xt7rfj299f67 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7rfj299f67/data/mets.xml Towne, Charles Hanson, 1877-1949. 1923  books b92-263-31851780 English Century, : New York ; London : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Nova Scotia Description and travel. Ambling through Acadia  / by Charles Hanson Towne ; with drawings by W. Emerton Heitland. text Ambling through Acadia  / by Charles Hanson Towne ; with drawings by W. Emerton Heitland. 1923 2002 true xt7rfj299f67 section xt7rfj299f67 
















   AMBLING
THROUGH ACADIA

 









































   Little River-on St. Mary's Bay
You will see plenty of fishermen's huts

 




      AMBLING

THROUGH ACADIA


           BY
  CHARLES HANSON TOWNE



WITH DRAWINGS BY
W. EMERTON HEITLAND



New York & London
ThE CENTURY CO.
    Il 2 2



4



,", o', -

 















      Copyright, 1923, by
      THE CENTURY CO.

      Copyright, 1923, by
THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY



PRINTED IN U. S. A.

 





















            To
HERBERT AND GERTRUDE SHONK
      the Best of Friends

 This page in the original text is blank.

 
THE TRAMP THAT WALKED LIKE A KING



As we rode through Acadia upon a golden day,
  (Oh, white 'were all the apple-blooms, and blue the sky of
     spring!)
We spied a figure far ahead, say fifty rods away,
  With head erect and shoulders broad-yes, every inch a king.
A tall, majestic man he 'was, though shabby brown his suit,
  A ruler of the open road, a monarch of the land;
And something of the old lost world made farmer-lads salute
  This wonderful and regal form, with a scepter in his hand.

A scepter that 'was but a stick!-and yet he waved it there,
  As if proclaiming fields and streams his opulent domain.
He wore no crown upon his brow-his noble head was bare;
  Hle needed no accoutrement, nor any lordly train.
For he 'was every inch a king, and stately 'was his tread.
  (Oh, white were all the apple-trees, and blue the 'world's
      wide room!)
"He dreams of gorgeous palace halls, and princesses," we said.
  (The whole earth 'was his castle, filled with  marvelous
      perfume.)

I never sa'w a man who seemed more dignified than he;
  (Oh, thrones might crumble far a'way-but he remained a
      king!)
rind, as we passed him, 'we cried out, "Good day, your Majesty!"
  Whereat he turned and said, 'What ho!   What message do
     ye bring"
We could not smile. His regal mien caused us to envy him-
  A freeman if one ever lived, a monarch of the spring.
We thought of strutting sales-clerks in the cities gray and dim,
  And 'wished ihat they might see this tramp -who wandered
     like a king.

 

It was not pride-the false, cheap pride the little peolle wear;
  It was the gracious elegance that high-born courtiers know.
He had the manners of the French-yet English blood 'was there;
  His pace was somewhat ponderous, and beautifully slow.
Beyond us was a sunlit tot.zn-1his was the king's highway.
  "And may we give your Majesty a friendly lift" we said.
"I mueh prefer my garden walk. Dear commoners, good day"'
  He answered like the king he was-and bowed his kingly
      head.

We never saw that royal form in any later ride;
  No doubt he loitered far behind, on roadways of his own.
We loved his walk, but even more we loved his simple pride-
  In some remote and vanished time he sat upon a throne.
3ut now-oh, happier far his lot!-the freedom of the earth,
  And not the petty politics of some declining land
I think of him when spring comes back-this nan of happy birth,
  Who walks that road in Acadie, With a scepter in his hand!

