and the
subsequent raising of incomes for every participant. Medical service has
been instituted on a co-operative plan, and women’s study groups have
done excellent work in nutrition, health, and handicrafts. Co-operative
insurance, co-operative recreation, and a co-operative press are planned
as the next steps; some of them are already well under way.

One is tempted to quote Dr. Coady at length, but one more excerpt from
his book must suffice: “The kind of education just outlined is not
enough. As we have said, it is only the beginning. We have no desire to
remain at the beginning, to create a nation of mere shopkeepers, whose
thoughts run only to groceries and to dividends. We want our men to look
into the sun and into the depths of the sea. We want them to explore the
hearts of flowers and the hearts of fellow-men. We want them to live, to
love, to play and pray with all their being. We want them to be men,
whole men, eager to explore all the avenues of life and to attain
perfection in all their faculties. . . . We desire above all that they
will discover and develop their own capacities for creation. It is good
to appreciate; it is godlike to create. Life for them shall not be in
terms of merchandising but in terms of all that is good and beautiful,
be it economic, political, social, cultural or spiritual. They are the
heirs of all the ages and of all the riches yet concealed. . . . If they
are wise they will create the instruments to obtain them. . . . They
will use what they have to secure what they have not.”[12]

The farms in this part of the world still smell of honey and manure, the
industrial towns of coal dust and strong liquor, the fishing villages of
brine and dead seaweed and cod. But the people mind their hardships less
because hope has been given them, and they realize at last that they can
learn to think for themselves. Nova Scotia may lack many things, but
courage and common sense are not among them.

-----

[11] M. M. Coady, _Masters of Their Own Destiny_. Harper and Brothers.
(1939)

[12] _Ibid._


                                ROUTE 6

    _Amherst_ . . . see Chapter II.

    A side road off Route 6 from Amherst leads to Tidnish on the
    Northumberland Strait, and on down the shore to connect with the
    highway again near East Linden. This is the resort area of Nova
    Scotia for residents of Amherst and other Cumberland County
    towns. The beaches are smooth and wide, and the water has an
    average temperature of seventy degrees in summer. Tides rise
    only three or four feet along this shore, so the water is
    usually calm and canoeing is a favorite sport.

    _Shinimicas_ . . . a fertile farming territory, noted for its
    progressive co-operative efforts and fine stock.

    _Pugwash_ . . . the excellent harbor here can accommodate
    oceangoing vessels; beaches offer warm salt-water bathing free
    of sharks and reptiles; during the autumn there is an abundance
    of wild geese and duck for shooting. If the highways which lead
    to this town were paved—as they will someday be—it would be an
    outstanding summer resort.

    _Pineo Lodge._

    _Wallace Village_ . . . noted for sandstone quarries which have
    supplied many buildings in the United States and Canada, among
    them Province House in Halifax and the new Parliament Buildings
    in Ottawa. The town was settled by Empire Loyalists from New
    York. Its most famous son was Simon Newcomb, the great scientist
    and naval astronomer, who was made a Rear Admiral of the United
    States Navy in 1906. He lived here until he was eighteen.

    _Malagash_ . . . a holiday resort, with productive salt mines in
    the neighborhood from which salt that is 99.1 per cent. pure is
    taken. The reserves are estimated at 25,000,000 tons, and the
    workings are now over a thousand feet deep. The fishing industry
    in Nova Scotia alone consumes 50,000 tons of salt every year,
    and so the fishermen of the province have benefited enormously
    from this salt deposit since its discovery in 1916.

    _Tatamagouche_ . . . a quiet farming community, settled by
    French Huguenots from Montbéliard after the original Acadian
    settlement had been cleaned out by forces from New England.
    Large quantities of diatomite, mined in a lake in the vicinity,
    are shipped to the United States.

    _River John_ . . . this placid little place was named for the
    father of a child who was stolen by the Indians, never seen
    again, but believed to have been one of the Indian leaders in
    later years who roamed the forests of New Brunswick.

    _Pictou_ . . . population 3,200. Three rivers empty into the
    harbor. This town is the headquarters of the lobster industry in
    this section of Nova Scotia, which makes it one of the largest
    lobster-producing ports in the world. Within forty miles
    approximately 2,195,000 pounds of lobster have been landed in a
    single year; the largest single lobster taken weighed sixteen
    pounds, four ounces.

    _Pictou Lodge._

    _Green Hill Lookoff_ . . . one and a quarter miles off Route 6.
    The top of the observation tower is seven hundred feet above sea
    level, and the view covers the shores of Cape Breton Island and
    Prince Edward Island as well as a considerable portion of the
    mainland of Nova Scotia.

    _Alma_ . . . junction with Route 4.


                                ROUTE 4

    _Truro_ . . . see Chapter III.

    _Mt. Thom_ . . . three miles off Route 4. This is a village on a
    height of land that separates the northern slope of the
    provincial spine from the Bay of Fundy watershed. It was settled
    in 1801 by Highlanders who reached here after illness and
    tribulation. It is still being farmed by their descendants.

    _Stellarton_ and _Westville_ . . . off Route 4. The first has a
    population of 5,000, and the second of 4,000. These are both
    mining towns situated in a coal field that covers approximately
    fifty square miles, with seams from four to forty-eight feet in
    thickness. The coal is bituminous, and the collieries are large
    and up to date.

    _New Glasgow_ . . . population 9,000. Founded as a coal-mining
    town, this grew as a great shipbuilding port; then it became a
    steel-making center, with a population of 25,000 in the towns
    surrounding it. Its two main streets, through which traffic
    moves one way on each, are ugly to look at, but the shops that
    line them are filled with modern and even beautiful merchandise.
    MacLeod’s is the place to stop for a meal or a sundae, no matter
    what the time of day; anything you order will be served on Spode
    china. The residential section of the town climbs up and down
    hills and commands handsome views; in fact, New Glasgow isn’t
    half bad if you forget the main street and don’t expect too much
    of a place surrounded by roaring blast furnaces, railway-car
    factories, steel mills, and iron foundries.

    _Barney’s River_ . . . a small settlement named for its founder,
    an old character who came from North Ireland. The road along
    here between Antigonish and New Glasgow is sparsely settled, and
    it runs over hills, through valleys, across rivers, and around
    innumerable curves. From it branch only a few side roads, but
    their signs indicate directions to places with names like Aspen,
    Garden of Eden, Goshen, Marshy Hope, MacPherson, Beaver Meadow,
    Roman Valley, and Malignant Cove.

    _Antigonish_ . . . population 2,800. This is a town set in the
    midst of fertile and attractive farmlands, flat in itself but
    surrounded by hills which rise as high as 750 feet. There are
    also extensive gypsum and limestone quarries in the
    neighborhood. A road to the left runs for twenty-two miles to
    Ballantyne Cove and the point of Cape George, overlooking George
    Bay and Cape Breton Island for most of its length.

    _Tracadie_ . . . the inhabitants are mainly French Canadians,
    who carry on some mixed farming and lumbering.

    _Monastery_ . . . for nearly a hundred years—until
    1919—Trappist monks maintained a monastery here. The land
    appears to be good for little else.

    _Mulgrave_ . . . population 1,000, or thereabouts. Freight and
    passenger cars of the Canadian National Railways are taken to
    Cape Breton Island across the Strait of Canso at this point. A
    passenger and car ferry runs every half-hour through the
    twenty-four hours of each day, to connect with Port Hawkesbury
    on the other side. Honk the horn of your car as you slide down
    the last hill, for the ferry will turn back for you even if it’s
    already well away from the dock. Such a courtesy is very Nova
    Scotian.




                                   IX
                             _NEW SCOTLAND_


Cape Breton is called an island, though actually it is a group of them,
with the longest crow-flight distance between their extremities only a
trifle over a hundred miles. As a unit its contours are involved and
misleading, and its roads cover hundreds of miles without overlapping
one another. If you choose to liken the shape of Nova Scotia to a
lobster, this part forms the claws. The two claws surround a large body
of salt water which is in turn divided into sections by peninsulas and
islands; and Boularderie Island forms a stopper, or wedge, between them,
letting enough of the sea by on either side to keep the lakes salt but
holding enough of it back to prevent appreciable tides.

To the visitor Cape Breton is a distilled essence of loveliness. Nothing
which nature has contrived here is so enormous or so grand as to be
incredible. Its hills curve and fall in gentle folds from their smooth
heights to water level; its lakes are like blue cups of water; its
salmon streams are cold and primitive and filled with swirling pools;
its farms are green-patched and well tended; its roads run like a song
through valleys and glens and beside the tree-shadowed expanse of
countless bays. Elsewhere in Canada, prairies may engulf enormous
amounts of space in their voracity, and mountain ranges may split the
sky like crashing chords. Cape Breton is more like a lullaby, modest and
withdrawn.

Among all the lovely dwelling places in Canada, none leaves so marked an
emotional impression on American travelers as this island; and surely
none is so little understood beneath its surface sights and sounds.
Essentially, it is a refuge—as, in a sense, all islands are. Through
the years it has sheltered a succession of men of imagination, like
Alexander Graham Bell, who have been unafraid to make new paths to this
faraway offshoot of land instead of following the reasonless wanderings
of the herd to more notable spots. And because it has always respected
its guests, Cape Breton remains a refuge for anyone in need of the
solace of tranquillity.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the great landlords of
England had come into possession of clan property in the north of
Scotland and were determined to rid their estates of crofters in order
to turn the land into pastures and preserves for deer, successive
shiploads of Highlanders left their homes and sailed away to the new
world, leaving the “lairds” to their shooting parks. When they arrived
in Nova Scotia they found all the good acreage on the mainland occupied,
and so they were forced to settle on public lands in Cape Breton which
had previously been considered waste.

The laborious task of deriving a livelihood from its essential elements
has always been at the root of the Nova Scotian problem, and success in
surmounting this handicap to some extent has been the principal Nova
Scotian glory. It has been true of the mainland, and it has been trebly
true of Cape Breton—on farms, in the mines, and on the sea. Wherever
the ground is good the farms appear prosperous and well kept. But where
in Cape Breton is the land really good? There are tiny, narrow valleys
such as the sloping country about Lake Ainslee, the glens of the Middle
and Baddeck rivers, patches on Boularderie Island and the eastern shores
of the Bras d’Or Lakes, bits along the Mira River, in the graceful
valley of the Margaree, and in the narrow glens near Cape North. But
that is all—a few minor dots for trimming on the great coat of farmland
that covers this continent. It is on these minuscule dots that the last
of the Highlanders to emigrate from their Scottish homes have settled
and stayed.

These men are all broad-shouldered creatures with pale-blue opaque eyes,
high complexions, gnarled hands, and features so inelegant as to seem
handsome. The girls are pretty, and the mature women are fair to look
upon at any age. All of them, including their polite children, speak
with a lilt in their voices that clings to one’s memory like the odor of
lavender or the sound of the sea. Locally they are said to “have the
Gaelic” because most of them are still bilingual.

If I could describe even one of these people so that you could see them
as I do in my memory’s eye, I should have described all that matters in
Cape Breton except the scenery. Let me try with Mr. MacGregor.

For a week he dug up the back half-acre behind our house for a garden
and shoveled earth in a trench for a cesspit. Helping him were two other
men, known as Black Angus and Willie Dan, and while they were at work on
the latter job they were invisible except for the cloth caps which rose
above the level of the trench and disappeared again as they worked. One
afternoon toward the end of the week Mr. MacGregor came out of the
trench and contemplated my husband’s mother, who had shortly before
arrived on the scene, with a slow and courteous stare. He removed his
cap and made a slight bow. Though this man was a master carpenter by
trade, and had worked with his hands all his life, his manners were
courtly. He knew—because the business of one is the business of all in
every small place—why I had not returned from my father-in-law’s
funeral and why my husband’s mother had come back with him instead.

