Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/222

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
178
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

much desired was a common black flagon which had been loaned to a neighbour to carry home a measure of fish oil. Law suits are still a source of diversion in the "Huckleberry Courts" which are held in rural magistrate's houses. Within recent years a prolonged action amused the country-side in which the plaintiff spent three hundred dollars to get satisfaction from a neighbour who had appropriated fifty cents' worth of waste wood from the yard of a saw mill. Says the curator of the little museum, "Were the tribunal in the centre of a marsh, isolated ten miles from creation, there would be a press about the doors on trial day." This litigious quality among the farmers does not, however, affect the kindness of heart and the hospitality of a people whose gates are always wide to friend and stranger.

On the wall of the museum is a portrait of the Reverend Bruin Romkes Comingo, first Protestant minister to be ordained in Canada. The ordination took place at Halifax in July, 1770. The cases contain fine specimens of native amethysts and agates. Lobster giants of thirty years ago are shown, their claws two feet long from tip to body. Nova Scotia decapods of the present are degenerates in proportion. A formal bill of lading issued a hundred years ago is prefaced: "Shipped, by the Grace of God, in good order and well conditioned by Collins and Allison, in and upon the good ship called The Swallow, whereof is master,