CHAPTER LX.
OFF FOR THE STRAIT OF CANSO.—ST. PETER’S AND THE COUNTRY.—DAVID MURDOCH’S HORSES, AND HIS DRIVING.—ARRIVE AT PLASTER COVE.
Monday, July 25. We are out “by the dawn’s early light,” and assist in getting our baggage upon the coach, as David Murdoch calls his two-horse covered wagon, which is to carry us on to the Strait of Canso. We have breakfasted, and all is ready. As I pen these notes, here and there by the wayside, I keep them mainly in the present tense. David, a little fair-complexioned, sandy-whiskered farmer, innkeeper, stage-proprietor, and driver, all in one, is exactly the man for his vocation. Quick in his motions, intelligent and good-tempered, he is entirely to our purpose. He starts his Cape Bretons, a span of light, wiry animals, upon a canter, in our opinion an indiscreet pace. We pass St. Peter’s, a superlative place—superlatively minute, the smallest city in the world. It had, for several years, one house, but has of late been in a more thriving condition. It has now a name on the map, a population of some nine or ten souls, and two houses, a large public work in the shape of a beach, and a little shipping, not able to say how much exactly, as it is all absent but a skiff and a bark canoe, and the wreck of a schooner, in a poor and neglected condition. How long, at this rate of progress, it will take for St. Peter’s to grow out of existence, is a fair question of arithmetic, left for the statist of the island to cipher out. We pause for a moment only, and that in front of a mercantile establishment, if one may guess from a tin-foil-covered paper of tobacco, and astride of it a couple of pipes in the window, but dash through its suburbs, a pig-pen and a hen-roost, and pass the gates of a calf-pen and a potato-patch, and gain the open country, a wild and lonesome tract, half-wooded, and the other half weeds, brush, and stumps of all calibre and colors, from rotten-red and brown down to coal-black, and all torn to pieces, and tangled into one briery wilderness, just fit for the fires that occasionally scour through.
We were mistaken about the indiscretion of David, in his driving, and add two more to the list of those impertinent travellers who hastily pass judgment upon persons and things of which they are quite ignorant. David is the Jehu of the road, and his steeds are chosen, and fitted to their master. Like locomotives, they work with the greater ease and spirit as they wax hotter. For three hours they trotted, galloped, ran, as if something more than horse was in them, and something worse than man was in their driver. There was; as we knew by the flame in his face and about his nostrils, and by his breath that had spirit in it. Around the hills, and at their foot, over bridges, and through the bushy dales, the road described many a Hogarth’s line of beauty, and many a full-blooded S. In whirling through these graceful sinuosities, now strongly on the right wheels, then heavily on the left, flirting the dust or mud into the air, we seemed to swim or fly on the oily brim of peril. Expostulation flashed out upon the lips in vain. A shake of the head, and a knowing smile, sharpened off by the crack of the whip, restored assurance, and fairly straightened all things out. But all went well, and passengers as well as driver became rash and brave, and foolishly came to like and applaud what at first they were disposed to protest against.
A change of horses has enabled David to persist in this extraordinary driving, which brings us to Plaster Cove at noon, where we part with both the mercurial little Scotchman, and Cape Breton. Thus have we coasted, and crossed this British Island, in which, with all that is repulsive and desolate, nature has done much, especially in the picturesque, and where agriculture and commerce have large fields for improvement. To the tourist that loves nature, and who, for the manifold beauties by hill and shore, by woods and waters, is happy to make small sacrifices of personal comfort, I would commend Cape Breton. Your fashionable, whose main object is company, dress, and frivolous pleasure with the gay, and whose only tolerable stopping-place is the grand hotel, had better content himself with reading of this Island.