Thumbcap Weir

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THUMBCAP WEIR

I

tHE Wolves lie long and low and black to the eastward, the last outposts of the islands of the Passamaquoddy before the long rollers of the Bay of Fundy begin. There is East Wolf, low and dark on the skyline. There is Spur Wolf lifting its rocky profile majestically through the blur of the fog. There is Flat Wolf shoving its ledges through the surf. And at the end of the straggling line there is Southern Wolf, the largest of them all.

On clear days the lighthouse on Southern Wolf is visible from the islands of the Passamaquoddy to the westward. And when the fog crawls in from the Fundy the foghorn on Southern Wolf sounds its monotonous rhythm hour by hour.

It forms an undertone to life in the little fishing settlements on Campobello and Grand Manan. They hear it in the group of weathered gray houses on Deer Island. And on all the smaller islands of the bay with their lonely fishermen's camps the moan ​of the foghorn accompanies the weary wait from tide to tide for herring.

Westward toward the Bocabec Hills the voice of the foghorn grows fainter, until, far up the rivers that cut back through miles of sheer gray cliffs to fresh water it is lost in the stillness of the fir woods.

But on the farms up river, sweet with the scent of clover and new mown hay, and in the granite quarries of the Bocabec Hills, the crawling bank of fog means little enough. It is only on the islands of the Passamaquoddy that men watch the sky, and the bay, and the far gray fog coming in from the Fundy-only there that the rhythm of the foghorn is the rhythm of life.

The people of the little gray islands have dwelt in lonely camps these many years. Nicholas Sabattis, one of the last of the Passamaquoddy Indians -the tribe that owned all the islands before the white man came-can remember the days when white children would run in terror from the Indians, and can tell of the nearer years when smoke rose from many villages on the Passamaquoddy islands and the bay was dotted with tall ships bringing sugar and molasses and rum from the West Indies and taking back dried hake and porpoise oil from New Brunswick traders. But, though still ​in the fall of the year he goes porpoise hunting on the bay, Nicholas Sabattis is old and the days of which he tells are long since gone. When old men of the islands were boys, Nicholas Sabattis was old. Now, though his back is straight and his eyes keen, he is weary from the memories of a hundred years or more. And when he goes on his last long hunt, the memory of those days of tall ships from the Indies and the vessels which sailed out of the Passamaquoddy harbors in those far years will have passed with him.

The Indians will have gone, leaving only their names as imprints on that land of fir and granite and salt—Bocabac, Digdeguash, Pocalogan and Magaguadavic. The French explorers, who touched on the New Brunswick shore and named Letete, L'Etang and the St. Croix River, will have been forgotten. And though the sons of the English and Scottish settlers who cleared their farms from the towering trees of the first growth at Caithness and Mascarene and Scotch Settlement will pass on their names and memory, they, too, will fade, bit by bit, into the purple mists of the past.

The "Black Douglas" and all the other ships that sailed out of the harbors of the Passamaquoddy have gone down in distant seas or been left to rot on Passamaquoddy shores, and a young growth of fir ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/15 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/16 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/17 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/18 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/19 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/20 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/21 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/22 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/23 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/24 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/25 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/26 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/27 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/28 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/29 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/30 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/31 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/32 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/33 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/34 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/35 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/36 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/37 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/38 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/39 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/40 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/41 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/42 ​Page:Thumbcap 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Weir.djvu/286 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/287 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/288 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/289 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/290 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/291 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/292 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/293 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/294 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/295 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/296 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/297 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/298 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/299 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/300 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/301 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/302 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/303 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/304 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/305 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/306 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/307 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/308 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/309 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/310 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/311 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/312 ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/313 ​Debbie looked down at the child in her arms.

"A good year!" she protested quietly. "And a good year ahead, I'm thinking."

The cowbell tinkled from the pasture. The quiet of the spring night filled the kitchen.

"It'll be a good year," agreed Gid confidently. "Now the weir's built, we can be starting soon to build the camp again, Peter and I. We'll have a place, Debbie, for you and the little one to come." "It'll be a dreary sight on the island with the mountain bare," Debbie said, with a sudden note of sadness in her voice.

"It'll not be long till the mountain's all ablaze with fireweed," Gid reminded her.

"Fireweed," repeated Debbie thoughtfully."Fireweed between the charred stumps.That'll be a fine sight, Gid." They sat silent for a little time, Upper Archie smoking quietly, Gid contentedly watching Debbie with the baby at her breast.

She crooned a little song as she rocked him at last to sleep. When she had laid him in the cradle she sat down again to sew, with the glow of the lamp-light on her coiled gold braids. The fog had come in like a warm blanket over the land, and the foghorn, hushed by distance, sounded steadily. ​Page:Thumbcap Weir.djvu/322


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