At One Moment He Was
Holding Smelling-Salts To Some Exhausted Lady - At Another Carrying Down A
Poor Irishwoman, Who, Though A Steerage Passenger, Should Not, He Said, Be
Left To Perish From Cold And Hunger - And Again, Feeding Some Crying Baby
With Bread And Milk.
My clothes were completely saturated, and his good
offices probably saved me from a severe illness by covering me up with a
blanket.
At twelve we reached Shediac in New Brunswick, a place from which an
enormous quantity of timber is annually exported. It is a village in a
marsh, on a large bay surrounded by low wooded hills, and presents every
appearance of unhealthiness. Huge square-sided ships, English, Dutch, and
Austrian, were swallowing up rafts of pine which kept arriving from the
shore. The water on this coast is shallow, and, though our steamer was not
of more than 150 tons burthen, we were obliged to anchor nearly two miles
from shore.
Shediac bad recently been visited by the cholera, and there was an
infectious melancholy about its aspect, which, coupled with the fact that
I was wet, cold, and weary, and with the discovery that my escort and I
had not two ideas in common, had a tendency to produce anything but a
lively frame of mind.
We and our luggage were unceremoniously trundled into two large boats,
some of the gentlemen, I am sorry to say, forcing their way into the
first, in order to secure for themselves inside places in the stage. An
American gentleman offered our rowers a dollar if they could gain the
shore first, but they failed in doing so, and these very ungallant
individuals hired the first waggon, and drove off at full speed to the
Bend on the Petticodiac river, confident in the success of their scheme.
What was their surprise and mortification to find that a gentleman of our
party, who said he was "an old stager, and up to a dodge or two," had
leisurely telegraphed from Shediac for nine places! Thus, on their arrival
at the Bend, the delinquents found that, besides being both censured and
laughed at for their selfishness, they had lost their places, their
dinners, and their tempers.
As we were rowing to shore, the captain told us that our worst difficulty
was yet to come - an insuperable one, he added, to corpulent persons. There
was no landing-place for boats, or indeed for anything, at low water, and
we had to climb up a wharf ten feet high, formed of huge round logs placed
a foot apart from each other, and slippery with sea-grass. It is really
incredible that, at a place through which a considerable traffic passes,
as being on the high road from Prince Edward Island to the United States,
there should be a more inconvenient landing-place than I ever saw at a
Highland village.
Large, high, springless waggons were waiting for us on this wharf, which,
after jolting us along a bad road for some distance, deposited us at the
door of the inn at Shediac, where we came for the first time upon the
track of the cholera, which had recently devastated all the places along
our route. Here we had a substantial dinner of a very homely description,
and, as in Nova Scotia, a cup of tea sweetened with molasses was placed by
each plate, instead of any intoxicating beverage.
After this meal I went into the "house-room," or parlour, a general
"rendezvous" of lady visitors, babies, unmannerly children, Irish servant-
girls with tangled hair and bare feet, colonial gossips, "cute" urchins,
and not unfrequently of those curious-looking beings, pauper-emigrant lads
from Erin, who do a little of everything and nothing well, denominated
stable-helps.
Here I was assailed with a host of questions as to my country, objects in
travelling, &c., and I speedily found that being from the "old country"
gave me a status in the eyes of the colonial ladies. I was requested to
take off my cloak to display the pattern of my dress, and the performance
of a very inefficient country modiste passed off as the latest Parisian
fashion. My bonnet and cloak were subjected to a like scrutiny, and the
pattern of the dress was taken, after which I was allowed to resume my
seat.
Interrogatories about England followed, and I was asked if I had seen the
queen? The hostess "guessed" that she must be a "tall grand lady," and one
pretty damsel that "she must dress beautiful, and always wear the crown
out of doors." I am afraid that I rather lessened the estimation in which
our gracious liege lady was held by her subjects when I replied that she
dressed very simply on ordinary occasions; had never, I believed, worn the
crown since her coronation, and was very little above my height. They
inquired about the royal children, but evinced more curiosity about the
princess-royal than with respect to the heir to the throne. One of the
querists had been at Boston, but guessed that "London must be a pretty
considerable touch higher." Most, however, could only compare it in idea
with St. John, N. B., and listened with the greatest appearance of
interest to the wonders which I narrated of the extent, wealth, and
magnificence of the British metropolis. Altogether I was favourably
impressed by their intelligence, and during my short journey through New
Brunswick I formed a higher opinion of the uneducated settlers in this
province than of those in Nova Scotia. They are very desirous to possess a
reputation for being, to use their borrowed phraseology, "Knowing 'coons,
with their eye-teeth well cut." It would be well if they borrowed from
their neighbours, the Yankees, something more useful than their slang,
which renders the vernacular of the province rather repulsive. The spirit
of enterprise, which has done so much for the adjacent state of Maine, has
not yet displayed itself in New Brunswick in the completion of any works
of practical utility; and though the soil in many places has great natural
capabilities, these have not been taken due advantage of.
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