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!
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