Dense Forests, Impassable Morasses, And
Sedgy Streams Always Bounded The Immediate Prospect, And The Clearings
Were Few And Far Between.
Nor was the conversation of my companions
calculated to beguile a tedious journey; it was on "snatching,"
"snarlings" and other puerilities of island politics, corn, sugar, and
molasses.
About dusk we reached the Bend, a dismal piece of alluvial swampy-looking
land, drained by a wide, muddy river, called the Petticodiac, along the
shore of which a considerable shipbuilding village is located. The tide
here rises and falls twenty-four feet, and sixty at the mouth of the
river, in the Bay of Fundy. It was a dispiriting view - acres of mud bare
at low water, and miles of swamp covered with rank coarse grass,
intersected by tide-streams, which are continually crossed on rotten
wooden bridges without parapets. This place had recently been haunted by
fever and cholera.
As there was a slight incline into the village, our miserable ponies
commenced a shambling trot, the noise of which brought numerous idlers to
the inn-door to inquire the news. This inn was a rambling, unpainted
erection of wood, opposite to a "cash, credit, and barter store," kept by
an enterprising Caledonian - an additional proof of the saying which
ascribes ubiquity to "Scots, Newcastle grindstones, and Birmingham
buttons." A tidy, bustling landlady, very American in her phraseology, but
kind in her way, took me under her especial protection, as forty men were
staying in the house, and there was an astonishing paucity of the softer
sex; indeed, in all my subsequent travels I met with an undue and rather
disagreeable preponderance of the "lords of the creation."
Not being inclined to sit in the "parlour" with a very motley company, I
accompanied the hostess into the kitchen, and sat by the fire upon a
chopping-block, the most luxurious seat in the apartment.
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