In the course of an hour more I was on board, and waiting for the turn of the tide, upon which, of necessity, the boat takes her departure. I had missed, after all, seeing the first approach of the tidal wave, and had to content myself with what I have described, and with a short walk in the town, of late esteeming itself noteworthy on account of being the birthplace of General Williams, the hero of Kars, of whose fine personal appearance I have spoken.
We are now at the opening of the Avon into Mines Bay or Basin, as they call this small sea, and look upon scenes of which Longfellow speaks in the first pages of his Evangeline. It is simply a pleasant-looking farming country, checkered with fields of green, now of a yellow tint and then of a blue. Shores of reddish rocks and sand make a pretty foreground line along the west, and rise to the picturesque as they wind away northward. Headlands of gray and red rocks in slopes and precipices stand out in bold relief crowned with underwood and loftier trees. The clouds are clearing away before the breeze, and letting us have a sparkling sea, a fine blue sky, and landscapes dappled with light and shadow.
Parsboro, a village on the north shore of the Basin, enjoys more than its share of broad, gravelly beach, overhung with clifted and woody bluffs. One fresh from the dead walls of a great city would be delighted with the sylvan shores of Parsboro. The beach, with all its breadth, a miracle of pebbly beauty, slants steeply to the surf, which is now rolling up in curling clouds of green and white. Here we turn westward into the great bay itself, going with a tide that rushes like a mighty river toward a cataract, whirling, boiling, breaking in half moons of crispy foam. Behind us is the blue reach of Chignecto Bay, the northern of the two long and winding horns of the main body of water, up which it would be play for a fortnight to hunt romantic scenery, and witness the “bore,” that most brilliant of all tidal displays.
Here is a broad sea, moving with strange velocity for a sea. The prospect to the south is singularly fine. Nova Scotia, sloping from the far-off sky gently down to the shores, its fields and villages and country dwellings gleaming in the warm noon-day, or darkening in the shadow of a transient cloud—a contrast to the northern, New Brunswick coast, iron-bound and covered with dark forests. Drops from a coming shower are wasting their sweet freshness upon the briny deep, an agreeable discord in the common music of the day, and chime in, among pleasant incidents, with the talk of the Prince Edward’s man, and the sparkling conversation of the Newfoundland gentleman. “And so sail we” into the harbor of St. Johns, the last of the waters of this divine apostle, in time for supper and a pleasant ramble about the city. You might call it the city of hills.
Thursday, July 28, 1859. St. Johns, N. B. This is my last date, and I write it out in full, in the light of a fine morning, on the deck of the steamer for Portland. The coast of Maine, truly picturesque as it is, with its rocky points, lake-like bays, and islands bristling in their dark evergreens like porcupines, and particularly Mount Desert Island and Frenchman’s Bay, is the mildest form of Newfoundland scenery as you see it on the Atlantic side, with an additional dressing of forest and vegetation, sparsely studded with towns and habitations.
Speaking of Mount Desert Island, recalls Cole to memory, who was, I believe, the first landscape painter of our country that visited that picturesque region. I remember with what enthusiasm he spoke of the coast scenery—the fine surf upon Sand Beach—the play of the surge in the caverns of Great Head—the Ægean beauty of Frenchman’s Bay—the forests, and the wild, rugged mountains, from the tops of which he could count a multitude of sails upon the blue ocean, and follow the rocky shores and sparkling breakers for many and many a mile. Familiar to me as all that has long since become, I shall not pass it to-day without emotion.
Grand Manan, a favorite summer haunt of the painter, is the very throne of the bold and romantic. The high, precipitous shores, but for the woods which beautify them, are quite in the style of Labrador. I look upon its grand old cliffs with double interest from the fact that he has made me familiar with its people and scenery. As it recedes from my view, and becomes a dot in the boundless waters, I will put the period to this record.
THE END.