 

              CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                PAGE
   I FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH . . .     3

   11 FROM YARMOUTH ON . . . . . . 23

 III WEYMOUTH, ST. MARY'S BAY, SANDY
       COVE, AND LITTLE RIVER . . . . 59

 IV\ DIOBY AND BEAR RIVER  . . . . . 8I

 V  To OuL PORT ROYAL . . . . . . 113

 VI BRIDGETOWN-AND   BEYOND   . . . . 129

 VII THE ORCIIARDS-AT LAST .    .45

VIII ROUND ABOUT WOLFVILLE AND GRANDPRE 153

IX  CORNWALL1S  V\ALLEY  FROM  LOOKOUT
       MOUNTAIN; SUNSET ON MINAS BASIN 191

  X  PARRSBORO AND FIVE ISLANDS . . . . 213

  XI BRAVE   LITTLE  HALIFAX; CHARMING
       CHESTER  .  . .  .  .  . .  .  . 229

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            ILLUSTRATIONS

Little River-on St. Mary's Bay . . . Frontispiece
                                             PAGE



The East River .
The Lighthouse on Blackwell's Island .
Yarmouth Harbor
A street in Yarmouth   .
Port Maitland
"A little fishing village bids you welcome"
Yarmouth fishermen .
A Weymouth street .
Campbell's Wharf-Weymouth North
`-;nnc1A Cnup



"A youngish man was painting the fence"
Digby-from "The Pines" .
Bear River
"One old skeleton of a boat still stands on the
    water's edge"
Our itinerary .
A load of apples .
The little boat f rom Bridgetown .
The Annapolis River .



     13
     ' 7
   . 27
   3I
    37
   . 43
. . 49

     67
. .  67
     '7T



75
87

97



I05

"17
123

'3'
I37

 
            ILLUSTRATIONS
                                          PAGE
The Covenanter's Church-Grand Pr6 .   .  . I59
Evangeline's Well .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  . 171
Pulpit of Grand Pr6 Church.  .  .  .  .  . I8I
"The Old Men of the Amethysts".   .        I99
The Harbor of Parrsboro.  .  .  .  .  .  . 2I5
The Wreck of the Seth Todd.  . .   .  .  . 221
The Arsenal-Halifax .   . .  .  .  .  .  . 231
"The enchanting little village of Chester" .. . 239
A Chester Doorway .  . .  .  .  .  .  .  . 243
The Shore-Chester .  . .  .  .  .  .  .  . 247

 







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44
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            1;
            '4







C IRAPTER..,. I

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AMBLING THROUGH
             ACADIA

             CHAPTER I

      FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH

I T was the apple-blossoms that started me.
   I had heard of them from many travelers,
read of them, seen pictures of them, and finally
I began to dream of them. Always my joy had
been vicarious. And then the day came when
I said to myself that I must see them with my
own eyes.
  Those apple-blossoms in the rich orchards of
Nova Scotia, I mean; those miles on miles of
miraculous trees in the Annapolis valley. One
would have thought, with a glorious memory of
the apple-orchards on Long Island and in Con-
necticut when May came dancing into the world,
that I had had enough of them for one season.
                    3

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



But the glimpses I had of these white earthly
-loud-drifts as I motored around New York with
gerif rous friends only caused me to be more de-
tcrmrined than ever to follow the spring north, to
ieve-se the usual habit of the swallows at the
end of summer and fly in the opposite direction
at a much earlier date, so that I might taste, for
once, the glamour and wonder of a long, long
spring.
  I remember a friend saying to me long ago:
"Just think! even if we live the allotted span
there can be but a few Aprils for us, at best.
So we ought to keep our eyes open when the
leaves begin to come, and miss no moment of
the rapture and rustle of spring."
  Sometimes it seems to me that I can hardly
wait for that time each year when grass ascends
and the first warmth begins to flood the world;
when in meadows lately covered with snow the
violets and primroses show their tiny faces, and
the boughs of all the trees seem suddenly to be
touched with a magic wand and break into green,
exultant life. But a little later, in the full tide
                      4

 

FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



of May, when our apple-orchards, drenched by
sun and rain, put on their vestments of white
splendor, I think the world is a place of clean
perfection, and I confess that the sense of earth's
loveliness almost breaks my heart.
  I have some friends on Long Island who have
transplanted two apple-trees to the terrace of their
house, so that guests, from their upper windows
on white May mornings, may look out and actu-
ally touch those gleaming boughs and drink in the
fragrance of them. When the petals finally fall,
while one is having tea on that same terrace, it
is as though a Danae shower of silver were drop-
ping, instead of gold, and the light rain makes a
fairy carpet that one scarcely dares to tread.
  Now, having had a plethora of these magical
boughs, I craved, even as a drunkard craves, one
more full cup of joy-as though a prohibition
of apple-blossoms were about to go into effect;
as indeed it may, if our stupid lawmakers do not
call a halt. And I say this in all seriousness;
for, since cider is made from apples, the fanatics
wishing to rid the world of a few roustabouts,
                       5

