Illness. Here, too, as everywhere in pioneer life, the women suffered as much as, if not more than, the men. When sickness came upon them they endured it patiently, with that kind of meek despair which looks upon illness either as fate or as the will of the Lord. Fortunately for them, a young girl, who had been born on the Island, became at sixteen a skilful nurse. She was sought from far and near, and taken out at night when she had to be blindfolded on account of the storms. The description of one of her visits must be given in her own words, as she told it when she was eighty-four:—
The Indian's Squaw. "Once I and my husband were abed a howling night, and I heard a knock. Says I, 'Jim, I bet that's for me; get up and see.' And I sorter guessed it was a foreigner. And he came back and says, 'P. (that's what he called me, short for Parker), it's an Indian from down on the Narrows; and he's been for the doctor, and he's down at Robinson, and won't be fetched 'cause he's having a good time.' So I got up and dressed and went down with him; for the squaw's skin was as dear to her husband as a white woman's is to her, and her heart may be just as good to God. And when I got there I saw two squaws, and one was all in a heap; and they made eyes at me, and I didn't know whether it meant murder or not, only I guessed not. And I says, 'Sister, what is it?' And she says, her husband tell her 'white doctor no come. You white woman come and make his squaw live.' So I went to work. And when all was right, they wanted me to take a blanket and lie down; but I could no way make believe Indian, so I sits up till morning. Then the Indian asked me what he should give me; and I told him my gineral price was three dollars, but when folks was no better off than I, I turned in and asked nothin'. And he says, 'We give five dollars if it's a girl, and three dollars if it's a boy.' 'Well,' I says, 'sure enough it's a boy'; and I come home. And next day he travels down here [to the Pool], and says me better than man doctor, and wished he could give me twenty dollars."
Some sixty years after this incident had occurred, when Mrs. Parker was driven up to the Narrows where the squaw had lived, and past the Tyn-Y-Coed and cottages, that she might see the changes which time had wrought, she exclaimed, "As the Bible says, now I can die in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation, I will not say of the Lord, but of Campobello."
The Admiral. The salvation, such as it was, came slowly; at first through Admiral William Fitz-William Owen. His life was curious and pathetic, from the time when a boy five years old, an inmate of the artillery barracks, he replied, on being asked his last name, "I don't know, mother can tell you," to his old age, when, dressed in admiral's uniform, he paced back and forth on a plank walk, built out into the bay, over the high cliffs of the shore, in memory of the quarter deck of his beloved ship. Conceited and religious, authoritative and generous, humorous and ceremonious, disputatious and frank, a lover of women more than of wine, his fame still lingers in many a name and tradition.
His Growth. When very young, a friend of his father's took him away from the barracks and from his mother, of whom he never again heard. He was boarded and punished in various homes in North Wales, but as recompense wore a cocked hat and a suit of scarlet made from an old coat of his father,—"the first sensible mark of the earthly pre-existence of some one who claimed to be my father" he had ever received, wrote the Admiral, in his later days. He learned the catechism and collects, repeated the Lord's prayer on his knees, and thought of raising the devil by saying it backwards; but he never completed the charm, and for four or five years after was self-punished by his fear that the devil was waiting for him at the church door.
By degrees he learned something of his father, the William Owen of Pondicherry fame, who had died while he was a baby. When about fourteen he went to a mathematical academy, where his "progress was as remarkable as it had before been in classics." Here religious instruction consisted in going to church "to talk with our fingers to the girls of a school who used the adjoining pew." As a boy, he "had no other distinct idea of our Lord Jesus Christ than that he was a good man."
His Dreams. His belief in the direct interposition of the Creator on his behalf frequently solaced him in these youthful days of loneliness and misdemeanor. The literal and instant fulfillment of two dreams on special and unthought-of subjects were convincing proof, to quote his own words, that "they were sent by God Almighty himself, as a simple way of assuring me that as I was under his eye he would himself take care of me."
Man-of-War Garden. So he grew up to be presumptuous, adventurous, resolute, and strong. In 1788 he became a midshipman in a line-of-battle ship, in due course of time cruising in the Bay of Fundy. For three years his man-of-war was stationed at Campobello. The crew often went ashore in summer, tending a little garden at Havre de Lutre (Harbor of the Otter), called Man-of-War Garden, which in turn gave its name to the headland. The garden was brilliant with dahlias and marigolds, which were presented in overweighted bouquets to the few Island belles, who, in return for such unexpected courtesies, consented in winter to dance on the ship's deck, regardless of their frozen ear-tips. Two of the midshipmen were as dauntless in pedestrianism as in love, and for a wager started on a perilous walk around icy cliffs which threw them headlong. Their comrades buried them under the gay flowers, and sailed away from the henceforth ill-omened garden. And the little store near by, kept by one Butler, lost its customers and passed into tradition.
The Boy as Midshipman. With Owen's entrance into the naval service as boy officer "commenced," he wrote in later years, "a public life which may be said to have had no sensible intermission until the close of 1831, or forty-three years, during which I have served under every naval man of renown, and was honored by the friendship of Nelson. From the year 1797 I have held commands and been entrusted with some important service, for the most part in remote parts of the world. My character, if I may be allowed to draw it myself, contained much of good and bad. The latter, perhaps, I contrived to veil sufficiently not to mar my reputation; but, by the grace of God, he has not left me without his spirit of self-conviction.... At forty-four I married His Settlement at Campobello. "The Quoddy Hermit,"—this was the name he chose when, with the rank of admiral, he came back to Campobello to live. He brought with him building material and the frame of a house taken from Rice's Island, and erected his habitation where is now the Owen. In the grove at the northern end of the present hotel he planted two or three English oaks. He placed the sun dial of his vessel in the garden fronting his house, and put a section of his beloved quarter deck close to the shore, not far from the seedling oaks. There, pacing up and down in uniform, he lived over again the days of his attack upon the Spanish pirate. Proud as he was of the two cannon he then captured, there is no one living to tell who bled or who swore, or whether the Spanish galleon sank or paid ransom. He placed the cannon on the Point, where they bid defiance to American fishing boats. In later years one was taken to Flagstaff Hill whenever a salute was to be given in honor of the Queen's birthday, or a fish fair, for such fairs were famous.