Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/275

Rh Up and down a minor cadence five male voices quaver with an effect more Hindoo than Anglo-Saxon. Throats grow drier as the measures wear on. The singing is as long as the psalm has verses. Pauses occur only when induced by extreme need of breath. Stoical attention on the part of the audience is indicated by the rigorous poise of sunburned necks and out-thrust beards and chins. Like characters from MacLaren, the assemblage sits enthralled by the chant of vocable bagpipes which sum for them the harmony of harps and the angels.

Baddeck was not always given to psalm-tunes. Once Indians had their wigwams here, but they are relegated now to a reservation 12 miles on the road to Hogomah. The antiquated steam craft that goes back and forth three times a week from Sydney to the lower end of the channel takes aboard an occasional family of the wistful, slovenly Miggamack at informal stopping-places. According to an early missionary, the Souriquois, as they were called by the French, believed themselves to have been born "where they were," and that the Great or Super Being "having made them and their land as a master-piece, formed the rest carelessly." The Acadian Indians inhabit Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and upper New Brunswick, the seven "districts" of the Micmac Kingdom being Cape Breton, the seat of the chief, Pictou, Memramcook, Restigouche, Eskegawaage,