 
     AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA
you and I may one day be deprived of a portion
of the beauty of the earth! It is an appalling
thought; yet how are we to have complete pro-
hibition so long as Nature, in her infinite wis-
dom, goes on allowing apples to ripen and mellow
on lavish branches!
  I have often wondered, when we in the United
States plan our holidays, why it is that we do
not consider more that heavenly and limitless
district which lies directly north of us. There
are supreme advantages in a trip to Canada.
One finds himself, almost in the twinkling of an
eye, in an entirely different country, yet among
a people who speak the same language, who do
not require silly passports of us, and who, though
they insist, logically enough, upon engraving the
King of England's portrait upon their bills, fol-
low our monetary system and banking methods.
Our legal tender is interchangeable, and there is
no bother about exchange, and travelers' checks,
and learning to count anew on one's fingers, try-
ing to reconcile pence and shillings and pounds
with static American dollars. It is a great relief
                      6

 
FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



to one who, like myself, loathes mathematics and
the necessary bother of money. Then, too, the
Canadians possess an abundant supply of large
leisure. They have time to be polite, to say
good morning and good evening, to direct the
stranger on his way, to try to make him comfort-
able and happy and at home. I had a conduc-
tor assist me with my bags in a little town, as I
struggled into the parlor-car of his train.
Would that ever happen in my own country I
cannot recall such an experience.
  But more to be taken into consideration is the
fact that the climate of Canada is matchless in
summer. If one is going westward, to the won-
derful country around the much-advertised Banff
and Lake Louise, it would be well to break the
long continental trip by train-that is, if one
is starting from our eastern coast-with a few
days and nights on the Great Lakes. The boats
are excellent, the food is all that could be de-
sired, and the service could scarcely be improved
upon. There could be a day's stop-over at a
city like Winnipeg, again to break the journey
                      7

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



through flat prairie territory, and then the plunge
into the Canadian Rockies, where Nature seems
to have made a startling and supreme gesture,
and finally set the seal of her complete approval.
  I used to imagine, as a child, that there was
some physical barrier to be crossed when one
went from one's own country into another, just
as I fancied the north pole was actually a pole,
standing on the very top of the world. I did
not think one could just melt, as it were, into an-
other land. I always have a feeling of awe when
I am told, on a railway train, that we are now
passing into another State, or even into another
county. For me, a sense of adventure is in this
unexciting process-I cannot say why. I posi-
tively expect the landscape to take on a new as-
pect, the soil to be of a different color, the very
trees and bushes to be of another kind. Yet
they remain strangely the same, until one con-
siders border lines and boundaries, and wonders
why it is that such a fuss and furor are made over
them-why, indeed, people go to war about
them.
                      8

 
FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



  We slipped into Canada by the sea, when we
made up our minds to discover the Evangeline-
haunted districts of Nova Scotia; and that is the
best way to go anywhere. Traveling thus, bound-
ary lines are indeed invisible; their names are
writ in water, and give one no concern. You
awaken the next morning or the day after and
find yourself looking at another flag, breathing
other air, and realize that you are a vigorous pil-
grim, being so thrillingly far from home.
  The way to go from New York, I should ad-
vise, is to take the night boat to Boston. There,
the following afternoon at two, one may board
a small steamer at the very next wharf, for Yar-
mouth. And let me pause to be specific here, to
aid those who may follow me on this delectable
journey. No luncheon is served on the Yar-
mouth vessel on the day one sails. Therefore,
have a box made up in Boston and enjoy your
sandwiches and your thermos bottle on the deck
as you steam out of that lovely harbor.
  The exit from New York forever thrills me.
I love dipping under our massive highways of the
                      9

