It gave
an antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wanted
without this. Round stone towers are not so common in this world
that we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called a
Martello tower, but I could not learn who built it. I could not
understand the indifference, almost amounting to contempt, of the
citizens of St. John in regard to this their only piece of curious
antiquity. "It is nothing but the ruins of an old fort," they said;
"you can see it as well from here as by going there." It was,
however, the one thing at St. John I was determined to see. But we
never got any nearer to it than the ferry-landing. Want of time and
the vis inertia of the place were against us. And now, as I think of
that tower and its perhaps mysterious origin, I have a longing for it
that the possession of nothing else in the Provinces could satisfy.
But it must not be forgotten that we were on our way to Baddeck; that
the whole purpose of the journey was to reach Baddeck; that St. John
was only an incident in the trip; that any information about St.
John, which is here thrown in or mercifully withheld, is entirely
gratuitous, and is not taken into account in the price the reader
pays for this volume. But if any one wants to know what sort of a
place St. John is, we can tell him: it is the sort of a place that if
you get into it after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, you cannot
get out of it in any direction until Thursday morning at eight
o'clock, unless you want to smuggle goods on the night train to
Bangor.
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