Acadia / or, A Month with the Blue Noses

by Frederic S. Cozzens

"You was lucky to get in last night," said the master of the hutch, an old, weather-beaten fisherman.

"Yes," replied Picton, surveying the grey head before him with as much complacency as he would a turnip; "and a serene old place it is when we get in."

To this the weather-beaten replied by winking twice with both eyes.

"Rather a dangerous coast," continued Picton, stretching out one thigh before the fire. "I say, don't you fishermen often lose your lives out there?" and he pointed to the mouth of the harbor.

"There was only two lives lost in seventy years," replied the old man (this remarkable fact was confirmed by many persons of whom we asked the same question during our visit), "and one of them was a young man, a stranger here, who was capsized in a boat as he was going out to a vessel in the harbor."

"You are speaking now of lives lost in the fisheries," said Picton, "not in the coasting trade."

"Oh!" replied the old man, shaking his head, "the coasting trade is different; there is a many lives lost in that. Last year I had a brother as sailed out of this in a shallop, on the same day as yon vessel," pointing to the Balaklava; "he went out in company with your captain; he was going to his wedding, he thought, poor fellow, for he was to bring a young wife home with him from Halifax, but he got caught in a storm off Canseau, and we never heard of the shallop again. He was my youngest brother, gentlemen."

It was strange to be seated in that old cottage, listening to so dreary a story, and watching the storm outside. There was a wonderful fascination in it, nevertheless, and I was not a little loth to leave the bright hearth when the sailors from the schooner came for us and carried us on board again to dinner.

The storm continued; but Picton and I found plenty to do that day. Equipped with oil-skin pea-jackets and sou'-westers, with a couple of fish-pughs, or poles, pointed with iron, we started on a cruise after lobsters, in a sort of flat-bottomed skiff, peculiar to the place, called a dingledekooch. And although we did not catch one lobster, yet we did not lose sight of many interesting particulars that were scattered around the harbor. And first of the fisheries. All the people here are directly or indirectly engaged in this business, and to this they devote themselves entirely; farming being scarcely thought of. I doubt whether there is a plough in the place; certainly there was not a horse, in either the old or new town, or a vehicle of any kind, as we found out betimes.

The fishing here, as in all other places along the coast, is carried on in small, clinker-built boats, sharp at both ends, and carrying two sails. It is marvellous with what dexterity these boats are handled; they are out in all weathers, and at all times, night or day, as it happens, and although sometimes loaded to the gunwale with fish, yet they encounter the roughest gales, and ride out storms in safety, that would be perilous to the largest vessels.