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



air, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and
Queensboro bridges. Their roaring traffic, their
ceaseless clamor, their energy, their solid per-
manence-I love them. These are the exposed
arteries of the monster Manhattan, and living
tides sweep through them. In a late May eve-
ning, at sunset, when the workers who dwell in
Brooklyn begin to pour homeward, these veins
are filled with blood; and as the Artist, the Guide,
and I passed along the river we were glad of an
escape from the great city that had clutched us
too long, held us closely on her heart of stone
and steel.
  The World Building looked like a golden bee-
hive melting among a garden of giant sky-
scrapers, strange flowers of agate, unmoved by
storms, rejoicing alike in the beat of the rain or
the smiting rays of the sun. This May evening,
the beehive glistened and gleamed, and I thought
of the time, not so many years ago, when it was
the proudest turret of them all. Now it was
but a pygmy in this hard and terrible garden.
And then I thought of all the bees huddled be-
                      10

 

FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



neath this hive, trying to make honey out of-
what   Later, I knew, the whole city would be
a vast honeycomb of light, when the electric
bulbs danced at the tiers of windows, and aspir-
ing domes shot, rocket-like, to the darkness of
the sky. A returning American recently said that
the Woolworth tower was as wonderful as any
cathedral spire he had seen abroad. I quite agree
with him. There is a stern loveliness about
these commercial buildings, a hard, compelling
beauty that cannot be denied, and I have always
pitied those who fail to read the wonder of blun-
dering, groping cities, with their message of hu-
man endeavor and dream. Their lack of vision
is worse than blindness, for it is nothing short
of a spiritual shutting of the eyes.
  It is curious how the bridges erected since
Brooklyn Bridge simply magnify the beauty of
the latter, just as the old, shingled, weather-
beaten farm-houses on Long Island and in New
England gain in impressiveness through the years,
and serve to "show up" the nouveau-rich archi-
tecture crowding around them. They built
                      11

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



better in the old days, when artisans were really
artists, with a personal pride in their work. And
there were more robust dreamers a quarter of a
century ago. I have always resented the conflict
of Manhattan Bridge with the beautiful lines of
the older structure. Looking at Brooklyn Bridge
from the harbor, one feels that a hideous back
drop has been placed in the near distance, almost
ruining the perfect symmetry of what Roebling
did. Yet the perfection of Brooklyn Bridge
remains, despite contiguous upstarts, a stretch of
magnificence in the air, an iron rainbow linking
two enormous boroughs.
  I like those dark warehouses along the wharves
of New York and Brooklyn as one sails up the
East River, and the glimpses one catches of shad-
owy, mysterious streets leading to the radiant
heart of the vast, tumultuous city. Now and
then a human figure skulks along in the dusk, just
visible from one's upper deck; and the tugboats
whistle, and the seeming confusion works itself
somehow into a plausible pattern, as ship passes
ship, and helpless trains of cars are propelled
                       12

 


































               The East River
"The radiant heart of the vast, tumultuous city"

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FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



on a thick raft to some port where they may
work out their destiny. It strikes one as ignoble
that a massive train must thus be commandeered
and escorted by a tiny tug, just as there is some-
thing ludicrous in the spectacle of a broken-
down limousine being dragged through a city
street by a little taxicab. But even giants grow
weary and worn sometimes, and then it is that
the Lilliputians of the earth come into their own.
Every one loves a tug, puffing in its pride, help-
ing some larger vessel to find its way to its pier.
These are the only craft that I can never think of
as feminine, they are so altogether sturdy and
strong.
  Disarmament is robbing the Brooklyn Navy-
Yard of its old-time pomp and glory. Now
only a battle-ship or two may be seen where once
a score or more lay silent as watch-dogs, and a
network of iron and steel proclaims where a part
of our valiant navy made its quarters once upon
a time.
  Farther along, tall black chimneys rise like
monster organ-pipes,, chanting forever the glory
                      i5

