but the tourist felt that
he had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky the
evening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was an
inspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountains
than on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound of
sea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.
In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlantic
isles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion with
little fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling of
sluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-going
traveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let the
reader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.
Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place,
which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.
If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too well
what would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon Cape
Breton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints,
their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns and
fishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel,
their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;
and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. And
the traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.
There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sake
of sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, and
watching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, the
red flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of gray
twilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure.
There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which is
lacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no person
to go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lack
occupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter,
he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with a
rifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsula
between Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He may
also have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially on
the Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, a
hundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling the
salmon with the delusive fly, and lea