This was the summer of 1940. France had fallen two months before and a
new scar incomprehensibly deep had been left on the body of the world.
In the microcosm of our family a loss had occurred which would also
leave a scar. The knowledge of both was in the eyes of this workman,
this calm gentleman, as he emerged from the ground. But his eyes also
carried something which most of us today have lost—a knowledge that he
had no needs which he could not fulfill, no questions about what he must
do next, and no doubts about the sense in what he had done so far. Here
was one of the rarest persons left alive—a strong man who was gentle, a
wise man who was simple, a thoughtful man who was contented. And it was
the summer of 1940.

So he stood there with his cap in his hand. His hands were gnarled and
earth-stained. His face was weather-beaten and his hair was thinly
silver over a ruddy, high-cheekboned face.

“Himself is inside, ma’am, if you would be looking for him.” He
indicated the side door of the house, and small wrinkles in lieu of a
smile appeared about his eyes. She knew this indicated his pleasure in
seeing a new face.

Next morning a longer conversation took place between them. Mr.
MacGregor was minus one of his helpers and he began to excuse the man
with an elaborate show of courtesy.

“But I saw Willie Dan in the village this morning,” she protested. “He
should be here. That cesspool must be finished by the end of the day.”

Mr. MacGregor’s voice answered in its slow Gaelic rhythm after a
perceptible moment of silence, its cadence like music. (I shan’t attempt
to spell it phonetically. Consonants at the ends of words sound doubled,
and there’s a good deal of added aspiration.) “Whell now, ma’am,” he
said, “I wouldn’t be the one at all to be saying that Willie Dan
shouldn’t be here like the rest of us.” A pause. “But you know it’s like
this . . . Willie Dan iss one of those fellas that thinks a lot when
he’s alone. And last night he wass all alone. And he wass thinking.”

She was sufficiently acquainted with the indirectness of Gaelic
expression to know that Mr. MacGregor intended something else to be
understood than the mere fact that Willie Dan had been alone last night
with something on his mind. “So that’s it,” she said, and laughed.

Mr. MacGregor laughed then, too, but it had a melancholy sound,
indicating relief because the lady of the house knew that Willie Dan was
drunk and Mr. MacGregor had not found it necessary to mention the fact
overtly.

There was the clank of a shovel against a stone. “Nhow about this
cesspit, ma’am,” he said. “You must not be worrying yourself about it at
all. I haf said it will be finished tonight, and so it will be
finished.”

“Well . . .”

“Indeed, yhes, it will.” Another pause. “Nhow I was wondering about
tomorrow morning.” The words were meant as a question.

“Tomorrow morning you start the painting, don’t you?” she said.

“Yhes, indeed. But it wasn’t that I was meaning. It wass Willie Dan.”

“He’ll surely be sober by tomorrow, won’t he?”

“Indeed, yhes.” The lilt rose higher. “Willie Dan will be sober as the
minister tomorrow. But it whill be bad if he thinks yourself wass
knowing why he didn’t work today.”

She laughed. “Very well, Mr. MacGregor. Tell me what I’m to do.”

He chuckled. “If you wass to ask Willie Dan in the morning how wass hiss
health, it whould be nice. If you wass to do that, moreover, Willie Dan
whould feel much better about hiss work.”

Before breakfast time the next day Willie Dan was back, red about the
eyes but industrious, and Mr. MacGregor was quietly supervising the work
as usual. The proper salutations took place. By late afternoon another
conversation was under way between the lady of the house and her
carpenter—the kind of thing that in my world would have been
incredible.

“Indeed, yhes,” Mr. MacGregor was saying. “He’s a good little fella, the
minister. And I whould not be the one to be saying that he don’t preach
a long sermon, with good theology. But, after all the things the Germans
haf been doing to the Frenchmen, I wass saying to Mrs. MacGregor last
Sunday it wass a wonder a warr is going on at all, for all Mr. Morison
hass to say about it.”

“He’s a pacifist, isn’t he?” she replied, busy with her own work.

There was a silence then, and finally the slow words, “There iss a warr
on all the same. And it would seem to me [with a slap of the paint
brush] the way things are . . . it would maybe be the warr that would be
noticing Mr. Morison . . . if Mr. Morison notices the warr, or not.”

The work was finally finished, and Willie Dan and Black Angus had packed
their tools and gone over the hill to their homes. Mr. MacGregor was
adding a few last touches before presenting his bill. For the first time
he looked awkward and uncomfortable. Finally he stood by the steps of
the porch where the lady of the house sat reading, his kindly eyes
worried and wandering. She looked up and realized the predicament.

“I’d be happy to have your bill, Mr. MacGregor,” she said. “I’ll give it
to my son.”

There was an awkward fumbling in the pockets of overalls and finally a
crumpled piece of paper emerged. She examined it. “But, Mr. MacGregor,
I’m sure there’s a mistake.”

He took the piece of paper from her, looked at it, and handed it back.
“Indeed, no,” he said.

“But you haven’t charged for three whole days. That’s three out of a
fortnight. We owe you much more than this.”

He frowned and his voice became stubborn though still courteous. “It
whill not be necessary to talk about it. That’s my bill, and to the
devil with whether the days are added up or not.”

“But I’d like to understand,” she persisted. “Why aren’t you charging us
the proper amount?”

There was a defiant silence. Then he said, “Whell, now . . . there’s
whays of paying besides it’s just money.” He cleared his throat
somberly. “You made no talk about the morning Willie Dan wass drunk. But
I tell you, if you wass like that whoman down the road a way, there
whould be no use in arguing whateffer . . . she pays all the bill that
was agreed upon. And then there are others I do not work for at all.”

She stood by the steps and watched him walking off down the path to the
road. From the rear he moved with a heavy shambling gait, like an
amiable but clumsy animal. He stopped at the road and turned, lifting
his cap and making a slight bow. And then he went on slowly home.

It would be inaccurate to say that Mr. MacGregor is typical of Cape
Breton as it is today. He stands for what Cape Breton has always been in
the minds of Nova Scotians . . . but one thinks of him in the past
tense; for when his generation is gone a way of life will have ended in
this small section of the world, dispersed and unreplenished.

Because they are rarely artists, inventors, politicians, or rogues, the
Scots of Nova Scotia make poor copy and their names as individuals
seldom head any list of world-renowned figures. In their background is
no Burns, Barrie, Buchan, or Lauder. But Stephen Leacock penned a living
aphorism when he said that Nova Scotia has always been able to export
two notable products—cod and brains.

The Scottish Highlander has no sense of class, in the English meaning of
the word. His distinctions are based on a reverence for intelligence.
Without attempting to do so, or quite knowing how they have done it,
these Scots have become the dominant peoples of Nova Scotia. If two
Englishmen are unwilling to consort with each other on first meeting
until their accents, manners, and activities have been inspected
sufficiently to enable each to be placed in his proper social stratum,
even more careful are Nova Scotians. Not one of them is willing to rest
until he has measured the education, mental sagacity, and cultural level
of everyone he meets. Often there is a deal of discussion among two who
know each other well as to where a third party belongs.

And better than the English—whose decisions must rest for the most part
upon familiar signs which give away the game to an outsider—Nova
Scotians are able to classify whole nations and races. (I should be
specific and say, rather, Nova Scotians with Highland blood.) In one
thing they all agree: those to whom they look up in admiration are
people of dead cultures, such as the ancient Greeks; those upon whom
they look down are all living peoples besides themselves.

I am convinced that in the eyes of God there is no difference between a
Scotsman and a Frenchman or a Jew, but of all the races on earth it
would be most difficult to persuade the Highlanders to accept such a
proposition. So they are called arrogant. And yet this lordliness has
only grown out of the primal necessity of finding compensation for the
loss of material property and power. If they weren’t a stubborn people
they would all have died long ago or committed suicide, for the country
which they inherited from their Viking and Celtic ancestors in the north
of the British Isles has never been anything but poor and unyielding;
and wherever they have been forced to go in the world after leaving the
Highlands, the land has still been poor and the living hard.

So if they remain as stubborn as John Knox himself, and as little likely
to be convinced of the futility of such a trait in bettering their lot,
who can blame them? With all their stubbornness they possess an
adaptability rare among men, and a well-concealed wit that gives them a
lift over bad times. An Englishman, transplanted to foreign soil for
reasons of state or private income, will resist his new environment to
the end. But not so the Highlander; possessed of an acute sense of
atmosphere, he will take on the color of any place he inhabits, change
his language, and accept uncomplainingly whatever public duties may fall
upon him.

And, furthermore, no Highlander is willing at any time or under any
circumstance to sell any part of himself. Not one of them can be bought
at a price. So they seem at times to be unenterprising to Americans and
Englishmen, but in all recorded history it would be difficult to find a
single one who ever betrayed his people.

The experience of generations has taught every Highland Scotsman to
expect the worst of every circumstance. And when the worst arrives he
suffers still, burdened with the sorrow of his ancestors. When
occasionally the best descends instead, the Highlander is nearly
incapable of enjoying it to the full; for he is consumed with a feeling
that fortune is trying to put one over on him and, whatever the
immediate pleasure, the end will probably be bad.

So they take for granted a misunderstanding of themselves and things
they hold dear. They hide their wounds and hug their pride, trying to
find warmth in a native dignity—and nearly always find more than they
should. On the other hand, they never cry and seldom feel sorry for
themselves—but endure the cold stoically, being proud of themselves
even for that.

Lillian Mowrer tells a story in _Journalist’s Wife_ about one of their
German cooks who gave notice of an intent to leave. Weren’t they paying
her enough? asked Mrs. Mowrer. The cook burst into tears. It wasn’t
that, she said—it was because they didn’t love her. A Highland woman
would have left for the same reasons, but she would never have told why;
she would simply have gone quietly, taking her offended pride and
dignity with her.

There is no happier man on earth—well, within bounds—than the
Highlander who lives his life among his own kind. It is only when he
goes afield into the world that he becomes uncomfortable, unhappy, more
dour than ever, and more worthy and upright of character than any one
human being can safely bear to be. But those who emigrated to Nova
Scotia (and now I reach the point I started to make several pages ago)
_have_ gone out into the world, because they recognized the necessity of
eating in order to live. Beyond that, too, a Highlander’s pride requires
recognition, and sometimes families and friends who take one’s
superiority for granted are not enough to satisfy it. So he has found
his way into the places where his native love of teaching and preaching
and righting wrongs has a wider field to work and expand.

Only a generation or two after the land was broken in Cape Breton an
amazing process began, based upon these Highland qualities which—to go
even deeper—arise out of a deeply religious nature. Home, the school,
and the kirk have always been the three centers of their life—the three
sources of their faith and inspiration. And the parable of the talents
is to them more important than any other to be found in Jesus’
teachings. Any Highlander, and the Nova Scotian variety in particular,
considers it a sin against God not to use the talents he has been
given—not in the acquisition of money, not in big adventure and going
west to make a fortune, but definitely in procuring the best possible
education for every son and daughter in every family, and then using
that education for the good of mankind.