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



and wonder of the town. A gasometer stands
sharply silhouetted against the imperishable sky;
and, in contrast to its heavy beauty, the white
clouds drift in a blue spring sea of glory. We
were going to a wilderness, to the land of "the
forest primeval." But was not this a greater
wilderness This tangle of dwellings, this mad-
ness that man had created, what was it but an
endless forest, in which the sou! might lose its
way   What did it all mean!   Why had it
risen out of the sea, and why did it chain us so,
and grimly make us its very slaves Some old
lines by Marrion Wilcox came singing into my
head, as our boat pressed on:

A poisonous forest of houses far as the eye can see,
               And in their shade
               All crime is made-
  Now God love you and me.

  The ugly-beautiful city! I would leave it;
but also I knew I would come back to it gladly,
as I always did-as every one of us does.
  But I was not out of it yet. Just as, when
you attempt to motor from New York, it seems
                     i6

 
FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



                       impossiible to get to the
                  I/-   last house on the last
                       street, so, in gliding up
                       the East River, the dwell-
                       ings never end; and the
                       windows of houses along
                       the shore seem to stare
                       at you, follow  you, as
                       the eyes in a portrait do.
                         When we came to
                       Blackwell's Island, I no-
                       ticed the lighthouse on
                       the northern end of it;
                       and for the first time,
                       though I have lived in
                       New York all my life, I
                       heard a priest near me
                       on the deck telling an-
                       other a legend concern-
           qiw:p       ing it. I do not know
           .0         whether it is authentic
  The Lighthouse on
  Blackwell's Island  or not, but the story as
I overheard it interested me.
                      17

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



  "A man suffering from melancholia built that
little stone edifice with his own hands," the priest
was saying to his companion. "He was a mas-
ter builder, 'way back in the sixties, and when he
fell ill he asked permission to go over to the
island and erect that lighthouse we see. And as
he worked, day by day, quite alone there, piling
stone on stone, he sent out a message, asking the
prayers of all passers-by for his recovery. And
every tugboat captain, every sailor on every
craft, prayed for him."
  "A lovely story," the younger priest said, at
the conclusion of the tale.  "I only hope the poor
man recovered. That would make the thing com-
plete."
  "Ah, that I do not know," answered the other.
"And perhaps it is just as well not to know the
end of the story. At any rate, there the light-
house is."
  Out in the sound, the city is gone. A sense of
freedom sweeps over one with the first evening
breeze. Definitely, one has escaped from the
trap that tears the heart as well as the body. And
                      18

 

FOLLOWING THE SPRING NORTH



when the sunset is vividly painted on the western
sky, and reflected in the deep blue of the water,
there comes an hour of calm that leaves one
speechless and breathless. One sees the long
stretch of Long Island shore, separated more and
more from Connecticut as the boat pushes on,
away from the flaming sun; and soon there will
be the wide, open sea; and in the morning the first
lap of one's journey will be over.
  We are following the spring north, free as
those birds that swing through the air; and al-
ways there come the thought and dream of the
white orchards that await us, up there in the rich
Annapolis valley.



19

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C W,& T IZ R- El

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CHAPTER II



            FROM YARMOUTH ON

I DON'T like buying railway tickets-indeed,
   tickets of any kind; and so, when the Guide, a
good friend who strangely and happily is of an
opposite turn of mind, said he could make his
vacation plans fit in with the Artist's and my
own, I was delighted.
  He it was who engaged our passage every-
where; and he is clever with maps, and has all
sorts of ideas about where not to go, which, when
you come to think of it, is quite as important as to
decide just where to go. He has a way with him
when it comes to porters and waitresses, conduc-
tors and hotel clerks-a sort of genius for mak-
ing friends with any and everybody; and through
his kindly offices one's luggage miraculously ap-
pears at the right moment, and he has counted it
up at a glance, and simply orders one to "come
                      23

