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Sandstone was rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many centuries.
Once in a while, in the course of my life, I have found myself in the midst of a tulip-bed of full-dressed, handsome women in all their glory, and when some one among them has shaken her gauzy wings, and sat down before the piano, and then, only giving the keys a soft touch now and then to support her voice, has warbled some sweet, sad melody intertwined with the longings or regrets of some tender-hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as they call the chicks of a new season, and light up the flame of romance in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burnt-out ones, like mine, I was going to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear me say it isn't so, if you like, was perhaps better than to be remembered a few hundred years by a few perfect stanzas, when your gravestone is standing aslant, and your name is covered over with a lichen as big as a militia colonel's cockade, and nobody knows or cares enough about you to scrape it off and set the tipsy old slate-stone upright again.
The high road leads over an extent of ground where the slate-stone lies like a firm floor. In the Campagna of Rome, one would say it is a piece of via appia, or antique road; but it is Kinnakulla's naked skin and bones that we pass over.
The date was as old as 1575. On various parts of the wall were other and ruder monuments of slate-stone, the inscriptions and dates of which were nearly effaced by time.
This was so down to the time of Loyard's death. His successor, Danielou, ministered to the Indians of Medoctec, also, as is shown by the presence of his name on the slate-stone tablet of the Medoctec chapel. But it is probable that Danielou was frequently at Aukpaque, and he certainly had the spiritual oversight of the Acadians at St. Anne's Point. The Indians of the River St.
It must be a dull sensibility that can look on this old slate-stone without a feeling of pathos and a larger charity for the errors of human nature. It is said that one of the convicted witches cursed Judge Hathorne, himself and his descendants forever; but it is more than likely that they all cursed him bitterly enough, and this curse took effect in a very natural and direct manner.
And another method of trying the goodness of slate, is to place the slate-stone lengthwise and perpendicularly in a tub of water, about half a foot deep, care being taken that the upper or unimmersed part of the slate be not accidentally wetted by the hand, or otherwise; let it remain in this state twenty-four hours; if good and firm stone, it will not draw water more than half an inch above the surface of the water, and that perhaps at the edges only, those parts having been a little loosened in the hewing; but a spongy defective stone will draw water to the very top.
The walls were made of flattish stones, moss, and the bones of seals, whales, narwhals, and other Arctic creatures. The stones were laid so that each overlapped the one below it, a very little inwards, and thus the walls approached each other gradually as they rose from the foundation; the top being finally closed by slabs of slate-stone.
The least visited side of Kinnakulla is just the most characteristic, and thither will we go. The road still leads us a long way on this side of the mountain, step by step downwards, in long terraces of rich fields: further down, the slate-stone peers forth in flat layers, a green moss upon it, and it looks like threadbare patches in the green velvet carpet.
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