Baddeck and That Sort of Thing | Page 7

in the world, out of Baddeck, who knew anything about it lives in
Boston, and sells tickets to it, or rather towards it.
There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of
it, when the traveler is settled simply as to his destination, and commits
himself to his unknown fate and all the anticipations of adventure
before him. We experienced this pleasure as we ascended to the deck of
the steamboat and snuffed the fresh air of Boston Harbor. What a
beautiful harbor it is, everybody says, with its irregularly indented
shores and its islands. Being strangers, we want to know the names of
the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has a national reputation,
pointed out. As usual on a steamboat, no one is certain about the names,
and the little geographical knowledge we have is soon hopelessly
confused. We make out South Boston very plainly: a tourist is looking
at its warehouses through his opera- glass, and telling his boy about a

recent fire there. We find out afterwards that it was East Boston. We
pass to the stern of the boat for a last look at Boston itself; and while
there we have the pleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and the
State House. We do this with easy familiarity; but where there are so
many tall factory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the Monument
as one may think.
The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned air
of the land. The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like the top of
a glass of champagne. We intend by and by to sit down and look at it
for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasing ourselves with the
shifting and dancing of the waves. Now we are busy running about
from side to side to see the islands, Governor's, Castle, Long, Deer, and
the others. When, at length, we find Fort Warren, it is not nearly so
grim and gloomy as we had expected, and is rather a pleasure-place
than a prison in appearance. We are conscious, however, of a patriotic
emotion as we pass its green turf and peeping guns. Leaving on our
right Lovell's Island and the Great and Outer Brewster, we stand away
north along the jagged Massachusetts shore. These outer islands look
cold and wind-swept even in summer, and have a hardness of outline
which is very far from the aspect of summer isles in summer seas. They
are too low and bare for beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring
and humble description. Nature makes some compensation for this
lowness by an eccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque
on the map, and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a
slender arm with knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war
club. We sit and watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight.
Its curves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villages
and dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the white
spires, the summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with an
occasional orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and then the
flag of some many-piazzaed hotel. The sunlight is the glory of it all; it
must have quite another attraction--that of melancholy--under a gray
sky and with a lead-colored water foreground.
There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention from the
study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers had gone on
the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. The passengers were
mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and had the listless

provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler or two, and a few
gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed in their uncomfortable
Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen to the boat, it was
doubtful if there were persons on board who could draw up and pass
the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers. I heard one of these
Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficient to repress the
mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom, enlightening an admiring
friend as to his idiosyncrasies. It appeared that he was that sort of a man
that, if a man wanted anything of him, he had only to speak for it
"wunst;" and that one of his peculiarities was an instant response of the
deltoid muscle to the brain, though he did not express it in that
language. He went on to explain to his auditor that he was so
constituted physically that whenever he saw a fight, no matter whose
property it was, he lost all control of himself. This sort of confidence
poured out to a single friend,