Mrs. Munroe has thirteen to look after, and at the time was cooking enough to last most of them a week in the woods, where they will cut pulpwood. Norma, the eldest of eleven, is now a trained nurse in Boston, and earns $25 each week. The local doctor says there is not another girl in the county with as little education as she had a chance to secure who could have passed the examination. “You know the eldest child in a large family does not have great opportunity for education.” Norma spent three weeks at home last summer, but could not stand it longer. A smart little shower passed to the westward while the lunch was being disposed of, the only one that occurred during the day.
My course from East Jordan lay through woods; one glimpse over the head of Green Harbor was the only variation. If one can judge by the names of places the people here have no great inventive faculty. For instance, the five towns on Jordan Bay are Jordan, Jordan Ferry, Jordan Bay, Lower Jordan Bay and East Jordan.
The ox, which is the common carrier of this region, is seen everywhere on the road, always harnessed to a yoke which is fitted around the horns so that all the pull comes on the neck. The Biblical injunction, “Be ye not stiff necked as your fathers were” would never do for Nova Scotian oxen, whose value would be greatly lessened were they other than stiff necked as their fathers were. Their beautiful, great, soft eyes indicate a habit of thought that would hardly make them entertaining companions, but they accomplish much heavy hauling.
One has much time to moralize thusly while plodding along the wood roads that for the most part offer little to the imagination, unless a partridge whirrs up and over the treetops or scurries through the brush, as sometimes occurs.
One who picked me up about two miles out of Lockport and regaled me with much talk by the way, had somewhat to say concerning his father-in-law, a native of these parts, but to his way of thinking made of a superior brand of clay.
During the days of the Fenian raid along in the sixties, when all up and down the coast there was much excitement, a stranger appeared on this shore against whom the people with one accord shut their doors, dreading they knew not what. After being rebuffed at several houses he finally sought shelter with father-in-law who, fearing nothing, promptly took him in and learned in the course of time that the visitor was of Prince Edward Island, that his brother-in-law had been arrested for smuggling, and that he was the only witness against him. If he could keep in hiding until after the trial there could be no conviction, and as his host had little sympathy with government efforts to suppress the illicit traffic, the stranger was kept within his gates until he could safely return unto his own people. Ever after when he of the sheltering hand visited the home land of the former refugee, he was received with open arms and entertained with the best.
LOCKPORT AND THE WAY TO LIVERPOOL.
At Lockport I put up at Mrs. Mack’s “New Hillcrest,” from which it is but “two minutes’ walk to the celebrated Lockport beach,” a pebbly, crescent shaped stretch, where the waves break well out, owing to the shoal water.