[CHAPTER XXV.]
THE RECALL.
In compiling this Journal, Squire, my object has been less to give you the details of my cruise, than to furnish you with my remarks on men and things in general. Climate, locality, and occupation form or vary character, but man is the same sort of critter everywhere. To know him thoroughly, he must be studied in his various aspects. When I learned drawing, I had an India-rubber figure, with springs in it, and I used to put it into all sorts of attitudes. Sometimes it had its arms up, and sometimes down, now a-kimbo, and then in a boxing posture. I stuck out its legs or made it stand bolt upright, and put its head every way I could think of, and so on. It taught me to draw, and showed me the effect of light and shade. So in sketching human character, feelings, prejudices, and motives of action, I have considered man at one time as a politician, a preacher, or a trader, and at another as a countryman or a citizen, as ignorant or wise, and so on. In this way I soon learned to take his gauge as you do a cask of spirits, and prove his strength or weakness by the bead I could raise on him.
If I know anything of these matters, and you seem to consait I do, why I won’t act “Peter Funk”1 to myself, but this I will say, “Human natur is my weakness.” Now I think it best to send you only such portions of my Journal as will interest you, for a mere diary of a cruise is a mere nothing. So I skip over my sojourn at Canzeau, and a trip the doctor and I took to Prince Edward’s Island, as containing nothing but a sort of ship’s log, and will proceed to tell you about our sayings and doings at that celebrated place Louisburg, in Cape Breton, which was twice besieged and taken, first by our colony-forefathers from Boston, and then by General Wolfe, the Quebec hero, and of which nothing now remains but its name, which you will find in history, and its harbour, which you will find in the map. The French thought building a fortress was colonization, and the English that blowing it up was the right way to settle the country. The world is wiser now.
1 At petty auctions in the States, a person is employed to bid up articles, in order to raise their price. Such a person is called a Peter Funk, probably from that name having frequently been given when things were bought in. In short, it is now used as a “puffer.”—BARTLETT.
As we approached the place the Doctor said, “You see, Mr Slick, the entrance to Louisburg is pointed out to voyagers coming from the eastward, by the ruins of an old French lighthouse, and the lantern of a new one, on the rocky wall of the north shore, a few minutes after approaching which the mariner shoots from a fretful sea into the smooth and capacious port. The ancient ruins display even yet the most attractive object to the eye. The outline of these neglected mounds, you observe, is boldly marked against the sky, and induces a visit to the spot where the fortress once stood. Louisburg is everywhere covered with a mantle of turf, and without the assistance of a native it is not easy to discover even the foundations of the public buildings. Two or three casemates still remain, appearing like the mouths of huge ovens, surmounted by a great mass of earth and stone. These caverns, originally the safeguards of powder and other combustible munitions of war, now serve to shelter the flocks of sheep that graze upon the grass that conceals them. The floors are rendered nearly impassable by the ordure of these animals, but the vaulted ceilings are adorned by dependent stalactites, like icicles in shape, but not in purity of colour, being of a material somewhat similar to oyster shells. The mass of stone1 and brick that composed the buildings, and which is now swept so completely from its site, has been distributed along the shores of America, as far as Halifax and Boston, having been successively carried away for the erections in those places and the intermediate coast, which contains many a chimney bearing the memorials of Louisburg. The remains of the different batteries on the island and round the harbour are still shown by the inhabitants, as well as of the wharves, stockade, and sunken ships of war. On gaining the walls above the town, they are found to consist of a range of earthen fortifications with projecting angles, and extending as already mentioned from the harbour to the sea, interrupted at intervals by large pits, said to have been produced by the efforts of the captors to blow up the walls. From these heights, the glacis slopes away to the edge of the bog outside, forming a beautiful level walk, though now only enjoyed by the sheep, being, like the walls, carpeted by short turf. At the termination of this line of fortification on the sea-shore, is a huge and uncouth black rock, which appears to have been formerly quarried for building stone, large quantities ready hewn being still scattered round it, and gathered in masses as if prepared for that use.
1 See Haliburton’s “History of Nova Scotia.”
“The prospect from the brow of the dilapidated ramparts is one of the most impressive that the place affords. Looking to the south-west over the former city, the eye wanders upon the interminable ocean, its blue rolling waves occupying three-fourths of the scene, and beyond them, on the verge of the horizon, a dense bank of fog sweeps along with the prevailing S.W. wind, precluding all hopes of discerning any vista beyond that curtain. Turning landwards towards the south-west, over the spacious bog that lies at the foot of the walls, the sight is met by a range of low wood in the direction of Gabarus, and can penetrate no further. The harbour is the only prospect to the northward, and immediately in its rear the land rises so as to prevent anymore distant view, and even the harbour appears dwindled to a miniature of itself, being seen in the same picture with the mighty ocean that nearly surrounds the beholder. The character of the whole scene is melancholy, presenting the memorials of former life and population, contrasted with its present apparent isolation from the natives of the earth. The impression is not weakened by the sight of the few miserable huts scattered along the shores of the port, and the little fishing vessels, scarcely perceptible in the mountain-swell of the ocean; they serve but to recall painfully the images of elegant edifices that once graced the foreground, and of proud flags that waved upon the face of that heaving deep.
“It is not easy to give a reason for the continued desolation of Louisburg. A harbour opening directly upon the sea, whence egress is unobstructed and expeditious, and return equally convenient at all seasons; excellent fishing grounds at the very entrance; space on shore for all the operations of curing the fish; every advantage for trade and the fisheries is offered in vain. The place would appear to be shunned by tacit consent. The shallops come from Arichet and St Peter’s Bay to fish at its very mouth, but no one sets up his establishment there. The merchants resort to every station in its vicinity, to Main-a-Dieu, the Bras d’Or, St Anne, Inganish, nay, even Cape North, places holding out no advantage to compare with those of Louisburg, yet no one ventures there. The fatality that hangs over places of fallen celebrity seems to press heavily on this once valued spot.”
“Massa Doctor,” said Sorrow, when he heard this description, “peers to me, dem English did gib de French goss widout sweetenin’, most particular jess dat are a nateral fac. By golly, but dey was strange folks boff on ’em. Ki dey must been gwine stracted, sure as you born, when dey was decomposed (angry) wid each other, to come all de way out here to fight. Lordy gracious, peers to me crossin’ de sea might a cooled them, sposin’ dar hair was rumpled.”
“You are right, Sorrow,” said I; “and, Doctor, niggers and women often come to a right conclusion, though they cannot give the right reasons for it, don’t they?”