The Island; "A hegweit”

There is a' joke that has been repeated so often that nearly every- body I know has heard it: A man, who went off the Island for the first time, met a stranger on the mainland who asked him “Where are you from?” He replied “The Island”. The man asked him, “What Island?” To this question, which he thought indicated the man’s great ignorance, he replied with impatience, “Prince Edward Island, what other island is there?” It is called “The Garden of the Gulf”, it is so beautiful in summer. The Indians called it “Abegweit”; which means, “Resting on the wave.” Jacques Cartier discovered this Island on St. John’s Day and named it “Isle St. Jean”. It retained this name until 1800, when the Legislature changed it to its present name in honour of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria.

That is where I was born and brought up. It is “The Island” to me. There is none like it; none so lovely, none so dear. Sir Walter Scott expresses my feelings in his fervent patriotic words the school children know so well:

"Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, ‘Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land? Whose heart hath ne’er within him hurn’d, As home his footsteps he hath turn’d, From wandering on a foreign strand?”

The Island is about 120 miles long and has an average breadth of 30 miles. It is cut nearly across in the middle by two tidal rivers. If you look at the map you will see it is shaped like a horn, or a cres- cent, with the points turned toward the north and sticking out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In between these horns, or points, was a danger- ous place for the fleets of sailing vessels that came there every summer; if they were caught in there in a northerly gale they could not clear the points of the horns in trying to get out. Shipwrecks were common occurrences. Sometimes after one of these gales vessels would be stranded on the beach. Once I saw a vessel that upset in the raging

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