Taking Leave Of The Amusingly Miscellaneous Party In The "House-Room," I
Left Shediac For The Bend, In Company With Seven Persons From Prince
Edward Island, In A Waggon Drawn By Two Ponies, And Driven By The
Landlord, A Shrewd Specimen Of A Colonist.
This mode of transit deserves a passing notice.
The waggon consisted of an
oblong shallow wooden tray on four wheels; on this were placed three
boards resting on high unsteady props, and the machine was destitute of
springs. The ponies were thin, shaggy, broken-kneed beings, under fourteen
hands high, with harness of a most meagre description, and its cohesive
qualities seemed very small, if I might judge from the frequency with
which the driver alighted to repair its parts with pieces of twine, with
which his pockets were stored, I suppose in anticipation of such
occasions.
These poor little animals took nearly four hours to go fourteen miles, and
even this rate of progression was only kept up by the help of continual
admonitions from a stout leather thong.
It was a dismal evening, very like one in England at the end of November -
the air cold and damp - and I found the chill from wet clothes and an east
wind anything but agreeable. The country also was extremely uninviting,
and I thought its aspect more gloomy than that of Nova Scotia. Sometimes
we traversed swamps swarming with bullfrogs, on corduroy roads which
nearly jolted us out of the vehicle, then dreary levels abounding in
spindly hacmetac, hemlock, and birch-trees; next we would go down into a
cedar-swamp alive with mosquitoes.
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