Tough fibred oak, that it might have stood for fifty years more
without injury; while a little judicious propping and repairing,
perhaps, would have preserved it for a longer period than that. Poor
Annapolitans, who had no Centennial Exhibition to teach them the value
of historical relics and "old things".
On the Maine Central Railroad, quite near the track at Winslow, we
passed, on our way here, an old block-house, which is carefully
preserved.
Not long ago, the Canadian Government received orders that all
buildings, except the barrack and magazine, must be removed from the
fort enclosure; yet a garrulous old Scotchman still resides there in a
tiny house, and plies his trade as cobbler.
His delight is to regale strangers with preposterous "yarns", and
accounts of his adventures in her Majesty's service; accounts which must
be taken with considerably more than the proverbial grain of salt, but
to which we listened with delight and amazingly sober countenances. When
asked how it happens that he still remains in the fort grounds, he
answers, "I writ out home, to Angland, to say that I served in the
arrumy fur thurty yeer, and I know the ould gurrul will let me stay."
(There's respect for a sovereign!)
He talks wisely of the "bumpruf", a word which we have some difficulty
in translating into bomb proof; and we are, apparently, overpowered
with wonder as he explains how "with a few berrls av pouther they cud
send ivery thing flying, and desthroy the whole place, avery bit av
it."
Presumably misled by our simulated credulity, he goes on to describe a
well in front of the magazine, and says, "When they wanted to get red
av throoblesome preesoners, ploomp they'd go in the watter, and thet was
the last av 'em'" Suffice it to say, that the oldest inhabitant has no
recollection of the slightest trace of such a well.
