Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/78

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54
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

challenge creation to put them out. At which men of Inverness or Mabou fall to. . . . On such occasions, as a witness put it, "Ten miles from Judique is quite close enough for an onlooker to be—much closer than the same distance would be from a town less aggressive."

"Holy Fairs," held each year in the mountain valleys of central Cape Breton, are the excuse for Gaelic celebrations of a sterner sort no less enjoyed by the participants.

In remote Acadian villages of the Cheticamp district, northern Cape Breton, where the priest's visitations are comparatively rare, "marriage parties" are arranged in advance of his coming. A dozen or even two dozen couples are wedded on a single day, their guests driving from house to house for the feasting and dancing, sometimes through snow and rain. "Down Cap Rouge way," at the extreme north of the Island, nuptial festivities endure for three days, the invited ones being billeted upon the neighbours. In winter, teams crawl over ice-coated cliff roads, but in summer-time launch-loads of young Acadians are conveyed by water along the coast to cragged Red Cape.

Not for years will a certain marriage celebrated in Eastern Harbour, Cheticamp, be forgotten by village guests, nor by guests from that distant country of which Boston is commonly supposed to be the chief town and capital. . . . The bride be-