Chapter 4

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_ CHAPTER IV

"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been
conscious of that, he never would have thrown himself into
the bosom of their country, and trusted to the protection of
its remote inhabitants with a fearless confidence."
--BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.

Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day as it is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late on Sunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleep of the just. It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl, who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost the opportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,--an act of gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.

The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of Sabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,--such a morning as never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning, with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day it was for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and night from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fully opened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper balcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond, reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, and inhale the balmy air. (We greatly need another word to describe good air, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps it might in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to rest in such a soothing situation,--rest, and not incessant activity, having been one of the original designs of the day.

But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an out-of-the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not set themselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to teach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained two hundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that the sacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantness of it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, and probably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on Cape Breton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelers fishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authorities to lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on the Lord's day.

In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the kirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I could without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, I could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants; that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping curve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops, and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves ran into the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and the usual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful and perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked down the road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappeared round the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had a small pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day, and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics from Whykokornagh.

The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun. There was something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews had high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,--a sort of theological fortification,--approached by wide, curving flights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seats to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister, though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars. The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England congregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had been Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.

Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid Scotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh and rosy-cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of the audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and respectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frills over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and hanging down the neck,--a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.

The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this region to go to church,--for whole families to go, even the smallest children; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend the service. There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for the lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practiced elsewhere. The service was worth coming seven miles to participate in!--it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if he had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. The singing was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good (for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. This congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David powerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded, and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. It certainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza from Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with perfect individual independence as to time:

"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king, And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."

The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation; and it filled a solid hour of time. I am not a good judge of sermons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knows a sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological, and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository. It was doubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it. But the adults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied with it; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually. The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocritical show of attention. To be sure, the day was warm and the house was unventilated. If the windows had been opened so as to admit the fresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers and their wives would have resented such an interference with their ordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemed more musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air. Considering that only half of the congregation could understand the preacher, its behavior was exemplary.

After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and I noticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,--a melancholy sound for the pastor. This might appear niggardly on the part of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that they put only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel, and so far as they are concerned they have it. Although the farmers about the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their minister enough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support is eked out by the contributions of a missionary society. It was gratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part of the people, but was due to their religious principle. It seemed to us that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs next to nothing.

When the service was over, about half of the people departed; the rest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbath exercises. These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understood little or nothing of the English service. The minister turned himself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that language the long exercises of the morning. The sermon and perhaps the prayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and the singing was a great improvement. It was of the same Psalms, but the congregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, as wailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotional outburst of two centuries ago. This service also lasted about two hours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without any rest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must have been half past three o'clock before that was over. And this is considered a day of rest.

These Gaelic Christians, we were informed, are of a very old pattern; and some of them cling more closely to religious observances than to morality. Sunday is nowhere observed with more strictness. The community seems to be a very orderly and thrifty one, except upon solemn and stated occasions. One of these occasions is the celebration of the Lord's Supper; and in this the ancient Highland traditions are preserved. The rite is celebrated not oftener than once a year by any church. It then invites the neighboring churches to partake with it,--the celebration being usually in the summer and early fall months. It has some of the characteristics of a "camp-meeting." People come from long distances, and as many as two thousand and three thousand assemble together. They quarter themselves without special invitation upon the members of the inviting church. Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer, overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about his premises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family, and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out of house and home. Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of these religious raids,--at least he is left with a debt of hundreds of dollars. The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains over Sunday. There is preaching every day, but there is something besides. Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, the four days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, of drinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he would not particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St. Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses. The evil has become so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacred rite will have to be reformed altogether.

Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fast driving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowded full of men, women, and children,--released from their long sanctuary privileges, and going home,--was a sort of profanation of the day; and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.

Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadful prison-house. It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stone and substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with a square of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for the residence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings at the lower windows. A more inviting place to spend the summer in, a vicious person could not have. The Scotch keeper of it is an old, garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan. I think that if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take him with him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod. If the prisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape, the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardly approve the prisoner's conduct.

The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us to enter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our own country (officially), we were interested in inspecting this. It was a favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a man confined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper's feeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four rooms on the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three of these rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, were cells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family. The family were now also occupying the front cell,--a cheerful room commanding a view of the village street and of the bay. A prisoner of a philosophic turn of mind, who had committed some crime of sufficient magnitude to make him willing to retire from the world for a season and rest, might enjoy himself here very well.

The jailer exhibited his premises with an air of modesty. In the rear was a small yard, surrounded by a board fence, in which the prisoner took his exercise. An active boy could climb over it, and an enterprising pig could go through it almost anywhere. The keeper said that he intended at the next court to ask the commissioners to build the fence higher and stop up the holes. Otherwise the jail was in good condition. Its inmates were few; in fact, it was rather apt to be empty: its occupants were usually prisoners for debt, or for some trifling breach of the peace, committed under the influence of the liquor that makes one "unco happy." Whether or not the people of the region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; the jail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity. The great incident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-known citizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money. The keeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, where an attempt had been made to batter a hole through. The Highland clan and kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came one night and threatened to knock the jail in pieces if he was not given up. They bruised the wall, broke the windows, and finally smashed in the door and took their man away. The jailer was greatly excited at this rudeness, and went almost immediately and purchased a pistol. He said that for a time he did n't feel safe in the jail without it. The mob had thrown stones at the upper windows, in order to awaken him, and had insulted him with cursing and offensive language.