So within three generations Nova Scotia has become a nursing ground for
a race that has done more to develop Canada than any other. Inordinate
numbers of young boys and girls from these God-fearing, lovely mannered,
dignified families have gone—and are still going—from their homes to
far places which offer them better opportunities for improvement and
service. The girls go as nurses and teachers; the boys as clergymen,
doctors, professors, teachers, and lawyers—and occasionally statesmen.
One boy and one girl in each family usually stays behind on the farm,
but always more go away than stay.

Now the sad spectacle that took place in the Highlands of Scotland is
beginning to repeat itself in Nova Scotia—the depopulation of whole
districts. But there is no gainsaying the fact that these young people
who have left their homes and come to maturity elsewhere have brought to
the rest of the continent qualities and purposes and capacities badly
needed. Without them we should be even more grossly money-minded and
uncultured than we are, which is surely in some respects bad enough.

They remain on the credit side for Cape Breton, as opposed to the
devitalizing effect of the mines, but they have never yet been able to
pay back a fraction of the whole debt. Their work has been done hundreds
or thousands of miles away, and the island can claim nothing from them
but the willing and proud admission that they were born and bred there.

“Buttercups have come and gone in the meadows,” he wrote, “and
strawberries are ripe on the hills. One of Mother’s recent guests
thought she would help brighten the living room when she brought in a
great clump of blooming white hawthorn after a walk, and she took pains
to arrange it attractively in an old brown crock on the floor. When
Mother came downstairs humming a song and saw it, her face turned as
white as the blossoms. Before anyone knew what had happened she had the
hawthorn outside in disgrace on the doorstep. I had to explain to our
guest that we were a superstitious people beyond belief and Mother was
still certain that white hawthorn in a house brought death to one of
those who lived in it. Mother, of course, explained nothing, but
returned to humming a Hebridean song after the blossoms were well
disposed of.” . . .

I put the letter down and let my mind accept a fellow feeling for the
unwitting guest. If strawberries were ripe on the hills of Cape Breton
they were the last on the continent—first Louisiana berries, sent to
the tables of northern cities in January; strawberries from Missouri for
a spring delicacy; and finally Michigan berries to round out the season.
But Nova Scotia knew summer still when the rest of the northern world
had already tired of it.

Southwest winds would be sweeping over the Bras d’Or each morning now,
rounding points of land with a quiet persistence that made sailing a
tricky business on this inland sea. By noon the winds would go away and
let the sun grow hot and promising; but afternoon would barely begin
until they were back with renewed strength, and sometimes a sailboat
would capsize before them under the most skillful hands. Was he still
scudding into a stiff breeze in the _Snowbird_, his hair tousled, his
eyes thin slits, and an expression of unadulterated ecstasy on his face?
Did anyone else enjoy the play of sound and obedient muscles as much as
he? Was he forgetting for a little while longer through a Cape Breton
summer the weight of the world’s trouble that he persisted in carrying
on his shoulders these days? My eyes went back to the letter in my hand.

“The book is nearly finished,” he wrote. “I’m afraid it will be called
rather a cruel thing, though I certainly don’t intend it to be. I’m
sorry about that part of it, yet it didn’t seem possible to make it
otherwise and retain its honesty. ‘Such things don’t happen in Canada,’
people will say, ‘and such men as you have drawn don’t exist in our
society.’ But you and I both know they do. . . .

“Other things in your last letter, I’m sad to say, merely strengthen a
growing dread in me that the older generation still retains sufficient
barnacle activity to wreck us. And the power of the narrow mind in the
small town can be paralleled by the same mind in London and Washington
and Ottawa with tragic clarity. If our civilization goes, future
historians will certainly head their books on it with the old tag of
Virgil—_quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat_. When one thinks of the
power of one-half of one per cent of a population to retard the majority
in its efforts to preserve itself in these days! . . . Such people can’t
be convinced or converted. They can either be crushed or sidetracked. So
far as the world is concerned, it will crush them. So far as you are
concerned, there is nothing to do but contrive a way to sidetrack them.”
. . .

A pair of robins carried on a muted conversation on the lawn and the
haughty black Persian who never forgot his show ribbons watched the
birds superciliously through the screen. I could hear my father
whistling in the garage and Mother talking to someone about club
business on the telephone upstairs. Next door an automatic sprinkler
flicked water in arcs over a bed of larkspur and snapdragons, and across
the street a radio continued to give out songs and soap operas as it had
done for the past nine hours. They formed an obbligato of sounds
familiar most of my life; they enclosed me in their comfortable
assurance of a continuance of things I had always known. I watched the
Persian watch the robins for a while longer, and then I got up from the
glider and turned my back on the garden that needed nothing but
admiration, and the cat who knew himself a thoroughbred, and all the
suburban houses on our elm-shaded street which were replete with
pastel-tiled bathrooms and games-rooms and more fixtures for easy living
than a palace.

Nova Scotia still needed so many things that America took for granted. I
was forever a Yankee and my instincts were still those of my fathers;
but in that small province by the sea I had encountered new ideas and a
different basic point of view about humanity, and they had entered into
me while I was unaware. Nothing would ever turn me back again into the
person I had been before I knew them.

Suddenly I was homesick for Nova Scotia, torn at the prospect of leaving
my own parents again but filled with a longing for simpler, more
profound beauties uncontrived by man. America was too perfect; it had
gone too far in the acquisition of material comforts and pleasures. Now
it would have to go back and catch up on lessons forgotten or overlooked
on the way.

Nova Scotia is backward in many respects by modern standards, but she
has never lost her way. If her sons and daughters have left her and few
returned, it was not to make money but only to preserve something in
themselves—something that would save their families from degradation.
Often they, too, must be filled with homesickness in the cities and
towns of my country, but they have never been able to go back—even as
their forefathers were unable to return to the hills of the Highlands a
hundred years before.

Let the rest of the world call them pigheaded if it would; I knew it was
only their unbroken honesty, and a knowledge they all share that to give
in means defeat. So they remain aristocrats to the last man and boy, no
matter what their work—always conscious of being on the losing side,
but never once forced to lower their ancient standards of right and
wrong.

I picked up the paper I had been reading before his letter arrived, and
turned to an essay on an inside page about an old shepherd who lives on
one of the islands of the Hebrides. My eye found the place where I had
stopped.

“These places, romanticized and famous in the modern world, are among
the oldest names of the old world. Their history goes back to the tribal
beginnings of the Gaelic stock. And Sandy looks in every aspect as
indigenous as the heather and firs on the hillside and the wheeling
wildfowl that inhabit the lonely cliffs.

“He could speak no English until he was seventeen and today he is still
more comfortable in Gaelic. When the British censor considered that it
would be more suitable if he wrote his letters to his brothers in Nova
Scotia in English, he was highly indignant, for English gives him
trouble on paper. He is a struggling scholar then; whereas, in his
native tongue, he is a creative artist with a distinguished literary
style. . . .

“It would be wrong to call Sandy a hermit. That is not a word we should
use about a man merely because he lives alone. Sandy—even after
twenty-three years—does not quite accept as permanent the fact of his
aloneness. He never uses the first personal pronoun, when referring to
his activities in the house, or to his domestic possessions. It is: ‘One
of our china cups was broken last week. Ah, well: it served us a long
time!’ ‘That,’ pointing to a photograph on the kitchen dresser, ‘is our
mother.’ This is not feckless English—or Gaelic. It is the expression
of his faith in family unity. He has three brothers in Nova Scotia and a
sister married to a rich farmer in England. For them, as much as for
himself, that little cottage where they all were born is Home. . . .

“‘They never forget me,’ he smiled. ‘But they’re daft.’ He looked round
us, his smile broadening into a grin. ‘They are aye sending me food from
Nova Scotia. They must think we are starving here!’

“‘Poor old Scotland,’ said the minister. ‘She’s never starved yet.’

“‘No, no,’ said Sandy, ‘and it’s about time my brothers were coming home
to see that for themselves. Anyway,’ he added, thoughtfully, ‘they
should be back home. They’ve been away too long already, I’m thinking!’

“Outside, the ancient islands lay jet black in a moonlit sea. On my way
home to my own cottage, I halted many times to gaze at the wondrous
night view; and a feeling almost of awe overcame me when I realized that
not only in Nova Scotia, but scattered all over the world, there were
Highland men and women whose nostalgic dreams were of just this that I
was seeing; and who, indeed, would be back home if they could!”[13]

Did it matter if my ways were sometimes misunderstood by such people, so
long as even one of them loved me a little? If they were embarrassed and
shy in my presence it was only because they longed to be understood and
were too proud to show it. If the Highlander and the Yankee are poles
apart in manners and measurements, so much the more do they need each
other for leavening of eccentricities and an exchange of qualities for
their common good.

People who have thought for generations in terms of nationalities and
races are not quick to broaden interpretations to encompass an organism
so varied as the human race. Perhaps if conceptions of unity can be
enlarged from “our town” to “our country” and even to “our kind” among
polyglot humanity, it will be enough to ask of this generation. And the
widened vision can start with two persons as well as with two nations.
One American plus one Nova Scotian is surely a combination greater than
the sum of its parts. We might even, together, become a prototype—a
proof for ourselves, at least, that a new order of things is surely on
its way.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Elsewhere[14] I have told how the colorful nicknames heard so much in
Cape Breton came about. There seems no reason why I shouldn’t repeat
myself here, for these names happen to be one of the most endearing
aspects of Nova Scotian custom.

Among the twenty-five thousand emigrants to Cape Breton from Scotland
there were probably representatives of all fourteen major clans, as well
as a majority of the septs of each clan—a sept being analogous to a
branch of a family that carries a different surname. Both Logans and
MacLennans, for instance, are septs of the clan MacKenzie. Each town, as
I have noted, came to have its superabundance of individuals with one
family name. But, added to that, there was also a superabundance of
individuals with both given and surnames alike, for the Highlanders are
overly conservative in christening their children. Each clan or sept
will have only a relatively few Christian names which it is customary to
give their sons. In my husband’s family, for instance, a son may be
called one of six names—unless he is called two of the same six. (And,
strangely enough, Duncan happens to be one of them. Apparently it’s no
disgrace for a Highlander to bear it as a given name.)

You can go down the street of any Cape Breton village and call for
Johnny MacDonald and half a dozen individuals in each place will be
likely to answer—except that each is known locally by some added sign,
indicating either his trade or a personal peculiarity. Often a man will
be known by an appellation earned by his father or grandfather, and
everyone who uses it will have forgotten why. Thus one Roderick MacIver,
in days gone by, drew his pay envelope as usual one Saturday and
discovered that it contained just one cent, because his wife had already
spent his salary in advance at the company store. The incident became a
joke and the joke took the form of calling him Roddy Big Pay. To this
day his children and all his sons’ children are known as the Big Pays,
and their real surname has all but disappeared from local usage.

Others, like Janet Barber, Angus Mason, and Sarah Butcher, derive their
nicknames directly from trades, for the wife is always known through the
appellation of her husband. Whenever _I_ speak to any one of them,
however, I must always say Mr. MacKenzie or Mrs. MacGillivray. Familiar
names are for the use of friends and neighbors. Yet the neighbors will
speak of each other in the local idiom in my presence. For how else will
I know who they are talking about?

Most of them are still translating in their minds from Gaelic to
English, which accounts for the frequent pauses in a conversation and,
of course, for the lilt in their rich voices. I hope no single one of
them will ever feel that my respect for their charming ways could be
higher, in spite of the fact that I have taken the liberty of putting
them into books. There is Neilly Tart, so dubbed because of his sharp
tongue; and Donald the Ox, whose father before him was Donald the Ox;
and Sandy Dan-the-Widow. Sandy Dan is, of course, the son of Mrs. Dan
the Widow.

