The Bras d'Or Road—Farewell to Picton—Home sweet Home—The Rob Roys of Cape Breton—Note and Query—Chapel Island—St. Peter's—Enterprise—The Strait of Canseau—West River—The last Out-post of the Scottish Chiefs.
The road that skirts the Arm of Gold is about one hundred miles in length. After leaving Sydney, you ride beside the Spanish River a short distance, until you come to the portage, which separates it from the lake, and then you follow the delicious curve of the great beach until you arrive at St. Peter's. From St. Peter's you travel across a narrow strip of land until you reach the shore upon the extreme westerly end of the island of Cape Breton, where you cross the Strait of Canseau, and then you are upon the mainland of Nova Scotia. I had fondly hoped to voyage upon the Bras d'Or, instead of beside it; but was obliged to forego that pleasure. Romance, at one dollar per mile, is a dear piece of extravagance, even in so ethereal a vehicle as a birch-bark canoe. Therefore I engaged a seat[Pg 197] in the Cape Breton stage, instead of the aboriginal conveyance, in which you have to sit or lie in the bottom, at the risk of an upset, and trust to fair weather and the dip of the paddle.
At day-break (two o'clock in the morning in these high latitudes) the stage drove up to the door of our pleasant inn. I was speedily dressed, and ready—and now—"Good bye, Picton!"
The traveller stretched out a hand from the warm nest in which he was buried.
"Good bye," he said, with a hearty hand-shake, and so we parted.
It was painful to leave such an agreeable companion, but then what a relief it was to escape from the cannie Scots! The first inhalation of the foggy air went tingling through every vein; the first movement of the stage, as we rolled westward, was indescribable happiness; I was at last homeward bound; in full health, in full strength; swift upon my sight came the vision of the one familiar river; the cottage and the chestnuts; the rolling greensward, and the Palisades; and there, too, was my best friend; and there—
"My young barbarians all at play."
Drive on, John Ormond!
Our Cape Breton stage is an easy, two-seated ve[Pg 198]hicle; a quiet, little rockaway-wagon, with a top; and although H. B. M. Royal Mail Coach, entirely different from the huge musk-melon upon wheels with which we are familiar in the States. In it I am the only passenger. Thank Heaven for that! I might be riding beside an aibstract preencepel.
But never mind! Drive on, John Ormond; we shall soon be among another race of Scotsmen, the bold Highlandmen of romance; the McGregors, and McPhersons, the Camerons, Grahams, and McDonalds; and as a century or so does not alter the old-country prejudices of the people in these settlements, we will no doubt find them in their pristine habiliments; in plaids and spleuchens; brogues and buckles; hose and bonnets; with claymore, dirk, and target; the white cockade and eagle feather, so beautiful in the Waverley Novels.
We left the pretty village of Sydney behind us, and were not long in gaining the margin of the Bras d'Or. This great lake, or rather arm of the sea, is, as I have said, about one hundred miles in length by its shore road; but so wide is it, and so indented by broad bays and deep coves, that a coasting journey around it is equal in extent to a voyage across the Atlantic. Besides the distant mountains that rise proudly from the remote shores, there are many noble islands in its expanse, and forest-covered penin[Pg 199]sulas, bordered with beaches of glittering white pebbles. But over all this wide landscape there broods a spirit of primeval solitude; not a sail broke the loneliness of the lake until we had advanced far upon our day's journey. For strange as it may seem, the Golden Arm is a very useless piece of water in this part of the world; highly favored as it is by nature, land-locked, deep enough for vessels of all burden, easy of access on the gulf side, free from fogs, and only separated from the ocean at its western end by a narrow strip of land, about three quarters of a mile wide; abounding in timber, coal, and gypsum, and valuable for its fisheries, especially in winter, yet the Bras d'Or is undeveloped for want of that element which scorns to be alien to the Colonies, namely, enterprise.
