or less valuables completely unprotected from theft, as was my custom throughout the whole journey. Neither here nor anywhere else did I lose so much as a single item.
Next morning after crossing “The Bar at Alberton” (of Robert Harris) I worked along the outer shore to Kildare Capes seeing, however, no sign of Jacques Cartier’s Indians. At Cape Kildare a large rock stood out of the water obviously formed by the waves eating through the tip of the Cape itself.
After stopping on shore for a half hour lunch-break, as was my practice, I eventually pulled into Tignish Run and put up for the night bedding down in a large motor-boat lying near the beach. From here I hoped to complete the following day our sweep along the North Shore, our conquest of the breakers rolling in from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to gain the comparative shelter of the Island itself.
X
Nearly an hour before first light great hordes of mosquitos descended upon the motor—boat driving its occupant at first under the blankets and driving their harpoons through the blankets into his, by this time, leathery hide. Escape there was not, except in flight. Breakfast being served (theirs and my own) long before usual breakfast time, the poor wanderer made a hurried “taking off” and was once more on the wide Gulf thankful for the light sea-breeze protecting him from his winged enemies. And so farewell to Tignish Run, on to Seacow Pond, and across the Reef at North Cape, a feat easily accomplished the tide across the reef being favorable.
Needless to say (tho’ I shall say it) it was a relief to be pointing no longer away from but now in the general direction of home. Taking a large pond lying along the shore as the Black Marsh, I paddled by and landed at the southern end on a beach a foot-deep in gravel, where I could see a number of boats and men working around them. The men completely ignored us at first. It seemed hard to understand such a cold reception. Finally I accosted one chap who seemed the only one who understood English. “Is that the Black Marsh?” “No, that’s Nail Pond. You passed the Black Marsh five miles back.”
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