 
     AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA
on." One goes, confident that all is well. If
Cook could but get hold of him, he would make
his fortune as a cicerone in foreign parts; but he
hides his light under a bushel; and so, though I
had known him for some time, I had not dreamed
that he had these wonderful talents as a tourist.
He was a revelation to me, just as I must have
been to him in another way; for I am one of
those who insist upon getting to a station a full
half-hour before it is time for one's train to go,
and I am likely to speak of it if others are not
equally prompt. Often, to save myself the fret
and worry of a too-late arrival, I have bundled
up with bag and baggage, getting to my destina-
tion, say, forty minutes beforehand, only to be
hustled through the gate in the greatest discom-
fort, finding myself on the train ahead. It is
humiliating, to say the least, and one's plans are
so definitely upset at the other end of the journey.
I am always telegraphing to friends that I am
arriving earlier than they had expected me, which
is quite as thoughtless and rude as to arrive late.
  My friend the Guide has cured me of much
                      24

 
FROM YARMOUTH ON



of my impetuous desire to take a taxi thirty
minutes before it is necessary. He has shown me
the wisdom, as the Italians put it, of making
haste slowly; and he has about convinced me that
rural trains are seldom on time, and that boats
rarely run according to schedule.  I never missed
anything if I but meekly followed him; and,
thanks to his kindness, I never had to consult
one of those cryptic little folders known to civi-
lized man as time-tables. Asterisks always an-
noy me; and time-tables are so full of them that
I wonder the printers do not run out of those nec-
essary signs. "Saturdays only" forever confronts
me on a Tuesday, say, when I make up my mind
to take a journey.  "Stops only on signal" is
the train I am always hopelessly running after at
some remote junction. "No baggage" is the
bane of my existence; whereas "Will not run on
Sundays" is always the very train I want, weary
of some small town on a Sabbath morning.
  The Guide had a way with him with time-
tables, too; and he told me that if I would but
leave matters to him he would see to it that we
                      25

 
AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



never took the wrong train. Moreover, there was
not to be much travel by rail, we agreed. We
would board an express-if there was such a prac-
tical thing in such a romantic country-only as a
means of getting rapidly through some dull terri-
tory. The rest of the time we would hire a mo-
tor or bicycles, and explore the land round about
our hotel. In this way we would get off the
beaten routes of the average tourist as much as
possible, take those little side journeys that some-
times prove to be the most delightful of all, and
do just about as we pleased, regardless of time.
  The steamer from Boston to Yarmouth takes,
literally, a bee-line course; and the afternoon we
set forth was radiant with sun and beautiful with
billowy clouds. Our clean little boat shot
through the sea, seemingly eager to reach that
port directly on the other side. Not until night-
fall is one definitely out of sight of land; and in
the early morning the bright little harbor of
Yarmouth greets the traveler, and the Canadian
air is cooler and spicier, and one drinks in long
drafts of it, feeling refreshed at once.
                      26

 
          FROM YARMOUTH ON








               Yarmouth Harbor
  It is a pretty town. The young oiler on the
boat lived there, and had sung its praises to me,
though he confessed to a hankering after Boston;
"It 's so big and busy," was the way he put it.
But down in his heart he was true to little Yar-
mouth.
  We had made the acquaintance of a young
man and his wife on the steamer, who had
brought their smart little car along, and were
looking forward to a Canadian summer, touring
wherever they had a mind to go. For a moment,
I envied them their easy manner of getting from
place to place, as they outlined the roads they
would follow, and pointed out on the map this
interior lake and that which they would be able
to reach. "It's the only way to travel," they
                      27

 

     AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA
said. "Wish we had room for you-all"; they
were obviously Southerners.
  "Oh, we'll do nicely," we told them as we
thanked them for their thought of us. I think
they were secretly pitying us our rides on trains
in this bright early-summer season. They had
a jaunty self-assurance, a natural pride of
ownership and well-being, which, while not in
the least offensive, got just a bit on my nerves
after two or three hours of it. W hey were too
satisfied with their plans, and would ask us down
to look at their gleaming motor, pull off the hood
to give us a peep at their authentic engine, and
boast of the extra tires they carried.
  "For we hear that the roads are n't quite so
good as we have at home," the husband said.
"Lots of rocks up here. But we believe in pre-
paredness."
  It made us humble to think of our hired mo-
tors and bicycles and unimaginative train trips.
Oh, some people were blessed by the Fates;
there was no doubt of that. "And it 's just great
to be able to go where you want to, and not be
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dependent on a chauffeur," we heard our new
friend saying; and when, after breakfast on the
boat, he bade us a gay good morning, and waved
to us in a rather patronizing manner, we thought
we envied him the easy days ahead of him
and almost wished that he had the room to take
us under his wing, as he had so generously sug-
gested.
  As he went down the gang-plank, the very
back of his neck and the slant of his head on
his shoulders told of his human joy in his trip
de laxe. All the way from the South to go
through Canada with his bride in his car par ex-
cellence! Yes, it was something to be happy
over; and he did n't care who knew how rejoiced
he was. There was n't another machine like his;
he had told us that over and over. It would eat
up the rough roads; it would whizz here and
there like a yellow flame, startling the country-
side; and the sound of his siren would be a cry
of triumph in the night, as they sped through
sleepy hamlets.
  We felt shabby after his blithe departure; a
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AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



little inferiority complex, it may have been-we
who had, until our meeting with him, been so
contented with our simple and normal means of
locomotion. I found myself half envying this
boastful young Southerner, wishing that we, too,
could have brought a dashing car along and made
such a thrilling exit from the boat.
  They have delicious clams at Yarmouth. We
had been told so by the watchman on the boat.
"I know, because I supply them to the hotel,"
he modestly said; but I must report that his clams
were all he asserted them to be, for we tried
them at every meal save breakfast.
  I had n't yet become used to leaving every-
thing to the Guide; so, while my baggage was
going through the customs, and an importunate
taxi-driver was asking us if we did n't want to
hire him to take us to our inn, I inquired of him
about evening trains north. "It left yesterday,"
was the way he put it. "Sorry."
  There was only one, you see; but the Guide,
having learned that long before we landed, smiled
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indulgently at me, as one does at an impetuous
child, as though to say, "Now will you be good
and leave the time-tables to me"
  I like a town such as Yarmouth, with rocking
boats in its cozy harbor, its tree-lined streets and
fragrant lilac-bushes, its little home-made con-
servatories in every other house, as though the
occupants were determined to hoard away some
of the golden summer against the stern, inevi-
table northern winter. Over the town comes the
keen, cool air from the Bay of Fundy, far off;
and there is plenty of good fishing, of course.
They catch much mackerel and thousands of her-
rings here; and the lobster traps are regularly
set. I have seldom seen healthier, more happy
children than one sees in Canada. And evi-
dently, judging by their parents, they will all
grow to a splendid and robust manhood or
womanhood; and that will cause them to require
those enormous bath-tubs which delighted us in
every little inn to which we wandered. What a
joy to get to a country where the people are so
big-boned, if for no other reason than that one
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AMBLING THROUGH ACADIA



may splash to the limit in those capacious basins!
  One instantly gets an impression of the rugged-
ness of Canada, entering it by this doorway. I
can't understand why more young Americans, in
search of a normal life on a farm, do not betake
themselves to this enchanting country; yet they
tell me everywhere that Canada's great problem
is to get her youth to remain at home. Boy-like,
they all wish to rush to the States, as they call
our land. They crave the excitement of big
cities, like Boston and New York, and they suffer
from the delusion that a fortune awaits them in
rich New England, just over the border. Many
return, later in life, finding too late that they
have been chasing rainbows, and they settle down
with poor grace. Yet all this is in the economic
scheme of things, and I suppose it will always
be so: that the citizens of one land will forever
dream of the hidden enchantment of another.
  Outside Yarmouth one finds beautiful country
and excellent roads. We caught glimpses, on
our first motor ride, of many a wild apple-tree
radiantly in bloom, a foretaste of those we were
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FROM YARMOUTH ON



to see later in such abundance. And tiny lakes
dance in the sun, and lumbering oxen cross one's
path every little while, their stolid heads fas-
tened under the heavy, cruel-looking block of
wood wh