Having finished inspecting the building, I was unfortunately moved by I know not what national pride and knowledge of institutions superior to this at home, to say,

"This is a pleasant jail, but it doesn't look much like our great prisons; we have as many as a thousand to twelve hundred men in some of our institutions."

"Ay, ay, I have heard tell," said the jailer, shaking his head in pity, "it's an awfu' place, an awfu' place,--the United States. I suppose it's the wickedest country that ever was in the world. I don't know,--I don't know what is to become of it. It's worse than Sodom. There was that dreadful war on the South; and I hear now it's very unsafe, full of murders and robberies and corruption."

I did not attempt to correct this impression concerning my native land, for I saw it was a comfort to the simple jailer, but I tried to put a thorn into him by saying,

"Yes, we have a good many criminals, but the majority of them, the majority of those in jails, are foreigners; they come from Ireland, England, and the Provinces."

But the old man only shook his head more solemnly, and persisted, "It's an awfu' wicked country."

Before I came away I was permitted to have an interview with the sole prisoner, a very pleasant and talkative man, who was glad to see company, especially intelligent company who understood about things, he was pleased to say. I have seldom met a more agreeable rogue, or one so philosophical, a man of travel and varied experiences. He was a lively, robust Provincial of middle age, bullet-headed, with a mass of curly black hair, and small, round black eyes, that danced and sparkled with good humor. He was by trade a carpenter, and had a work-bench in his cell, at which he worked on week-days. He had been put in jail on suspicion of stealing a buffalo-robe, and he lay in jail eight months, waiting for the judge to come to Baddeck on his yearly circuit. He did not steal the robe, as he assured me, but it was found in his house, and the judge gave him four months in jail, making a year in all,--a month of which was still to serve. But he was not at all anxious for the end of his term; for his wife was outside.

Jock, for he was familiarly so called, asked me where I was from. As I had not found it very profitable to hail from the United States, and had found, in fact, that the name United States did not convey any definite impression to the average Cape Breton mind, I ventured upon the bold assertion, for which I hope Bostonians will forgive me, that I was from Boston. For Boston is known in the eastern Provinces.

"Are you?" cried the man, delighted. "I've lived in Boston, myself. There's just been an awful fire near there."

"Indeed!" I said; "I heard nothing of it.' And I was startled with the possibility that Boston had burned up again while we were crawling along through Nova Scotia.

"Yes, here it is, in the last paper." The man bustled away and found his late paper, and thrust it through the grating, with the inquiry, "Can you read?"

Though the question was unexpected, and I had never thought before whether I could read or not, I confessed that I could probably make out the meaning, and took the newspaper. The report of the fire "near Boston" turned out to be the old news of the conflagration in Portland, Oregon!

Disposed to devote a portion of this Sunday to the reformation of this lively criminal, I continued the conversation with him. It seemed that he had been in jail before, and was not unaccustomed to the life. He was not often lonesome; he had his workbench and newspapers, and it was a quiet place; on the whole, he enjoyed it, and should rather regret it when his time was up, a month from then.

Had he any family?

"Oh, yes. When the census was round, I contributed more to it than anybody in town. Got a wife and eleven children."

"Well, don't you think it would pay best to be honest, and live with your family, out of jail? You surely never had anything but trouble from dishonesty."

"That's about so, boss. I mean to go on the square after this. But, you see," and here he began to speak confidentially, "things are fixed about so in this world, and a man's got to live his life. I tell you how it was. It all came about from a woman. I was a carpenter, had a good trade, and went down to St. Peter's to work. There I got acquainted with a Frenchwoman,--you know what Frenchwomen are,--and I had to marry her. The fact is, she was rather low family; not so very low, you know, but not so good as mine. Well, I wanted to go to Boston to work at my trade, but she wouldn't go; and I went, but she would n't come to me, so in two or three years I came back. A man can't help himself, you know, when he gets in with a woman, especially a Frenchwoman. Things did n't go very well, and never have. I can't make much out of it, but I reckon a man 's got to live his life. Ain't that about so?"

"Perhaps so. But you'd better try to mend matters when you get out. Won't it seem rather good to get out and see your wife and family again?"

"I don't know. I have peace here."

The question of his liberty seemed rather to depress this cheerful and vivacious philosopher, and I wondered what the woman could be from whose companionship the man chose to be protected by jail-bolts. I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive and sufficient. He only said,

"She's a yelper."

Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions in Baddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very good schools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sister would do credit to Boston scholars even. You would not say that the place was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is an orderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town. Book-agents visit it with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, which is said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in that direction yet. I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax, supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St. John; but so far as I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophers under whose instructions we have become the well-informed people we are.

The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one's opportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday. There seemed to be no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on the skeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within the statute. No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyond the island to fish for cod,--although, as that fish is ready to bite, and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excuses for angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw a line for another sort of fish. My earliest recollections are of the codfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,--his sacred tail pointing the way the wind went. I did not know then why this emblem should be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew why codfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table. But these associations invested this plebeian fish with something of a religious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.

Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we did not know to what to lay the quiet on Monday. But its peacefulness continued. I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and the traders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt that he had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky the evening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was an inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material. In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of sluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck. Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place, which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there. If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too well what would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints, their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel, their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature; and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. And the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned. There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray twilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure. There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is lacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no person to go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lack occupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter, he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He may also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on the Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the salmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook in his nose. The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can be caught whenever he will bite. The day we went for him appeared to be an off-day, a sort of holiday with him.

There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail to visit. That is St. Ann's Bay. He will go light of baggage, for he must hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch of St. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat. There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full of picturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around the indentations of St. Ann's harbor. From the high promontory where rests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross to English Town. High bluffs, bold shores, exquisite sea-views, mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of the Dominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed at this place. In point of grandeur and beauty it surpasses Mt. Desert, and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of the Atlantic Cable. If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he will visit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant, who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native shore. A man of gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as big as a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul. While the visitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only as sledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by his neighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity. He was not spoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreign triumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he is almost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feel bigger than he was. He performed his duty in life without ostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by the flattery of constant public curiosity. He knew, having tried both, how much better it is to be good than to be great. I should like to have known him. I should like to know how the world looked to him from his altitude. I should like to know how much food it took at one time to make an impression on him; I should like to know what effect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head. I should like to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experienced in merely closing his hand over something. It is a pity that he could not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school, and ending in a university. There was a field for the multifarious new education! If we could have annexed him with his island, I should like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States. He would have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear his lightest remark like a declaration of war. And he would have been at home in that body of great men. Alas! he has passed away, leaving little influence except a good example of growth, and a grave which is a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of the untamed Atlantic.

I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, if it were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said to make the traveler wish to go there. I more unreservedly urge him to go there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibility for his liking or disliking. He will go upon the recommendation of two gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residents of Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinations of land and water in coast scenery. When a Maine man admits that there is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a note of.

On Monday we went a-fishing. Davie hitched to a rattling wagon something that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a great deal of "go" in him, if he could be coaxed to show it. For the first half-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, moving indifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down the road, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of Middle River. Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks, and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses. Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,--he could start him after a while,--but he did n't like to have all the town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such an exhibition affected the market value of the horse. We sat in the wagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimes out of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused him with his tongue. It was a pleasant day, and the spectators increased.

There are two ways of managing a balky horse. My companion knew one of them and I the other. His method is to sit quietly in the wagon, and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse. The theory is that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse's mind, and he will try to escape them by going on. The spectators supplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measured gentleness. Probably the horse understood this method, for he did not notice the attack at all. My plan was to speak gently to the horse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by one sudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat the operation. The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word will start any horse. I tried this, and with a certain success. The horse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backed himself into the wagon, if I had continued. When the animal was at length ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side, coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed him into a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down. Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only on the return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began to reflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before his father saw them.

Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over the sprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream, to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into a bayou with ragged shores, about which the Indians have encampments, and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs. Saturday night we had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge. We followed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement of farmers. The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy, fertile, and sheltered by hills,--a green Eden, one of the few peaceful inhabited spots in the world. I could conceive of no news coming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender. Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook, we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at least as good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman and brother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse, and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely to be found at this season of the year.

It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor's residence, but truth is older than Scotchmen, and the reader looks to us for truth and not flattery. Though the McGregor seems to have a good farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rather cheerless place for the "woman" to slave away her uneventful life in, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock of children. And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,--there always is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough for them. A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small though he was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he had recently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself. The young Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks. We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in all remote regions where travelers are few. Mrs. McGregor had none of that reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agricultural regions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed us to partake freely of that simple drink. And he refused to take any pay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act of hospitality should have any commercial value. But travelers themselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we planted the notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life may be made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably the next travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small change there, if they use a little tact.

It was late in the season for trout. Perhaps the McGregor was aware of that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows, and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck. It was a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying in cool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content, indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod and reel. The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe, over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gently reposing in the broad bends of the grassy banks. It was in one of these bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies, that we tried our skill. We heroically waded the stream and threw our flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water nor in the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to the deceitful leaders. We enjoyed the distinction of being the only persons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and this was something. The meadows were sweet with the newly cut grass, the wind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed high overhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all these gentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their cool retreats. At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle River we found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, for I should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yet the public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without any fish in it. Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by a tree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens of them a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backs relieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at first they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis and the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were alike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial taste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor and baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in our day's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the worm before their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other, gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel, until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but it was not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregor contemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhaps learn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in Cape Breton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.

The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf; and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness of this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuous person on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height was made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his very short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a little difficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the back of his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at that stage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowing with information and good-nature. With what might in strict art be called an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civil engineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a great traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humorous satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsec junction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as a joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light. From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, to the relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boat drew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edge of the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail by a friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing us prosperity and the Fourth of July. His was the only effort in the nature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and we could not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."

Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of this hazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the most complete enjoyment of our voyage. Certainly, as we glided out upon the summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of the widening shores, it seemed as if we had taken passage to the Fortunate Islands. _

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