While we were waiting for a fresh stage and horses, several waggons came
up, laden with lawyers, storekeepers, and ship-carpenters, who with their
families were flying from the cholera at St. John, New Brunswick.
I enjoyed the next fifty miles exceedingly, as I travelled outside on the
driving-seat, with plenty of room to expatiate. The coachman was a very
intelligent settler, pressed into the service, because Jengro, the French
Canadian driver, had indulged in a fit of intoxication in opposition to a
temperance meeting held at Truro the evening before.
Our driver had not tasted spirits for thirty years, and finds that a cup
of hot tea at the end of a cold journey is a better stimulant than a glass
of grog.
It was just six o'clock when we left Truro; the shades of evening were
closing round us, and our road lay over fifty miles of nearly uninhabited
country; but there was so much to learn and hear, that we kept up an
animated and unflagging conversation hour after hour. The last cleared
land was passed by seven, and we entered the forest, beginning a long and
tedious ascent of eight miles. At a post-house in the wood we changed
horses, and put on some lanterns, not for the purpose of assisting
ourselves, but to guide the boy-driver of a waggon or "extra," who, having
the responsibility of conducting four horses, came clattering close behind
us.