The sound of bagpipes playing laments are still in the ears of them all
even to the men and boys who have gone into the mines—though the latter
have long since lost the look in their eyes of mists and heather hills
and peat smoke rising slowly against the sky. None of them wanted to
change, of course, but three influences outside their control have
become a blight to Cape Breton. If one extraneous force didn’t get them,
a second or a third was sure to do so before long.

Marketing difficulties, the mines, and the tourist trade are the three.
The first hardship is obvious; unless transportation is revolutionized
by air power it will never be easy to get farm and fish products from
Cape Breton to market. It was the first cause of widespread emigration
among the younger people. But for those who still didn’t want to go
away, there were the mines.

Coal mines have always been on this island, of course, and were worked
in the days when coal was needed in the fortress of Louisburg. But only
with the coming of steam engines and the upsurge of the industrial
revolution were the mines expanded, and a call sent out for men to go
down into the earth to bring the black gold to the surface. So it was
that many Highland boys left the farms and went to Sydney and Glace Bay
in the hope of making a better living, glad to find work not far from
home but not understanding until it was too late what they were getting
into.

Great steel works raise their belching stacks on the eastern shores of
Cape Breton, and thousands of acres of fertile land have been ruined by
their gases and slag heaps. Not far away have spread the pit heads like
a filthy growth, eating up good flesh and turning it out black and
stunted. To the men and women who live in this part of Cape Breton and
must get their meager living from it, the beauty of their dwelling place
in the lee of rolling hills that look over broad bays and blue waters
should compensate for many hardships. But one can hold small hope that
it does, for all this land that man can touch has been made ugly. Here
poverty does not seem the honest thing which Burns chose to praise;
rather is it a degrading, offensive sore.

About the mines and the steel works of Glace Bay and Inverness, poverty
has been aggravated by a turbulent record of strikes, lockouts, bad
faith on the part of owners, and profits accruing to shareholders who
live in great cities a thousand miles away. Although these steel works
and mines are the most productive in Canada, the fact remains that
transportation from Cape Breton to the interior of the country works a
hardship on them, and Cape Bretoners are convinced that bad financial
management has added nothing to alleviate a constant reduction in
profits.

Yet these people are first-class miners and proud of it. So Cape Breton
continues to present a paradox of much and little, of everything and
nothing.

The Highlanders who first went down into the mines two or three
generations ago have produced children smaller in size, duller of eye,
and slower of wit. Their stubbornness has grown into combativeness,
their dignity can often seem nothing but sullenness, and their
imagination has required strong drink in order to be still. So they work
until they are bone-tired, and enough of them fight after they have
become roaring drunk on Saturday night to give Glace Bay the reputation
of being one of the toughest towns in Canada. Intermarriage with the
Poles and Bohemians who have joined them for work underground has
produced a further mutation of character, but every once in a while the
real Highlander will show through a coal-begrimed face—as when a
commission from Ottawa, which had been sent to investigate conditions of
the miners, acknowledged their poverty in its worst colors in the hope
of forcing relief for them. “But you’ll not be telling that to other
people,” their leader protested. “Whatever would they be thinking of us,
then?”

Here, of late years, the Antigonish Movement has found its way and
proved again the substance of its theories. One of the few bright spots
in the bleak dreariness of Cape Breton’s “depressed area” is the
gorse-covered land at Reserve Mines where nine white houses stand
bravely together as a beacon of encouragement for everyone to see.

It was here that a group of miners decided one winter to study
co-operative housing, and with characteristic caution they spent a full
year investigating every angle of the subject. Finally they decided they
were ready to put their new learning into practical use; and so they
obtained twenty-two acres of land and secured seventy-five per cent of
the cost of their project through the Government Housing Commission, the
remainder to be paid by themselves in work and cash. Each member was
allotted one acre, and the rest of the ground was reserved for a
community center, playgrounds, and gardens. Half of each individual lot
was to be left free for cultivation.

They hired an expert builder to teach them, and they learned so quickly
they were able to finish the houses by themselves. Today these
structures form an attractive group of white clapboard homes, each
distinguishable from the others by red, blue, green, or brown shutters,
doors, and window trimming. They are owned by the association of
members, valued at $2,500 apiece for a cost of $1,650 apiece. Each
member of the group has been given twenty-one years to pay off the loan
to the Government Housing Commission in monthly installments of $9.65,
which includes taxes, insurance, interest, and amortization. They also
pay another $2.50 apiece each month to make up a fund which will take
care of repairs, as well as payment for any member who may temporarily
be unable to keep up his installments.

Twenty other groups have already been organized to undertake the same
scheme, though war priorities may interfere with the completion of their
plans for a time. No one doubts, however, that the effect on the
thinking of the people in this community at Reserve Mines outweighs
immeasurably the benefit of better living quarters. These white houses
standing in the midst of soot and barren earth are a tangible symbol of
the inner strength of a people and of their faith in a democracy founded
upon the principle of co-operation.

The third unfortunate influence on the Highlanders who have remained in
Cape Breton has been the tourist trade. This could hardly be considered
the fault of the visitors; tourists are the same in Switzerland, in
Brazil, or in Cape Breton. But to Highlanders, who are by nature the
most hospitable of any race on earth, accepting payment from guests has
seemed a shameful way to earn money. As more and more Americans have
sought out their island to enjoy its beauties, most of them have become
secretly ashamed of themselves for the small measure of prosperity this
has brought.

One or two Cape Bretoners were able to accept this new order of things
and adapt themselves to it; but the majority have never done so, for the
tourist trade will ever be incompatible with the Highland character.
They are not businessmen and rarely can be, and so they cannot make of
themselves a race of hotelkeepers. If this were not true, Americans
would like Cape Breton better because it would offer more inns with
ample accommodations in the manner to which they are accustomed. But to
most Cape Bretoners and the older ones particularly, accepting money
from guests still seems a prostitution, and the spectacle of Americans
being enticed to come and stay with them in order to bring American
dollars into the country is felt to be disgraceful. Poverty would be
preferable in their minds. It is quite safe to say, therefore, that so
long as Highlanders dominate the character of Nova Scotia the province
will remain unspoiled and unchanged.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Away from the mines and the steel works, nature has been lavish with
quiet beauty and handsome effects in Cape Breton. There are parts of it
that I love beyond others, and yet when I stop to separate them from the
whole I know there are as many more that I like just as well.

First, there is the sight of the island from Mulgrave on the mainland
side of the Strait of Canso. It presents no view of jagged bluffs and
torn remnants of earth, but careful, smoothed folds of hills veiled in
soft blue mists, with a cluster of white and tan buildings at their feet
which look best from the distance of the far shore. I never see it,
after having been away for months or a year, without feeling a
resurgence of pleasure and an anticipation of the welcome waiting across
the strait.

Then comes Whycocomagh, its buildings tracing a broad cove like a string
of pearls on a woman’s throat, with four modest white church steeples
and the great bumps of Salt and Skye Mountains holding it firmly in
place. This is where my husband spent so many summers as a small boy.
Even today he tends to see the curve of the road, the willows, the
rickety dock, and the old spring in the same dimensions they appeared to
be twenty-five years ago—the boundaries of a boy’s world, sufficient to
hold all his dreams.

St. Ann’s Gut is another place I particularly like. It isn’t so much a
single spot as a locality, and whenever I see the name I recall most
clearly the last good afternoon we spent by this fjord-shaped inlet of
the sea. We had packed a tea—his sister, himself, and I—and driven
slowly over the narrow road that traces its way to Englishtown beyond
South Gut St. Ann, and finally we had come out on a jasper bluff that
overlooks the narrow bay and the farm-studded hills on its farther side.
There was a path of sorts down through shrubs and blueberry patches that
led us to a clean, pebbly beach, and here the fold of the bluff
sheltered us from the wind.

I don’t remember much of what we did or said until the sun was high in
the afternoon. His sister went off to pick blueberries, and then we
decided to swim; for there had been no other human beings within sight
or calling distance for hours, and from the far shore our naked bodies
would be smaller than pinpricks even in a telescope. The water was
surprisingly warm, and its salt stirred our blood and sent us back to
the pebbly beach feeling invigorated. But when we rounded the edge of
the bluff to get our clothes, there worked two fishermen slightly above
the beach—slowly mending their nets. Wonderful, polite Gaels—their
backs were turned and they gave no evidence of knowing we were within
less than a hundred feet until we were dressed and ready to pack up our
picnic things and start home.

As we drove back I remember the story told by Captain Wallace of how
there came to Pictou, Nova Scotia, in 1817 the Reverend Norman McLeod
with a following of coreligionists from Assynt, Scotland.

“McLeod was a man of pronounced views regarding religion,” says Wallace,
“an exacting Presbyterian, and to his followers he was preacher,
teacher, leader and patriarch. In 1819, he received a call from a
settlement of Highlanders in Ohio to come and be their minister. He
accepted the invitation, but being loath to abandon his attached
followers in Pictou, he decided to take them with him. The problem of
making the journey to Ohio was debated, and it was finally decided to go
there by water via the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River.
Accordingly, and with characteristic energy, McLeod began the
construction of a vessel large enough to carry the emigrants and their
effects, and the keel of this craft was laid at Middle River Point,
Pictou, in the summer of 1819. The people of Pictou regarded the project
with derision, and nick-named the vessel the ‘Ark.’ The _Ark_ was
launched in the spring of 1820, and in May she took her passengers
aboard and set sail for the Gulf of Mexico. After passing through the
Straits of Canso, the _Ark_ met a heavy southwest gale, which drove her
up the Cape Breton coast. A shift of wind sent the vessel into St. Ann’s
Harbour, Cape Breton, and they dropped anchor there. Their experiences
during the gale sickened the emigrants of the Ohio idea, and they
decided to settle in St. Ann’s. Land was granted to Mr. McLeod, and a
community sprang up around the minister’s residence at Black Cove.

“McLeod remained ministering to his flock amidst the Cape Breton hills,
working with them in their daily labours and ruling them with a rod of
iron. In 1847, the minister received a letter from his son Donald, who
had settled in Adelaide, Australia. . . . In this epistle, Donald told
of the mild climate of Australia, the natural resources and wonderful
opportunities awaiting settlers.

“A failure of the potato crop inspired McLeod and his flock with the
idea of making a shift to Australia. Though 70 years of age at the time,
the minister caused the keel of a barque to be laid, and the work of
building her was undertaken by the congregation. In 1851, the barque
_Margaret_, 236 tons, was launched and rigged, and on October 28th,
1851, she sailed out of St. Ann’s Harbour bound for Adelaide, with the
Reverend Mr. McLeod and 135 emigrants on board. A call was made at St.
Jago, Cape Verde Islands, and also at Cape Town, for the replenishing of
supplies. On April 10, 1852, the _Margaret_ arrived at Adelaide, after a
voyage of 164 days.

“South Australia proved a disappointment to the emigrants. It was not
suitable for farming owing to the severe droughts, so in 1854, McLeod
and his people migrated to New Zealand, and finally settled in the
district of Waipu, where they found all that their hearts desired.
Urgent calls to come out to New Zealand were sent to those who had
remained in St. Ann’s, and in response to these invitations some 750
persons left Cape Breton and joined the Waipu colony, making the voyage
to New Zealand in vessels built by themselves.”[15]

                 *        *        *        *        *

If it isn’t a gray day soaked in fog and battered by damp winds when you
visit Louisburg, it should be. Sunshine has no place here, and no
meaning.

