HANDINESS OF THE NOVA SCOTIANS. 31 



forests yield fuel abundantly, and at a cheap rate, a pru- 

 dently managed manufactory of malleable iron ought 

 here to succeed. 



I could not help sympathising with my friend the 

 Doctor, when he discoursed of the extreme healthiness 

 of the Annapolis district. Though he is the only medical 

 man for sixteen miles one way and fifteen another, a 

 fortnight will often elapse without a single summons. 

 Were it not that the population increases, and that bones 

 break sometimes, medicine and surgery might be banished 

 the country. 



The Nova Scotians have the reputation of being super- 

 latively handy. " What will I do now ? " issues from 

 the mouth of a despairing Irishman ; but with the emer- 

 gency the resource not only springs up in the head, but 

 actually rushes to the hands, of the Nova Scotian. 



A farmer on the South Mountains will cut down lum- 

 ber on his farm, and will convey it with his own horses 

 to the shores of the bay. With or without the aid of a 

 carpenter, he will lay down the lines of a ship. He will 

 build it himself, with the help of his sons ; he will even 

 do the smith's work with his own hands. He will mort- 

 gage his farm to buy the materials, and will rig it himself. 

 He will then load it with firewood from his own farm, 

 and himself sail the ship to Boston, and sell cargo or 

 ship, or both ; or he will take a freight thence to the 

 West Indies, if he can get it, and return in due time to 

 pay off his encumbrances — or to sell his farm, if he have 

 been unsuccessful, and begin the world anew. If the 

 world were really to make up its mind to hang those 

 who have no shifts, a vast number of our Irish fellow- 

 subjects would be the first to taste the cord. The last 

 survivor would be a Nova Scotian, unless, indeed, it were 

 his fate to be strangled by my friend and subsequent 

 fellow-traveller, Mr Brown of New Brunswick, of whose 

 shiftiness I shall have occasion to speak in the sequel. 



