OBITUARIES. XV 



rather prejudiced against such popuhir American writers 

 as Long, Roberts, and Thompson-Seton, considering them to 

 be "animal romancers" and their writings valueless to the true 

 naturalist. His knowledge of the Indian, his character and 

 his legends, was remarks bly thorough. 



He was an amateur artist of most distinct talent, working 

 in watercolours, oils, and pencil, but mostly in the first, and 

 continuing to do so to the very last. As his subjects, he took 

 mostly woodland, lake and river scenery in the wilds of 

 Nova Scotia, and sporting incidents, largely relating to the 

 moose, all most truthfully represented and with distinct 

 artistic skill in composition. The engraved examples in his 

 books do not at all do justice to his brush; and the best 

 published specimens of his work are the two fine, coloured 

 lithographs published in 1863. I have a photograph of a 

 camp scene on a lakeside which is remarkably good. 



As a w'riter he possessed a charming, polished stjde, 

 which lends a literary flavour to his sporting sketches, and 

 makes some of them almost classics in their way. The 

 accounts of his adventures are entirely free from traces of the 

 boastful strain so common in some writers in modern American 

 sporting magazines; and he tells of his failures, as well as of 

 his successes, in a manner devoid of egotism. No doubt 

 "Forest Life in Acadie," his more mature work, shows him 

 at his best. He occasionally essayed poetry, and his un- 

 published stanzas, "A Brook of the Northern Woods,'' as 

 usual referring to this country, show considerable merit. 



Although Hardy was in Nova Scotia before my time, yet 

 his name and that of the hot-headed but warm-hearted 

 Irishman, Col. Chearnley, were constantly heard by me as a 

 boy, from veteran sportsmen of my familj^, when anecdotes 

 and reminiscences of forest and stream were being narrated, 

 until I grew to have a veneration for them; and it now gives 

 me distinct gratification to put on record these few notes on 

 Hardy's life. His son, Capt. E. C. Hardy, has his journals and 

 other papers, and will no doubt prepare a memoir that will 

 do full justice to his accomplished father. 