T. Morris Longstreth says of this dot on the map: “Nature sometimes
contrives with history. Some of the world-shaking events have occurred
amid commonplace surroundings. But the setting of Louisbourg [never
mind, no two writers ever spell it the same way] is such that the
feeblest imagination, if fed with any facts whatever, can build up the
scenes which render this place one of the most dramatic spots in North
America. Nature does not litter the outlook with detail. There is just
the harbor, a point of rock jutting into the gray Atlantic, a few broken
lines of the ancient fortress. The rest is sod and stone. The unread
tourist, dragged to Louisbourg because it is the thing to do, will
exclaim, ‘Is that all?’ and take the next bus back to town. But the
visitor who has mastered Senator McLennan’s great work ‘Louisbourg: From
Its Foundation to Its Fall, 1713-1758’ is going to wonder why Louisbourg
is not the object of public knowledge comparable to its greatness. . . .

“The more one reads the story of French colonization in America, the
more one feels that that race should have stuck to dressmaking.
[Longstreth wrote these words in 1935.] To study their attempts and the
reasons for their failures is to realize a tragedy greater than any the
Greeks conceived. For the French pioneer and the French priest were
magnificent; it was the French politician holding the strings in Paris
who twitched the strivers back from success every time. With every
handicap, the French pioneer had staked out for France a good half of
the world for her empire. . . . With even a mediocre honesty among her
rulers and a sounder philosophy of colonization, there might never have
been room for a British Empire, not to mention a German threat. . . .
The ruins of Louisbourg are an epitome of a grand opportunity frittered
away.

“The French love that word impregnability. It comes tripplingly from the
tongue. Today they try feverishly, and fruitlessly, to surround
themselves with impregnable walls. It has always been so. Their idea of
conquest in America was to build a fortress so impregnable that other
nations would fall back from it in awe. Louisbourg was to be the
scarecrow in the vast field of New France. . . .

“Verrier’s sketch of it hangs in the Archives at Paris today, a most
optimistic picture of impregnability. The Dauphin Bastion protected the
principal approach to the town. Between it and the King’s Bastion ran a
curtain wall. Across the opening stood the Château St. Louis, four
stories high. The Citadel contained the apartments of the Governor and
the King’s Chapel, and the barracks. . . . The town’s houses were built
of wood, on stone foundations, and only eleven feet high, but the
hospital was an imposing structure. Then there were the King’s
storehouses and dwellings for the military officers and the merchants’
establishments. The merchants, as one can well believe, were well off.
Verrier’s picture shows, in addition to the billiard room, the
lighthouse, the fish stages and the quay, a miscellaneous fleet in the
harbor. This fleet, as the Parisians were often told, stood ready to
repulse the dastardly English, should they be fools enough to cross the
ocean for the purpose of damaging the impregnable place. . . .

“Construction had been begun in 1720, and of course was never fully
completed. . . . For twenty-five years the building went on, while the
royal treasurer kept totting up longer and longer columns. But what
odds? The fortress was the key to America. The destiny of six millions
of square miles depended on it. Fabulous wealth was sheltered behind
these cannon (which never seemed to be in place or have the correct
ammunition).

“And then a band of villagers, who had been prospering without benefit
of fortress, sailed over from the New England settlements and took the
key to America! . . . It is one of the astounding jokes of history.”[16]

It was in 1745, according to the _Nova Scotia Tour Book_, that New
England raised a force of artisans, farmers, fishermen, and laborers,
placed the force under the command of a merchant named Pepperell, and
forwarded the expedition to take Louisburg. And after a siege of
forty-nine days the fortress surrendered. But I find Longstreth’s style
better suited to telling the tale.

“People love to spend money,” he says, “especially other people’s. . . .
It was necessary, all agreed [in France], to get back Louisbourg. . . .
Might it not be a good idea to create an armada and recapture the place?
Armadas were large, costly, and unwieldy. But they were impressive. It
was easier to collect taxes for an armada. So an armada it was. . . .

“A hundred vessels were planned, and a splendid program was outlined for
the armada. First it was to take Louisbourg. Then Annapolis. Then it
should proceed to burn Boston. Then wipe up the New England coast. And
after that, the West Indies. . . . The French, who should never put foot
in boat, had more than their usual quota of hard luck. They were
becalmed. They were struck by lightning. They died of scurvy. They died
of collision. They died of this and that. . . . And so Boston was not
burned, nor Annapolis annihilated, nor the West Indies ravaged. And
Louisbourg was not recaptured.

“So the English handed it back!”[17]

However, in 1758 the stronghold finally surrendered once more to a
British expedition consisting of a fleet under Admiral Boscawen and land
forces under Major General Amherst and Brigadier General Wolfe. This
time it was torn apart, stone by stone, until bastions and hospitals and
barracks and storehouses were level with the ground.

“Turf, turf, turf covers all!” says Frederic Cozzens in _Acadia; or, A
Month with the Blue Noses_. And to him we’ll give the last word. “The
gloomiest spectacle the sight of man can dwell upon is the desolate, but
once populous, abode of humanity. Egypt itself is cheerful compared with
Louisburgh!”

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Cabot Trail is a circular motor road that outlines the most eastward
projection of land in the Dominion of Canada. This northern claw points
directly into the strait of Belle Isle where that strip of water cuts
between Newfoundland and Labrador, and at its tip—as a star sapphire in
its solitaire setting—lies Cape Breton Highlands National Park, through
which the Cabot Trail makes its fascinating way.

The Trail begins and ends in Baddeck. It winds first through the valleys
of the Baddeck and Middle rivers, and then down through broad intervales
of the Margaree. From Margaree Forks to Margaree Harbour the road
follows the river closely, keeping in sight the meadows on either side
of this still valley, as well as every salmon pool and intervening
stretch of still water. At noon the stands of hardwood along the shore
alternate rhythmically with reaches of sunshine that net the gravel on
the river bottom. At dawn or twilight the small rapids break loudly in
the half-darkness. Still pools lie where the river dams itself at bends,
with the current barely perceptible through their hearts; here trout and
salmon hide from their enemies in daytime, and from these pools they
issue to feed at dawn and dusk. In some of them they cast their spawn.

Cheticamp is an Acadian fishing village sprawling bare on wind-blown
rocks. It is filled with the odors of brine and seaweed and codlivers
gathered into pails by deft fingers as the fish are cleaned. Behind the
doors of its paintless houses are made the most exquisite hand-hooked
rugs in all the continent. Through the winter these Acadian women thread
the wool taken from their own sheep into patterns and color schemes
given them by Miss Lillian Burke, the New York designer. And in the
summer the best of their output can be found on sale in Baddeck at the
shop of the Cape Breton Home Industries. Other rugs made to order by
these women have reached the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the
drawing room of a mansion in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the homes of
countless wealthy and discriminating Americans.

Beyond Cheticamp the road leaves pastural charms behind and begins its
diapason of dramatic harmonies . . . over the edge of Cap Rouge, down to
Pleasant Bay, across McKenzie and French Mountains, to the Aspy River
and Cape North. Then the road starts back to find Neil’s Harbour on the
eastern shore of the peninsula; drops down to Ingonish and the spacious
bay cut in two by the spike of Middle Head, where one of the loveliest
resorts in Canada has recently been built. Finally the road crawls up
the back of Cape Smokey to present one more superb view of ocean and
land at a point where the two unite with a consummate sense of drama.
And after that the pastural mood returns. St. Ann’s Bay is reached and
surrounded, the main highway is met and followed at Ross Ferry, and
Baddeck lies only a few miles beyond.

[Illustration: _Nova Scotia Bureau of Information_

Margaree Valley, Cape Breton]

From beginning to end the entire length of the Cabot Trail is less than
a hundred and ninety miles. To Americans this sounds like an afternoon’s
run (in the days when rubber was a commodity we thought was grown in
garages); and each summer hundreds into thousands of us skimmed around
the Trail in a day, never guessing the smallest portion of what we
missed by such speed. There’s no need to belabor the subject now. But
for the guidance of future generations who may find themselves tearing
over the earth’s surface on wheels shod with a substance we probably
have yet to hear about . . . remember the Cabot Trail, to keep it
unspoiled. Only small signs along the road point to places that have no
wish to advertise themselves; and because flamboyant arrows are absent
to force a decision, many of us were in the habit of following the main
trail without a thought as to what those minor roads might have in
store. So the real life of this part of the world too often remained
hidden from our eyes.

Baddeck itself relies on scenery rather than man-made objects for its
claim to the traveler’s attention. Of all its pleasant aspects, however,
I like best the road that leads upward beneath a continuing arch of very
old trees to the summit of Alexander Graham Bell’s “beautiful hill,”
which he called by its Gaelic name of _Beinn Bhreagh_. Here he lived six
months at a stretch for many years with his deaf wife, whom he attended
devotedly, and here they lie together on the very brow of the hill. A
small tablet reveals the fact that they died within five months of each
other.

The hill itself and the road that winds up and around it are still the
property of Bell’s two daughters, but they are generous in allowing
those who love this spot to visit it at will. Of all the things you may
see in Cape Breton this is one of the last you are likely to forget, for
spread out below is the heart of this land—the shimmering waters of the
Bras d’Or Lakes adorned with verdant islands, holding until the last
possible moment of each day the warm colors of a disappearing sun.

-----

[13] John Macnair Reid, “The Gael at Home,” in _The Christian Science
Monitor_, December 22, 1941.

[14] Dorothy Duncan, _Here’s to Canada_. Harper and Brothers (1941).

[15] Frederick William Wallace, _Wooden Ships and Iron Men_. Hodder &
Stoughton.

[16] T. Morris Longstreth, _To Nova Scotia_. Appleton-Century.

[17] _Ibid._




                               _EPILOGUE_


The mail boat _Eleutherian_ slipped around the point where McLean’s farm
slopes down to touch the waters of the lake and caught sight of the
white lighthouse off the harbor of Baddeck. By the time she had reached
the channel between the island and the town three modest blasts had been
given by her whistle, and I could see the old white house set back
behind its hedges of hawthorn and rowan trees.

Visitors from the hotels were strolling slowly under the low-hanging
beeches on their way to the post office for the mail, and village
loafers with caps pulled low over tousled hair had already begun to
assemble before the general store across the way. No one had come to the
wharf to meet me because none of them knew I was on the way. It took
only a few moments to reach the road, pass the bank, pass the White
Store, and say hello in answer to friendly smiles, skirt the junk pile
where the old garage had burned to the ground, and then find myself on
the home stretch.

Bats were swooping low over the drive when I cut across the lawn, and
then suddenly the open arms of his sister and mother were enfolding me
as rapid explanations were made. Himself was off fishing alone at this
hour of the evening, as I was sure he would be. Within ten minutes I was
driving the car over the Baddeck River bridge and then around the sharp
turn and onto the dusty road that led to MacRae’s farm. The same black
shepherd dog greeted me with a respectful growl, and the same cats had
produced another litter of kittens. I closed the heavy timber gate
behind me and walked through the farmyard and on to the river beyond.

Fireflies were making a pattern of light-points in the alder scrub in
the hollow beyond the barn, but the sky was still holding jealously its
last pink glow from the late sun. My feet went quietly across the
squashy bottoms where Farmer MacRae’s cows grazed and along the path
that pushed its way through a birch thicket. When a horse raised his
head to peer at me from the shelter of the copse where he had been
meditating, I realized I had been almost running, and then I slowed down
and walked carefully over the springy turf until I reached the willows
that bordered the riverbank.

