Читать книгу After Icebergs with a Painter - Louis Legrand Noble - Страница 7

Table of Contents

HALIFAX.

We have now been lying for hours off Halifax. The fog appears to be in a profound slumber. Whistle, bell and big guns have no power to wake it up. The waves themselves have gone to sleep under the fleecy covering. Old Ocean lazily breathes and dreams. The top-mast, lofty and slim, marks and flourishes on the misty sky, as an idler marks the sand with his cane. Pricked on by our impatience, back and forth we step the deck, about as purposeless as leopards step their cage. They are letting off the steam. It is flowing up from the great fountains, a deep and solemn voice, a grand ventriloquism, that muffles in its breadth and fulness all the smaller sounds, as the mighty roar dampens the noisy dashings of the cataract. What a sublime translation of human skill and genius is an engine, this stupendous creature of iron! How splendid are its polished limbs! What power in all those easy motions! What execution in those still and oily manœuvres!

Among the ladies there is one of more than ordinary beauty. Luxuriant, dark hair, a fair complexion with the bloom of health, a head and neck that would attract a sculptor, and surpassingly fine, black eyes. There is a power in beauty. Why has not God given it to us all? You shall answer me that in heaven. There is indeed a power in beauty. It goes forth from this young woman on all sides, like rays from some central light. I have called her a New England girl, but she turns out to be Welsh.

How like magic is the work of this fog! Instantly almost it is pulled apart like a fleece of wool, and lo! the heavens, the ocean, and the rugged shores. A pilot comes aboard from a fishing-boat, looking as rough and craggy as if he had been, toad-like, blasted out of the rocks of his flinty country, so brown and warty is his skin, so shaggy are his beard and hair, so sail-like and tarry is his raiment. The ancient mariner for all the world! His skinny hand touches no common mortal. His glittering eye looks right on, as he moves with silent importance to the place where shine the gilded buttons of the captain.

This is a wild northern scene. Hills, bony with rock and bristling with pointed firs, slope down to the sea. But yet how beautiful is any land looking off upon the barren deeps of ocean. Distant is the city on a hill-side, glittering at a thousand points, while on either hand, as we move in at the entrance of the harbor, are the pleasant woods and the white dwellings, country steeples and cultivated grounds. As the comfortless mist rolls away, and the golden light follows after, warming the wet and chilly landscape, I feel that there are bliss and beauty in Nova Scotia.

Grandly as we parade ourselves, in the presence of the country and the town, I prefer the more modest, back-street entrance of the railroad. The fact is, I am afraid of your great steamer on the main, and for the reason given by a friend of mine: if you have a smash-up on the land, why, there you are; if, on the sea, where are you?

I have been talking with the fair lady of Wales. She was all spirit. “There was much,” she said, “that was fine, in America; but Wales was most beautiful of all. Had I ever been in Wales?” One could well have felt sorry he was not then on his way to Wales. We parted where we met, probably to meet no more, and I went forward to gaze upon the crowded wharf, which we were then approaching. A few hasty adieus to some newly-formed acquaintances, and we passed ashore to seek the steamer for Cape Breton. It was waiting for us just behind the storehouse where we landed, and soon followed the America with a speed not exactly in proportion to the noise and effort.