I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive and sufficient.He only said,"She's a yelper."Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions in Baddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very good schools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sister would do credit to Boston scholars even.You would not say that the place was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is an orderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town.Book-agents visit it with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, which is said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in that direction yet.I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax, supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St.John; but so far as I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophers under whose instructions we have become the well-informed people we are.
The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one's opportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday.There seemed to be no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on the skeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within the statute.No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyond the island to fish for cod,--although, as that fish is ready to bite, and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excuses for angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw a line for another sort of fish.My earliest recollections are of the codfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,--his sacred tail pointing the way the wind went.I did not know then why this emblem should be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew why codfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table.But these associations invested this plebeian fish with something of a religious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.
Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we did not know to what to lay the quiet on Monday.But its peacefulness continued.I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and the traders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt that he had come into a place of rest.The promise of the red sky the evening before was fulfilled in another royal day.There was an inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.
In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of sluggishness.Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.
Far from it.The reader was never yet advised to go to any place, which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.
If he discovers it himself, the case is different.We know too well what would happen.A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints, their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel, their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it.And the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.
There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray twilight.You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure.
There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is lacking in many scenes of more pretension.No.We advise no person to go to Cape Breton.But if any one does go, he need not lack occupation.If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter, he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed.He may also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on the Matjorie River.As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the salmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook in his nose.The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can be caught whenever he will bite.The day we went for him appeared to be an off-day, a sort of holiday with him.
There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail to visit.That is St.Ann's Bay.He will go light of baggage, for he must hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch of St.Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat.