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The masters or supercargoes of English vessels receive, besides their regular pay of six pounds per month, a commission of five per cent. on all sales; they being responsible for any debts which they may allow the natives to contract. Ashore at Cape Lahon, the scene of the recent hostilities between the French and the natives. We landed in large heavy canoes, flat-bottomed and square-sided.
Three hundred years ago the defeated Welsh had turned to bay here while Kenwalch of Wessex and his men could not follow them; and now it seemed likely that here in turn would Wessex stand her ground. It is a great square-sided patch of rolling, forest-covered country, maybe twelve miles long from north to south, and half as much across.
Some are square-sided, others tapered, generally finished with beautiful little brass caddy balls as feet, and often with brass ring handles and ornaments. The inside of the caddy was divided into two compartments, usually boxes lined with lead or lead paper, and frequently a central compartment for a sugar bowl was added.
You see a thousand boatmen, raftmen, and millmen, some warping dingy scows, others loading huge square-sided ships; busy gangs of men in fustian jackets, engaged in running off the newly sawed timber; and the streets bustling with storekeepers, lumber- merchants, and market-men; all combining to produce a chaos of activity very uncommon in the towns of our North American colonies.
There were timber-ships, huge and square-sided, unmistakeably from Quebec or Miramichi green high-sterned Dutch galliots American ships with long black hulls and tall raking masts and those far-famed "Black Ball" clippers, the Marco Polo and the Champion of the Seas, in short, the ships of all nations, with their marked and distinguishing peculiarities.
At twelve we reached Shediac in New Brunswick, a place from which an enormous quantity of timber is annually exported. It is a village in a marsh, on a large bay surrounded by low wooded hills, and presents every appearance of unhealthiness. Huge square-sided ships, English, Dutch, and Austrian, were swallowing up rafts of pine which kept arriving from the shore.
Forcing his way through the crowds of passengers to the forward part of the boat, he stood where he could get the full sweep of the wonderful panorama: The jagged purple line of the vast city stretching as far as the eye could reach; with its flat-top, square-sided, boxlike buildings, with here and there a structure taller than the others; the flash of light from Trinity's spire, its cross aflame; the awkward, crab-like movements of innumerable ferry-boats, their gaping alligator mouths filled with human flies; the impudent, nervous little tugs, spitting steam in every passing face; the long strings of sausage-linked canalers kept together by grunting, slow-moving tows; the great floating track-yards bearing ponderous cars eight days from the Pacific without break of bulk; the skinny, far-reaching fingers of innumerable docks clutching prey of barge, steamer, and ship; the stately ocean-liner moving to sea, scattering water-bugs of boats, scows and barges as it glided on its way: all this stirred his imagination and filled him with a strange resolve.
There were huge, square-sided, bluff-bowed, low-masted ships, lying at anchor in interminable lines, and little, dirty, vicious-looking steam-tugs twirling in and out among them; and there were grim-looking muzzles of guns protruding through embrasures, and peripatetic fur caps and bayonets behind parapets of very solid masonry.
The main hatch was on, but there was a little cabin aft, with a small stove in it, and six berths, in which the crew lived. There was a table in the cabin, and on it were a couple of tumblers, a thick-necked, square-sided glass bottle, on its side, a broken pipe, and wet marks, and ashes of tobacco, as if people had very lately been drinking there. "What's wrong here?" said Hanks.
Its captain always felt a certain admiration upon doubling Cape Croisette, and noting the vast maritime curves opening out before the prow. In the center of it was an abrupt and bare hill, jutting into the sea, sustaining on its peak the basilica and square-sided tower of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde.
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