I stood there quietly. Swallows were dipping and rising soundlessly; a
cowbell tinkled rhythmically from the other side of the river, far away;
pickerelweed and meadowsweet were still blooming in patches at my feet;
and the pungent odor of alders wet with dew was everywhere. I must wait
here because I had no boots for crossing the rush of water that divided
this bank of the river from the gravel island in the center of the
stream. Of the three pools he liked best, two were out of sight around a
bend. I sat down beneath the willows and waited.

Almost imperceptibly the light waned. When the pinkish glow disappeared
a translucent aquamarine sky took its place. If he didn’t come soon,
sluicing through the small rapids quietly as he threw the line in
graceful arcs over the surface of the water, it would be quite dark and
I would know when he had reeled in his line only by the glow of the
flashlight he always carried to guide him home.

Then I heard the water gurgling just a trifle louder as it rushed past
his high rubber boots. The net hung from his hip and the creel on his
back might be full of sea trout with bright silver bellies and firm pink
meat on their bones, or it might be empty. It didn’t matter: angling was
a matter of the soul, not of food for lunch. The charm and mystery of
this stream lay for him in the fact that it was only a few miles from
salt water, and here he could be quite alone but not lonely. His line
played along the edge of the current. Had I been dressed to cross the
river, I should still have waited until he gave evidence of being ready
to give up for the night.

The noise of the river was utterly soothing, for it sighed as it slid
around a fallen log at my feet. The deepening dusk was making his figure
merge with the shadows on the far bank; but slowly he moved nearer, for
eventually he must return by the path where I sat. A deer stepped into
the water not a hundred feet from me. He raised his head to watch it,
and the deer returned his gaze but went on drinking. There was a sudden
snapping flash as a fish broke water and the deer was gone. His line
made an arc again with a faint whir that I could hear now.

A hawk slipped out of the trees and crossed the river silently in the
last residual gleam of light on the water’s surface. He glanced up
again, and then he saw me. There wasn’t a sound, anywhere, except for
the rushing water. It was too dark to see his eyes, but I knew how they
must be. We were together again, two parts of a whole. In a few moments
we should be returning home together, through the meadows saturated with
dew, and it would be hard to distinguish the lights of farmhouses from
fireflies flickering through the standing crops.


                                ROUTE 4

    _Port Hawkesbury_ . . . population 1,011. A Government
    Information Bureau is located near the ferry wharf.

    _Cleveland_ . . . a lumbering community named in honor of a
    president of the United States.

    _Grand Anse_ . . . a road on the right leads from here to Isle
    Madame, twelve miles away. The people on this island, which is
    separated from the mainland by a bridge, are mostly Acadians.
    Arichat, its chief town, is a “quaint” fishing village.

    _St. Peter’s_ . . . once an important French fishing and trading
    post. From here the road—one of the finest in the
    province—traces the shore of the Bras d’Or Lakes, which cover
    an area of four hundred square miles.

    _Sydney_ . . . population 23,100. Situated on one of the finest
    harbors in North America. Here, again, is a city built on a
    peninsula, facing the harbor to a line of hills beyond. The
    first settlers were Loyalists from New York, and they were
    followed in the beginning of the nineteenth century by Scotsmen
    from the Highlands. This is the site of the Dominion Steel and
    Coal Company, commonly called “Dosco.” It is said to be the
    largest self-contained steel plant in America, with a variety of
    subsidiary industries in the vicinity.

    _Isle Royale._

    _Louisburg_ . . . population 1,000. Faces a harbor which opens
    upon the Atlantic. The port is a famous base for the
    swordfishing fleet which has established Atlantic and North
    Atlantic records for broadbill swordfish taken by rod and line.
    Visitors may be taken out to watch the commercial fishermen at
    work. They bring in nearly two million pounds of swordfish in a
    year.

    _New Waterford_ . . . population 7,745. A coal-mining center.

    _Reserve Mines_ . . . off Route 4, nine miles from Sydney.

    _Glace Bay_ . . . twelve and a half miles off Route 4 from
    Sydney. Population 20,700, covering an area of 6,400 acres. Five
    collieries operate within the two limits. Number 1B is said to
    have the most modern equipment of any coal mine in the world;
    and No. 2 is the largest producing mine in Canada, with a record
    production of 5,300 tons in one day. Coal production in the
    entire district totals five million tons annually. The area of
    available coal in the county is officially estimated at 512
    square miles, containing six seams which run from three to
    twelve feet in thickness. Ten thousand men are employed in the
    collieries alone.

    This is also a swordfishing port. Sport fishing for tuna is
    becoming increasingly popular here, and the port holds the North
    American record for swordfish angling.

    In the near vicinity Marconi sent his first wireless message
    across the Atlantic more than a quarter of a century ago, and
    the largest ship-sending wireless station in Canada is still
    located here.


                                ROUTE 5

    _Sydney_ . . . this road is paved from Sydney to Little Bras
    d’Or.

    _North Sydney_ . . . population 6,140. Seems only an extension
    of the larger city, as it follows the curve of the harbor. A
    freight and passenger steamer sails three times a week to Port
    Aux Basque, Newfoundland, connecting with a train for St.
    John’s. Besides a sizable fishing fleet, the industries of the
    town include coal mining, marine railway, machine shops, stove
    foundry, fish packing, fish-oil refining, cold storage, and coal
    shipping piers.

    _Little Bras d’Or_ . . . a bridge is crossed here which spans a
    narrow arm of the sea connecting the Bras d’Or Lakes with the
    ocean.

    _Boularderie Island_ . . . the road winds across the island,
    making some hundred and twenty-six full curves in its course.
    (I’ve counted them more than once.) The island is about thirty
    miles long and six miles wide, containing some of the best soil
    in Cape Breton.

    _Big Bras d’Or_ . . . a farmland district. Water on right is
    another arm of the sea which reaches into the Bras d’Or Lakes.

    _Ross Ferry_ . . . this connects the road on the island with the
    road to Baddeck, and maintains a twenty-four-hour service.

    _Baddeck_ . . . aside from the summer homes of well-known men
    which are located here, the village is famous chiefly as the
    scene of the building and flight of the first flying machine in
    the British Empire. Milling frolics held at intervals throughout
    the summer afford visitors an opportunity to hear Gaelic songs
    and observe some of the old Highland customs.

    _Whycocomagh_ . . . twenty-five miles beyond Baddeck along the
    shore of the lake, this is a retreat surrounded by mountains and
    deep glens. Until recently sermons in the old Presbyterian
    Church here were preached both in English and in Gaelic.

    _Nyanza_ . . . a Micmac Indian reserve.

    _Inverness_ . . . population 2,900. A coal-mining center.

    _Judique_ . . . a district including five villages of
    approximately the same name, each with qualifying adjective.
    This is, in the words of the _Tour Book_, “one of the
    progressive rural communities of Cape Breton.”

    _Port Hastings_ . . . the road from Whycocomagh and Baddeck
    enters here on its way to Port Hawkesbury and the Strait of
    Canso. Across the Strait may be seen Cape Porcupine.

[Illustration: _Mary Van Nest_

A portion of the famous Cabot Trail in Cape Breton]


                            THE CABOT TRAIL

    _Baddeck_ . . . measurement of the Trail begins officially in
    front of the Court House. Proceed toward Margaree Forks on Route
    5.

    _Hunter’s Mountain_ and _Middle River_ . . . farming districts.

    _Margaree Valley_ . . . there are several villages which use the
    name of this lovely river. At _Margaree Forks_ the Cabot Trail
    goes forward, away from the road sharp left to Inverness.

    _Duck Cove Inn_ at Margaree Harbour.

    _St. Joseph DuMoine_ . . . fishing and farming are the
    industries here of the Acadian descendants of the district.
    Large limestone deposits may be seen at the base of the
    mountains. There are also extensive cranberry bogs and excellent
    oyster beds in this neighborhood.

    _Grand Etang_ . . . a co-operative lobster-canning plant is
    maintained here by the fishermen of the district.

    _Cheticamp_ . . . the gypsum quarries in the neighborhood employ
    some hundred men and products of the quarries are shipped to the
    United States. The only building in the vicinity of outstanding
    dimension is the Roman Catholic Church, which is open daily to
    visitors.

    _Acadian Inn._

    _Pleasant Bay_ . . . until 1927 there was no way to reach this
    village except by water or a narrow footpath over the highest
    mountains in the Maritime Provinces. The inhabitants are chiefly
    of Scottish and English descent, living by fishing in the waters
    of the Gulf—where they find an abundance of herring, cod,
    haddock, halibut, salmon, mackerel, and lobster.

    _MacDonald’s_ at Cape North.

    _Neil’s Harbour_ . . . named for its settler, Neil MacLennan.
    Visitors will be taken swordfishing from this port from about
    the end of July until the first week in September. Seven miles
    to the west there is a considerable area of feldspar and mica
    beds, and the contrasting colors they present are worth a trip
    to see.

    _North Ingonish_ . . . the wide, sandy beach here is the best in
    Cape Breton, good trout fishing may be found in the
    neighborhood, and artists love the place.

    _Keltic Lodge_ at Ingonish Beach.

    _South Ingonish_ . . . one of the finest golf courses in eastern
    Canada has been constructed on beautiful terrain near Middle
    Head, the promontory which runs through the center of the harbor
    to separate the two villages. A modern bathhouse and tennis
    courts have also been added to the accommodations offered by
    Keltic Lodge, situated on Middle Head.

    _Wreck Cove_ and _Briton Cove_ . . . infinitesimal fishing
    villages beyond Cape Smokey, a massive headland which towers a
    thousand feet above the sea.

    _Englishtown_ . . . the grave of Giant McAskill may be found
    here in a little cemetery, marked unobtrusively but plainly.
    This was the far-famed man whose height was seven feet, nine
    inches and whose weight was 425 pounds. He was remarkably well
    proportioned. For a number of years—he was born in 1825 and
    died at the age of thirty-eight—he traveled through the United
    States and other countries with Tom Thumb. At the request of
    Queen Victoria, he appeared in audience before her.

    _South Gut St. Ann_ . . . settled by Highland Scots. The only
    Gaelic school in North America is located in the vicinity;
    Gaelic is taught throughout the summer months and visitors may
    attend open sessions each day.

    _Baddeck_ . . . and here ends the Cabot Trail, as it started, in
    front of the Court House, where old men sit on benches day after
    day in the sun of noon.




                             _BIBLIOGRAPHY_


    _Acadia; or, A Month with the Blue Noses_, Frederic S. Cozzens.
    New York: Derby & Jackson, 1859.

    _The Acadian Exiles_, Arthur G. Doughty. (_Chronicles of Canada
    Series_). Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1915.

    _Barometer Rising_, Hugh MacLennan. New York: Duell, Sloan and
    Pearce, Inc., 1941.

    _The Book of Ultima Thule_, Archibald MacMechan. Toronto:
    McClelland and Stewart, 1927.

    _Builders of Nova Scotia_, Sir J. G. Bourinot. Toronto: The
    Copp-Clark Co., Ltd., 1900.

    _Captain Kidd’s Gold._, Edwin Teale. _Popular Science Monthly_,
    April, May, June, 1939.

    _The Clipper Ship Era_, Arthur H. Clark. New York: G. P.
    Putnam’s Sons, 1911.

    _Description and Natural History of Acadia_, Nicholas Denys,
    translated and edited by William F. Ganong. Toronto: The
    Champlain Society, 1908.

