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May 1, the first Sunday the Provincials spent at Canso, was a day of great and multifarious activity, both sacred and profane.
"That girl of Dave's it seems she's moved to Canso with her folks, and Dave's gone there. He's probably there before this maybe left again. She's an old plug, the Flamingo, but she ought've made Canso before this. He only stayed a few hours here and left Monday."
On the 25th of November 1758, Captain Nicholls sailed from the Bay of Canso, leading other six transports, with a strong breeze at north-west. All the captains agreed to make the best of their way to France, and not to go to Louisbourg, as it was a bad time of the year to beat on that coast, and then took leave of the agent who was bound thither.
At night our constant follower, the fog, shuts in, and the captain steering off the Cape, we lay by, jumping and rolling in a northeast sea, waiting for daylight to assist us to Cape Canso Harbor and the Little Ant.
The Acadian French in the vicinity were afraid to join du Vivier openly. The siege dragged on. The British received a slight reinforcement. The French did not. And in September du Vivier suddenly retired without attempting an assault. The burning of Canso and the attack on Annapolis stirred up the wrath of New England.
And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel. Here is the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck? It is Saturday morning; if we cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained in Boston. And who knows what we shall find if we get there? A forlorn fishing-station, a dreary hotel? Suppose we cannot get on, and are forced to stay here?
The only settlement passed through has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could see little river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belong to that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extract nothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a great relief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon the straggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.
The weird voice of the old woman was exciting in itself, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancing about this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by night and alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. This fugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the following simple poem: "There was an old man of Canso, Unable to sit or stan' so.
The only difficulty that they had to encounter was in crossing the Strait of Canso; but after following the shore for a few miles, they came to a place where there was a barge, used to transport cattle. Two or three French fishermen lived here, and they took the whole party over to the opposite side. After this they continued their journey. That journey seemed to Claude altogether too short.
When I asked him why he ran so, Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so, All down the Gut of Canso." This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of Antigonish. In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore on slowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in the jolting wagon.
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