On the road to Windsor—The great Nova Scotia Railway—A Fellow Passenger—Cape Sable Shipwrecks—Seals—Ponies—Windsor—Sam Slick—A lively Example.

A dewy, spring-like morning is all I remembered of my farewell to Halifax. A very sweet and odorous air as I rode towards the railway station in the funereal cab; a morning without fog, a sparkling freshness that twinkled in the leaves and crisped the waters.

So I take leave of thee, quaint old city of Chebucto. The words of a familiar ditty, the memory of the unfortunate Miss Bailey, rises upon me as the morning bugle sounds—

"A captain bold in Halifax, who lived in country quarters,
Seduced a maid, who hung herself next morning in her garters;
His wicked conscience smoted him, he lost his spirits daily,
He took to drinking ratifia, and thought upon Miss Bailey."
While the psychological features of the case[Pg 280] were puzzling his brain and keeping him wide awake—

"The candles blue, at XII. o'clock, began to burn quite paley,
A ghost appeared at his bedside, and said—
behold, Miss Bailey!!!"
Even such a sprite, so dead in look, so woe-begone, drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night to tell him half his Troy was burned; but this visit was for a different purpose, as we find by the words which the gallant Lothario addressed to his victim:

"'You'll find,' says he, 'a five-pound note in my regimental small-clothes;
'T will bribe the sexton for your grave,' the ghost then vanished gaily,
Saying, 'God bless you, wicked Captain Smith, although you've ruined Miss Bailey.'"
There is no end to these legends; the whole province is full of them. The Province Building is stuffed with rich historical manuscripts, that only wait for the antiquarian explorer.[G]

[Pg 281]But now we approach the station of the great Nova Scotia Railway, nine and three-quarter miles in length, that skirts the margin of Bed[Pg 282]ford Basin, and ends at the head of that blue sheet of water in the village of Sackville. It is amusing to see the gravity and importance of the conductor, in uniform frock-coat and with crown and V. R. buttons, as he paces up and down[Pg 283] the platform before starting; and the quiet dignity of the sixpenny ticket-office; and the busy air of the freight-master, checking off boxes and bundles for the distant terminus—so distant that it can barely be distinguished by the naked eye. But it was a pleasant ride, that by the Basin! Not less pleasant because of the company of an old friend, who, with wife and children, went with me to the end of the iron road. Arrived there, we parted, with many a hearty hand-shake, and thence by stage to Windsor, on the river Avon, forty-five miles or so west of Halifax.

My fellow-passenger on the stage-top was a pony! Yes, a real pony! not bigger, however, than a good sized pointer dog, although his head was of most preposterous horse-like length. This equine Tom Thumb, was one of the mustangs, or wild horses of Sable Island, some little account of which here may not be uninteresting. But first let me say, in order not to tax the credulity of my reader too much, that pony did not stand upright upon the roof of the coach, as may have been surmised, but was very cleverly laid upon his side, with his four legs strapped in the form of a saw-buck, precisely as butchers tie the legs of calves or of sheep together, for transportation in carts to the shambles, only pony's fetters were not so cruel—indeed he seemed[Pg 284] to be quite at his ease—like the member of the foreign legion on the road to Dartmouth.

Now then, pony's birth-place is one of the most interesting upon our coast. Do you remember it, my transatlantic traveller? The little yellow spot that greets you so far out at sea, and bids you welcome to the western hemisphere? I hope you have seen it in fine weather; many a goodly ship has left her bones upon that yellow island in less auspicious seasons. The first of these misadventurers was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who was lost in a storm close by; the memorable words with which he hailed his consort are now familiar to every reader: "Heaven," said he, "is as near by sea as by land," and so bade the world farewell in the tempest. Legends of wrecks of buccaneers, of spectres, multiply as we penetrate into the mysterious history of the yellow island. And its present aspect is sufficiently tempting to the adventurous, for whom—

"If danger other charms have none,
Then danger's self is lure alone."
The following description, from a lecture delivered in Halifax, by Dr. J. Bernard Gilpin, will commend itself to our modern Robinson Crusoes:[Pg 285]

"Should any one be visiting the island now, he might see, about ten miles' distance, looking seaward, half a dozen low, dark hummocks on the horizon. As he approaches, they gradually resolve themselves into hills fringed by breakers, and by and by the white sea beach with its continued surf—the sand-hills, part naked, part waving in grass of the deepest green, unfold themselves—a house and a barn dot the western extremity—here and there along the wild beach lie the ribs of unlucky traders half-buried in the shifting sand. By this time a red ensign is waving at its peak, and from a tall flag-staff and crow's nest erected upon the highest hill midway of the island, an answering flag is waving to the wind. Before the anchor is let go, and the cutter is rounding to in five fathoms of water, men and horses begin to dot the beach, a life-boat is drawn rapidly on a boat-cart to the beach, manned, and fairly breasting the breakers upon the bar. It may have been three long winter months that this boat's crew have had no tidings of the world, or they may have three hundred emigrants and wrecked crews, waiting to be carried off. The hurried greetings over, news told and newspapers and letters given, the visitor prepares to return with them to the island. Should it be evening, he will see the cutter already under weigh[Pg 286] and standing seaward; but, should it be fine weather, plenty of day, and wind right off the shore, even then she lies to the wind anchor apeak, and mainsail hoisted, ready to run at a moment's notice, so sudden are the shifts of wind, and so hard to claw off from those treacherous shores. But the life-boat is now entering the perpetual fringe of surf—a few seals tumble and play in the broken waters, and the stranger draws his breath hard, as the crew bend to their oars, the helmsman standing high in the pointed stern, with loud command and powerful arm keeping her true, the great boat goes riding on the back of a huge wave, and is carried high up on the beach in a mass of struggling water. To spring from their seats into the water, and hold hard the boat, now on the point of being swept back by the receding wave, is the work of an instant. Another moment they are left high and dry on the beach, another, and the returning wave and a vigorous run of the crew has borne her out of all harm's way.

"Such is the ceremony of landing at Sable Island nine or ten months out of the year: though there are at times some sweet halcyon days when a lad might land in a flat. Dry-shod the visitor picks his way between the thoroughly drenched crew, picks up a huge............