    _Down in Nova Scotia_, Clara Dennis. Toronto: The Ryerson Press,
    1934.

    _Gravestones of Acadie_, William Inglis Morse. London: A. Smith
    & Company, 1929.

    _The Great Fortress_, William Wood. (_Chronicles of Canada
    Series_). Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1915.

    _Here’s to Canada_, Dorothy Duncan. New York: Harper & Brothers,
    1941. Toronto: Musson Book Co.

    _A History of Nova Scotia_, Beamish Murdoch. Halifax: James
    Barnes Company, 1865.

    _In the Wake of the Wind-Ships_, Frederick William Wallace.
    Toronto: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1927.

    _The Lord Helps Those_ . . . , Bertram B. Fowler. New York: The
    Vanguard Press, 1938.

    _The Maritimes and Canada before Confederation_, William Menzies
    Whitelaw. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1934.

    _Masters of Their Own Destiny_, M. M. Coady. New York and
    London: Harper & Brothers, 1939.

    _More about Nova Scotia_, Clara Dennis. Toronto: The Ryerson
    Press, 1937.

    _The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia_, John Bartlett Brebner. New
    York: Columbia University Press, 1937.

    _New England’s Outpost_, John Bartlett Brebner. New York:
    Columbia University Press, 1939.

    _New Harvestings_, Ethel Hume Bennett. Toronto: The Macmillan
    Company of Canada Limited, 1938.

    _Nova Scotia_, Beckles Willson. London: Constable & Company,
    1912.

    _Nova Scotia at Work_, H. P. Jenkins. Toronto: The Ryerson
    Press, 1938.

    _Nova Scotia Tour Book._ Halifax: Bureau of Information and
    Publicity, 1941.

    _Old Province Tales_, Archibald MacMechan. Toronto: McClelland &
    Stewart, 1924.

    _Quietly My Captain Waits_, Evelyn Eaton. New York: Harper &
    Brothers, 1940.

    _Red Snow on Grand Pré_, Archibald MacMechan. Toronto:
    McClelland & Stewart, 1931.

    _Restless Are the Sails_, Evelyn Eaton. New York: Harper &
    Brothers, 1941.

    _Sam Slick, the Clockmaker_, Thomas Chandler Haliburton.
    Toronto: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1835.

    _Through Evangeline’s Country_, Jeannette A. Grant. Boston:
    Joseph Knight Company, 1894.

    _To Nova Scotia_, T. Morris Longstreth. New York: D.
    Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1935. Toronto: The Ryerson
    Press, 1935.

    _The Tribune of Nova Scotia_, William Lawson Grant. (_Chronicles
    of Canada Series._) Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1915.

    _The United Empire Loyalists_, W. Stewart Wallace. (_Chronicles
    of Canada Series._) Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1915.

    _Where to Stay in Nova Scotia._ Halifax: Bureau of Information
    and Publicity, 1941.

    _Wooden Ships and Iron Men_, Frederick William Wallace. London
    and Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1924.




                                _INDEX_


_Acadia: or, A Month with the Blue Noses_, 115-117, 254

Acadia University, 44

Acadians, expulsion of, 34-35, 45

Adult education, 221-226

Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 33

Alden, John and Priscilla, 43

Alexander, Sir William, 27

All Saints’ Cathedral, Halifax, 123

America
  colonization of, 23, 24, 252
  immigration to, 168

Americans in Nova Scotia, 132

Amherst, N.S., 49, 71

Amherst, Baron Jeffrey, 71

Annapolis Royal, 31, 42

Annapolis Valley, 21, 31-32, 35-36

Antigonish, 212, 214, 220-226, 229

Antigonish Movement, 221-226, 247

Argall, Samuel, 26

Argyle, 157

Arichat, 186, 259

Ashburn Golf Course, Halifax, 122

Aspé (Aspy), 186

Aylesford, 43


Baddeck, 186, 256, 261, 262, 263

Banking act established under Borden, 62

Barney’s River, 229

_Barometer Rising_, 124

Barrington Head, 149, 156

Barrington Passage, 156

Bass River, 50

Bear River, 41-42

Beauséjour, Fort, 31

Bedford, 46

Bedford Basin, 89, 92-93

Beech Hill, 153

Bell, Alexander Graham, 256

Belliveau Cove, 41

Big Bras d’Or, 261

Birchtown, 145, 156

Black Ball line, 166

Black Duck Cove, 207

Blomidon, Cape, 38, 49

Blue Rocks, 154

Blueberries, 149

_Bluenose_, 138

Bluenose, explanation of nickname, 187

Borden, Robert Laird, 60-64

Boscawen, Admiral, 254

Boularderie Island, 186, 231, 261

Boylston, 206

Bras d’Or, 186, 261

Brebner, J. B., 56, 58, 81, 144

Bridgetown, 42-43

Bridgewater, 154-155

Briton Cove, 263

Brooklyn, N.S., 142, 155

Burke, Lillian, 255


Cabot, John and Sebastian, 22

Cabot Trail, 254-256, 262-263

_Calpurga_, 171

Canada
  progress of, 61-63
  victim of false chroniclers, 3

Canadian Corps in World War I, 62

_Canadian Magazine_, 84

Canal across Nova Scotia, 180

Canning, N.S., 44

Canso, 186, 206

Cape Breton, 186, 212, 231-236, 239-241, 244-256

Cape Breton Highlands National Park, 254-255

Cape Breton Home Industries, 255

Cape Sable Island, 152

Captain Kidd’s treasure, search for, 133-137

_Captains Courageous_, 139

Carleton, Sir Guy, 64

Champlain, Samuel de, 25-26

Charles I of England, 28

Chamisay, Charles de, 28-29

Chebogue Point, 157

Chebucto Bay, 88

Chebucto Head, 130

Chester, 131-133, 154

Cheticamp, 255, 262

Chignecto Isthmus, 8

Childs, Frederick, 135

China trade, 147

_Christian Science Monitor_, 244 n.

Christmas in Halifax, 107-114

Church Point, 41

Churchill-Roosevelt Atlantic meeting, 148-149

Citadel Hill, Halifax, 116, 122

Civil War, 148

Clans, Scottish, 211-212, 220, 244

Clare, district of, 17-46

Clementsport, 42

Cleveland, N.S., 259

Clipper ships, 162-165, 166-167, 171
  the men who manned them, 167-170

Coady, Dr. M. M., 222-226

Cobb, Irvin, 84

Cobequid Hills, 48

Colchester County, 47, 209

Colonization of America, 23-24, 252

Columbus, Christopher, 22, 24

Comeauville, 19

Communism in the 16th century, 24

Conquerall, 142

Constantinople, fall of, 24

Contrasts of Nova Scotia, 8-9

Conversion of Indians to Catholic faith, 24, 30

Cook, Captain James, 123

Co-operative enterprises, 225, 247-248

Cornwallis, Honorable Edward, 116

Counterreformation, 24

Country Harbour, 190-191

_County of Pictou_, 174

Covenanters, Church of the, in Grand Pré, 45

Cozzens, Frederic, 115, 116, 254

Credit unions, 225

Cromwell, Oliver, 30

Cumberland County, 47, 209
  resort area of, 226-227

Cunard brothers, 166

Currier & McKay, 146

Customs and manners, Nova Scotian, 182-184


Dalhousie University, 87, 89, 99-100, 116, 123

Dartmouth, 89, 179-180, 203

De Monts, Sieur, 25

Debert, 73

Dennis, Clara, 73, 151

Depopulation of Nova Scotia, 239

Depression, in America, 53

DeWolfe, Elsie, 44

Dickens, Charles, 114

Digby, 9, 10, 20-22, 41, 65

Discipline on board sailing ships, 167-168, 174

Divisions of Nova Scotia, 9

Dockyard, Halifax, 123

Dominion Steel and Coal Company, 259-260

Donne, John, 196

Dos Passos, John, 53

Dover, 207

_Down in Nova Scotia_, 151


Eastern Steamship Lines, 177

Economic group action, 223

Economy, N.S., 50, 72-73

Ecum Secum Bridge, 204-205

Education, adult, 221-226

England in the New World, 25, 26-34

English
  and French, bitterness between, 33
  in Nova Scotia, 27-28, 30-36

Englishmen, types of, in Nova Scotia, 54-66

Englishtown, 263

Entering Nova Scotia, ways of, 9-10

Europe before the 16th century, 23-24

_Evangeline_, 34

Evangeline Memorial Park in Grand Pré, 44

Extension courses for adult education, 73, 221-226


Fairview, 74

Family Compact, 101

Fanshawe, Admiral, 115

Farmers, 57-60

Fisher, Lord Jackie, 121

Fishing, 22, 41, 139, 140, 142, 152, 153, 181, 227, 260, 263

_Flying Cloud_, 147

Fort Anne Historic Park, in Annapolis Royal, 42

Founding of Nova Scotia, 22-23, 25-26

Franklin, Benjamin, 60

Fraser’s Mills, 205-206

French
  and English, bitterness between, 33
  in the New World, 25
  in Nova Scotia, 26-36, 252-254

French and Indian Wars, 33

Fuller, Charles, 44

Fundy, Bay of, 7-8, 20, 45, 180, 185

Fur trade, 25, 26


Gabarus Bay, 186

“Gael at Home, The,” 244 n.

Gallatin, Albert, 135

Geographical position of Nova Scotia, 7

George, Cape, 229

George, Lloyd, _see_ Lloyd George

George I of England, 137

George’s Island, 89

Germany and Canada in World War I, 62

_Gertrude L. Thibaud_, 138

Glace Bay, 247, 260

Glenholme, 50

Gold
  discovery of, in California and Australia, 166-167
  discovery of, in Nova Scotia, 181, 201-202

Goldenville, 201-202, 205

Gorsebrook Golf Club, Halifax, 122

Government Housing Commission, 248

Grand Anse, 259

Grand Banks, 139-140

Grand Etang, 262

Grand Lake, 14

Grand Pré, 44-45

Grant, William Lawson, 103 n.

Granville, 25

_Great Republic_, 147

Great Village, 50

Green Hill Lookoff, 228

Grosses Coques, 19, 41

Guysborough County, 201-207


Haliburton, Andrew, 83

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 45, 83-87, 101

Haliburton, William, son of Andrew, 83

Haliburton Memorial Museum in Windsor, 45

Halifax, 10, 50, 76, 80-81, 82, 88-100, 103-124, 153
  Christmas in, 107-114
  founding of, 55-57, 116-117
  public buildings in, 99-100
  Saturdays in, 104-105
  social order in, 119
  in wartime, 93-96, 121
  in winter, 106

Halifax _Chronicle_, 224

Halifax explosion in World War I, 94, 124

Hall, William, 45

Hantsport, 45

Head of Jeddore, 204

Hebron, 40

Henry IV of France, 22

_Here’s to Canada_, 244 n.

