Baddeck and That Sort of Thing | Page 9

Noroway,"
"They hadna sailed upon the sea A day but barely three,
Till loud and boisterous grew the wind, And gurly grew the sea."
The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in an
August holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch the
suggestive shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, and
few women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stools that
the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers. There is no
scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one of those stools. And
when the traveler is at sea, with the land failing away in his horizon,
and has to create his own scenery by an effort of the imagination, these
stools are no assistance to him. The imagination, when one is sitting,
will not work unless the back is supported. Besides, it began to be cold;
notwithstanding the shiny, specious appearance of things, it was cold,
except in a sheltered nook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing
to be complained of by persons who had left the parching land in order
to get cool. They knew that there would be a wind and a draught
everywhere, and that they would be occupied nearly all the time in
moving the little stools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun,
or out of something that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people enjoy
riding on a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along
in pleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel any ennui,
as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizes them when
a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away. "Did you see the
porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On our steamboat there
was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just as plain, off to the
east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one. I wonder where all
these men come from who always see a whale. I never was on a
sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.
We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed close
by the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see the
lanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacher all
at play; and then we bore away, straight over the trackless Atlantic,
across that part of the map where the title and the publisher's name are

usually printed, for the foreign city of St. John. It was after we passed
these lighthouses that we did n't see the whale, and began to regret the
hard fate that took us away from a view of the Isles of Shoals. I am not
tempted to introduce them into this sketch, much as its surface needs
their romantic color, for truth is stronger in me than the love of giving a
deceitful pleasure. There will be nothing in this record that we did not
see, or might not have seen. For instance, it might not be wrong to
describe a coast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were
performing our morning toilets in our staterooms. The traveler owes a
duty to his readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too
indifferent to go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village
where a landing is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by
his indolence. He should describe the village.
I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinating on
the map as that of Norway. We had all the feelings appropriate to
nearness to it, but we couldn't see it. Before we came abreast of it night
had settled down, and there was around us only a gray and melancholy
waste of salt water. To be sure it was a lovely night, with a young
moon in its sky,
"I saw the new moon late yestreen Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"
and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push so boldly
down into the sea. At length we saw them,--faint, dusky shadows in the
horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a most poetical light. We
made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid for our journey by the sight
of this famous island, even at such a distance. I pointed out the hills to
the man at the wheel, and asked if we should go any nearer to Mt.
Desert.
"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in this
country have for inquisitive travelers,--" them's Camden Hills. You
won't see