Canoeing on the St. John River
The following description of a canoe trip on the Nashwaak is typical of hundreds of similar journeys that can be taken along the course recently traced, and indeed on any of the rivers and waterways, great and small, with which the province is so liberally endowed. As it is most convenient to make this particular excursion from Fredericton, that place is taken as the starting point from which the canoe puts out.
It is a bright morning, the air is playing in a gentle breeze, and the St. John River gleams with many a dancing ripple as we take our way well up stream to drop down quietly with the current as we drink in the glorious view on every hand. Higher up, where the banks become bolder, the lumbermen’s piers of stone, cribbed in with timber, and overgrown with young tree shoots and wild-flowers in profusion, line the centre of the stream like so many ornamental gardens.
Yon shimmering surface in the distant valley, at the foot of a bold hill, is not a placid lake bathed in the beams of the early sun—it is a white and fleecy morning mist catching the side rays horizontally and reflecting them in long pencils of light.
NEW BRUNSWICK SCENES
1. Boating on the Nashwaak 2. A New Brunswick Waterfall 3. Boating on the Nashwaaksis 4. Armstrong’s Brook, Jacquet River 5. New Brunswick Farm Scene—Pigs in Clover
At times the hills and woodland over there terminate abruptly in long stretches of perfectly smooth meadow-land, stretching out like a well-laid carpet, and with only an occasional high tree by the edge to mark the course of the river.
We are nearly opposite the Nashwaak, and paddling across the northern half of the broad St. John we reach the rich meadows that lie at the mouth of the stream upon which we shall soon float.
Gliding up stream with easy paddling, the covered bridge is reached and we thread our way through the loose floating boards and made-up rafts of deal that mark the lumberman’s highway. A little further up, however, a stop is made, for here is a boom of heavy timbers, chained directly across the stream. We soon find a place where there is a clear waterway near the shore, some three or four feet wide, and pushing through this we speed on.