Herring Cove, 150

Highlanders in Nova Scotia, 27, 141-142, 172, 211-213, 216, 220, 232,
  237-239
  and the English, 213

History
  early, of Nova Scotia, 57-60, 80-83, 100-101, 211-212, 232
  European, before the 16th century, 23-24
  of Halifax, 55-57, 119-121
  of Mahone, 154
  of Shelburne, 143-145
  of Yarmouth, 160-162

Hooked rugs, 255

Housing, co-operative, 247-248

Howe, Joseph, 85, 100-103, 124

Hubbards, 153-154

Hydrostone District, Halifax, 124


Imperoyal, 89

_In the Wake of the Windships_, 163

Indians, 23, 26, 42, 186

Inglis, Reverend Charles, 43

Ingramport, 153

Insularity of Nova Scotia, 4, 7

Insurance on shipping, 170-171

Inverness, 261

Italy Cross, 142


James I of England, 27, 28

Jenner, Doctor, 197-200

Joggins, 71-72

Jordan Bay, 142

_Joshua Bates_, 147

_Journalist’s Wife_, 238

Judique, 261


Kent, Duke of (Victoria’s father), 74, 120

Kentville, 43-44

Kidd, Captain William, 133-134, 135, 136

King’s College, Windsor, 83, 87

Kings County, 209


La Tour, Charles de Saint-Etienne de, 26-30

La Tour, Madame, 29

Labor-management troubles, 246-247

Labrador, 48

Land boom, 60

Lang, Gordon Cosmo, 149

Lang, Reverend Gavin, 149

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 61

Lawrence, Governor, 56

Lawrence, William, 51

Leacock, Stephen, 236

League of Nations, 62

Legations, Canadian, establishment of, 63

Le Marchant, Sir John Gaspard, 115, 117

_Lightning_, 147

Lingan Bay, 186

Liscomb, 205

Little Bras d’Or, 261

Little Port Hebert, 142

Liverpool, N.S., 142, 150, 155

Lloyd George, 62

Lochaber, 205

Logan, J. D., 84

Longfellow, 34, 44

Longstreth, T. Morris, 45, 252, 253 n.

Lookoff, The, 44

_Louisbourg: From Its Foundation to Its Fall_, 1713-1758, 252

Louisburg, 31, 33, 55, 186, 252-254, 260

Lower Granville, 42

Lowlanders, 216

Loyalist Church of St. Edward, Clementsport, 42

Loyalists, Empire, 64-65, 80, 143-144

Lumbering, 22, 181, 192

Lunenburg, 137-139, 140-142, 150, 154


Mahone Bay, 131, 154

Maitland, 74

Malagash, 227

Margaree Valley, 262

Maritime Tennis Tournament, 36-37

Maroon Hall, 204

Marshlands, 47-48

_Masters of Their Own Destiny_, 222, 223 n., 226 n.

_Mayflower_ compact, 142

Macdonald, Sir John, 103

MacGregor, Mr., 233-236

McAskill, Giant, 263

McKay, Donald, 146-148

McKay, Lauchlin, 147

McKay shipyards, 147-148, 172

McKenzie, Captain George, 172-175

McLennan, Senator, 252

McLeod, Reverend Norman, 250-251

McNab’s Island, 89

McNutt’s Island, 156

Merchant marine, Canadian, 175-176

Mersey Paper Company, 155

Mersey River, 155

Meteghan, 41

Mexico, 3

Middle River Point, 251

Milford Haven, 206

Minas Basin, 31-32, 38, 44, 50

Mines, Les, 31-32, 186

Mining, 246-247, 260

Mira, 186

Monastery, 206, 229

_Mont Blanc_ and _Imo_, collision of, 124

Moose River gold mine, tragedy at, 181-182

_More about Nova Scotia_, 73

Moser River, 204

Mowrer, Lillian, 238

Mud Island, 152

Mulgrave, 229-230

Musquodoboit Harbour, 204


Names
  family, 140-141, 189, 212
  place, 182, 185-189

_Nausett_, 148

Naval college in Halifax, 175

Needham, Fort, 124

Neil’s Harbour, 263

_Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, The_, 56 n., 58 n., 81, 144

Neutrality, Nova Scotian, in the American Revolution, 60, 80-81

New Brunswick border, 71

New Glasgow, 220, 228-223

New Waterford, 260

Newcomb, Simon, 50, 227

Nicknames, 244-245

North Ingonish, 263

North Mountain, 31, 32

North Sydney, 260-261

Northwest Arm, Halifax, 122

Norwegian Naval Service, 154

Nova Scotia Agricultural College, 73

Nova Scotia Normal College, 73

_Nova Scotia Tour Book_, 187, 253, 261

_Nova Scotian_, 100, 102

Nyanza, 261


Oak Island, 133-137

Ocean Limited, 51

Oil, discovery of, in Pennsylvania, 170

Old Meeting House, in Barrington Head, 149

Otis, Abigail, wife of Andrew Haliburton, 83

Otis, Susanna, wife of William Haliburton, 83

“Outports,” 149-150

Ovens, The, 154


Parcel-post system, inauguration of, 62

Parrsboro, 72

Pasha, Buckman, 45

Peggy’s Cove, 130-131, 150, 153

_Pennland_, 10, 11, 16

People of Nova Scotia, qualities of, 4, 15-16, 17, 33, 54-66, 79, 85, 91,
  98-99, 118, 138, 140-141, 184, 232-239

Pictou Academy, 213

Pictou County, 47, 209-230

Pictou town, 213-214, 228

Piracy, 32, 82

Place names, _see_ Names, place

Pleasant Bay, 262

Point Pleasant Park, Halifax, 92, 104, 122

Popular party, 102

_Popular Science Monthly_, 135

_Porgy and Bess_, 3

Port Hastings, 262

Port Hawkesbury, 259

Port Maitland, 40

Port Mouton, 155-156

Port Royal, 25, 27, 30-31

Portuguese Cove, road to, 126-131

_Potomac_, U. S. S., 148

Poutrincourt, Baron, 25

Preston, 204

Pride, Nova Scotian, 66, 238, 239

Prince Edward Island, 209, 210

Prince’s Lodge, 74

Privateers, 81-82, 133, 187

Pronunciation, 188-189

Province House, Halifax, 124

Provincial Museum, Halifax, 123

Public buildings in Halifax, 99-100

Public Gardens, Halifax, 104-105, 122

Pubnico Head, 156-157

Pugwash, 227


Quakers in Nova Scotia, 180

Quebec, 25, 30, 55


Raids on Nova Scotia in American Revolution, 81-82

Rasily, governor of Nova Scotia, 28

Reformation, 24

Regimental smokers, 120

Reid, John Macnair, 244 n.

Reserve Mines, 247, 248, 260

Revolution
  American, 60, 80-82, 143
  threat of, in 16th century, 24

River John, 227-228

Roads in Nova Scotia, 8, 9, 48, 49, 76, 181

Roberts, Sir Charles G. D., 187

Robinson, Morris, 51

Rochdale plan, 225

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 135
  meeting of, with Churchill, 148-149

Ross Ferry, 261

Route 1, points of interest on, 40-46, 121-124, 176-177

Route 2, 71-74, 121-124

Route 3, 121-124, 153-158, 176-177

Route 4, 228-230, 259-260

Route 5, 260-262

Route 6, 226-228

Route 7, 121-124, 203-206

Route 16, 206-207

Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, 176

Royal Canadian Navy, 148

_Royal William_, 170

Ruggles, Brigadier General Timothy, 43

Rum industry, 80-81

Rum-running, 140

Russians in Sonora, 203


Sable Island, 150-152

Sailing, 89-90

Sailing competitions, 138

Sailing ships, 146-148, 162-165, 171, 173-174

Sailing-ship masters, 167-170

St. Ann’s Gut, 250, 263

St. Ann’s Harbour, 251

St. Bernard, 41

St. Francis Xavier University, 220-225

Saint John, 29

St. John’s Church in Lunenburg, 154

St. Joseph DuMoine, 262

St. Laurent, Julie, 74, 120

St. Margaret’s Bay, 130

St. Mary River, 195, 200-201

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Halifax, 123

St. Mary’s Church at Church Point, 41

St. Matthew’s Church, Halifax, 123

St. Paul’s Church, Halifax, 122-123

St. Peter’s, 259

_Sam Slick, the Clockmaker_, 45, 84, 85

Saulnierville, 41

Scallops, 21-22

Scotsmen, _see_ Highlanders in Nova Scotia

Scottish Catholics in Nova Scotia, 220

Seal Island, 152

Semi-precious stones, 72

Service men in Nova Scotia, 55-56, 119-120

Seven Years’ War, 33

Shag Harbour, 152

Shelburne, 65, 143-146, 148, 156, 186-187

Shelburne County, 209

Sherbrooke, 192-193, 205

Shinimicas, 227

Shipboard life, 10

Shipbuilding, 145-148, 161-162, 165-167, 172-173, 174

Shipping, 170-171

Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, 34

Shubenacadie, 74, 186

Slavery, 28, 145, 156

Smokey, Cape, 263

Snobbery, 119, 120

Social reform, 84

Society in Halifax, 82-83, 101-103, 119-121

Sonora, 202-203

South Ingonish, 263

South Mountain, 31

South Shore, 125-158

_Sovereign of the Seas_, 147

Spain and Portugal in the New World, 24

Springhill, 72

_Stag-Hound_, 147

Stairs, William, 175

Steamships, 170-171

Steel works, 246

Stellarton, 228

Stewiacke, 73

Stillwater, 205

Sunrise Trail, 210

Swordfishing, 260, 263

Sydney, 259-260


Table manners, 183

Tatamagouche, 227

Thom, Mt., 228

Thompkins, Father J. J., 222

Thompson, Dorothy, 3

Thrum Cap, 128

_Titanic_, sinking of, 74

_To Nova Scotia_, 45, 253 n., 254 n.

Tories in Nova Scotia, 64-66, 143-144

Tourist bureaus, 48

Tourist literature, 2

Tourist trade, 248-249

Tracadie, 229

Train, Enoch, 146-147

Training camps, 73

Transportation problems, 246, 247

_Tribune of Nova Scotia, The_, 103 n.

Truro, 73

Tuna fishing, 142, 152-153, 155

Tupper, Sir Charles, 50, 61

Tusket Islands, 152, 157

Twain, Mark, 84, 86


Uniacke, Mt., 45-46

United Empire Loyalists, _see_ Loyalists, Empire

United States
  attributes of, 54
  relations of Nova Scotia with, 51


Victoria Park, Truro, 73


Wallace, Frederick William, 163, 173, 174, 250, 252 n.

Wallace Village, 227

Walters, Captain Angus, 138

War, 175-176
  Canada in, 62-63
  effect of, on Nova Scotia, 19, 20, 93-96
  profits of, in American Revolution, 80, 81, 82

Ward, Artemus, 84

Washington, George, 64

Weather, 8

Wentworth, John (pseud.), 193-196, 198-200

West River Sheet Harbour, 204

Westphal, 203-204

Westville, 228

Whaling industry, 180

White Point Beach, 155

White Star line, 166

Whycocomagh, 249, 261

William III of England, 133

Willkie, Wendell, 3

Wilmot, 43

Wilson, Morris, 154

Windsor, 45, 82-83, 87

Witherspoon, John, 60

Wobamkek Beach Golf Club, 155

Wolfville, 36, 37, 44

_Wooden Ships and Iron Men_, 163-165, 173, 174, 252 n.

Wreck Cove, 263


Yankees in Nova Scotia, 57-60, 143-144, 160-162, 172

Yarmouth, 9, 65, 159-162, 170, 171, 176-177




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

Because of copyright considerations, a map of Nova Scotia by George
Annand (1890-1980) has been omitted from this etext. Instead a public
domain image has been added in its place.

Footnotes have been numbered sequentially throughout the ebook.

Illustrations have been relocated to contextual places in the ebook.

A cover which is placed in the public domain was created for this ebook.

  [The end of _Bluenose: A Portrait of Nova Scotia_ by Dorothy Duncan]