If I had formed some romantic ideas concerning the new and strange people we found on the road we were now travelling, the Highlandmen, the Rob Roys and Vich Ian Vohrs of Nova Scotia, those ideas were soon dissipated. It is true here were the Celts in their wild settlements, but without bagpipes or pistols, sporrans or philabegs; there was not even a solitary thistle to charm the eye; and as for oats, there were at least two Scotchmen to one oat in this garden of exotics. I have a reasonable amount of respect for a Highlandman in full cos[Pg 200]tume; but for a carrot-headed, freckled, high-cheeked animal, in a round hat and breeches, that cannot utter a word of English, I have no sympathy. One fellow of this complexion, without a hat, trotted beside our coach for several miles, grunting forth his infernal Gaelic to John Ormond, with a hah! to every answer of the driver, that was really painful. When he disappeared in the woods his red head went out like a torch. But we had scarcely gone by the first Highlandman, when another darted out upon us from a by-path, and again broke the sabbath of the woods and waters; and then another followed, so that the morning ride by the Bras d'Or was fringed with Gaelic. Now I have heard many languages in my time, and know how to appreciate the luxurious Greek, the stately Latin, the mellifluous Chinese, the epithetical Sclavic, the soft Italian, the rich Castilian, the sprightly French, sonorous German, and good old English, but candor compels me to say, that I do not think much of the Gaelic. It is not pleasing to the ear.
Yet it was a stately ride, that by the Bras d'Or; in one's own coach, as it were, traversing such old historic ground. For the very name, and its associations, carry one back to the earliest discoveries in America, carry one back behind Plymouth Rock to the earlier French adventurers in this hemi[Pg 201]sphere; yea, almost to the times of Richard Crookback; for on the neighboring shores, as the English claim, Cabot first landed, and named the place Prima Vista, in the days of Henry the Seventh, the "Richmond" of history and tragedy.
"Le Bras d'Or! John Ormond, do you not think le Bras d'Or sounds much like Labrador?"
"'Deed does it," answered John.
"And why not? That mysterious, geological coast is only four days' sail from Sydney, I take it? Labrador! with its auks and puffins, its seals and sea-tigers, its whales and walruses? Why not an offshoot of le Bras d'Or, its earlier brother in the family of discovery. But drive on, John Ormond, we will leave etymology to the pedants."
Well, well, ancient or modern, there is not a lovelier ride by white-pebbled beach and wide stretch of wave. Now we roll along amidst primeval trees, not the evergreens of the sea-coast, but familiar growths of maple, beech, birch; and larches, juniper or hackmatack—imperishable for ship craft. Now we cross bridges, over sparkling brooks, alive with trout and salmon, and most surprising of all, pregnant with water-power. "Surprising," because no motive-power can be presented to the eye of a citizen of the young republic without the corresponding thought of "Why not use it?" And[Pg 202] why not, when Bras d'Or is so near, or the sea-coast either, and land at forty cents an acre, and trees as closely set, and as lofty, as ever nature planted them? Of a certainty, there would be a thousand saw-mills screaming between this and Canseau if a drop of Yankee blood had ever fertilized this soil.
Well, well, perhaps it is well. But yet to ride through a hundred miles of denationalized, high-cheeked, red, or black-headed Highlandmen, with illustrious names, in breeches and round hats, without pistols or feathers, is a sorry sight. Not one of these McGregors can earn more than five shillings a day, currency, as a laborer. Not a digger upon our canals but can do better than that; and with the chance of rising. But here there seems be no such opportunity. The colonial system provides that every settler shall have a grant of about one hundred and twenty acres, in fee, and free. What then? the Government fosters and protects him. It sends out annually choice stocks of cattle, at a nominal price; it establishes a tariff of duties on foreign goods, so low that the revenue derived therefrom is not sufficient to pay the salaries of its officers. What then? The colonist is only a parasite with all these advantages. He is not an integral part of a nation; a citizen, responsible for his franchise. He is but a colonial Micmac, or Scotch-[Pg 203]Mac; a mere sub-thoughted, irresponsible exotic, in a governmental cold grapery. By the great forefinger of Tom Jefferson, I would rather be a citizen of the United States than own all the five-shilling Blue Noses between Sydney and Canseau!
As we roll along up hill and down, a startling flash of sunlight bursts forth from the dewy morning clouds, and touches lake, island, and promontory, with inexpressible beauty. Stop, John Ormond, or drive slowly; let us enjoy dolce far niente. To hang now in our curricle upon this wooded hill-top, overlooking the clear surface of the lake, with leafy island, and peninsula dotted in its depths, in all its native grace, without a touch or trace of hand-work, far or near, save and except a single spot of sail in the far-off, is holy and sublime.
And there we rested, reverentially impressed with the week-day sabbath. We lingered long and lovingly upon our woody promontory, our eyrie among the spruces of Cape Breton.
"Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring."
Down hill go horses and mail-coach, and we are lost in a vast avenue of twinkling birches. For[Pg 204] miles we ride within breast-high hedges of sunny shrubs, until we reach another promontory, where Bras d'Or again breaks forth, with bay, island, white beach, peninsula, and sparkling............