The Viking Blood : A Story of Seafaring by Frederick William Wallace. Copyright - Toronto, The Musson Book Co., Ltd, 1920. Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd, Toronto.
Inside the front cover of my copy of this book is the inscription, "To Bob from Father, Christmas Greetings 1921". "Bob" is my father, George Robert McLeod. "Father" is my grandfather, Capt. John Daniel McLeod.
The author is noted as having written as well "Blue Water and The Shack-locker, etc." which are both listed in the bibliography.
This book is a fictional depiction of the comming of age of a Scots boy sent to sea at the age of 13. For those familiar with the work of George MacDonald, a writer of fiction for young people in the later half of the 19th century, the theme of this book will seem familiar. The greatest departure from MacDonald is the vividness and authenticity of the descriptions of life at sea on various types of sailing ships. This should not be surprising as Wallace apparently is writing from personal experience. This surmise is based on the extent of his non fiction work listed in the present bibliography. There are two transits of Cape Horn and many coasting and fishing voyages depicted that bring our young protaganist from the age of 13 to 21.
The quality of the narative is as close as I have seen in the genre of "juvenile fiction" to the work of Jack London. In London's stories, one never knows till the very end whether the protagonist will survive. In Wallace's story, true to it's genre, one expects that the young Scot, Donald McKenzie, will not only survive but in the end prosper. This expectation does not lessen the suspense as to how he will survive each desperate situation. We lose a few good friends along the way and we also find some, whom we thought had perished, had cheated death themselves. Wallace's depictions of the dangers and violence of life at sea do not seem contrived. I suspect there is more than a little in this story that is autobiographical.
What brings this book into a bibliography of Nova Scotia genealogy is the vivid descriptions of fishing on the Grand Banks and coastal trading by the residents of a small Atlantic Coast Nova Scotia town with the fictional name, Eastville. There is an Eastville near Truro but a bit far from the sea for this story. Donald McKenzie's best friend is Judson Nickerson who is from Eastville. From the descriptions in the book, Eastville could be anywhere between LaHave and Canso. In the hope that something rings a bell here is the description of Donald's first entry into Eastville aboard a steam packet traveling from Halifax where they had left the schooner that they had taken around The Horn.
Donald and Joak were awakened early by Captain Nickerson. "Gittin' in naow, boys," he said. "We're jest coming up by Eastville Cape and it's a fine morning." The boys rolled out of the berths in which they had been sleeping "all standing," and after a wash, they went on deck. It was indeed a fine morning--a glorious March morning of clear blue sky and brilliant spring sunshine, and the cool off-shore breeze seemed to carry the odors of balsam and spruce from the wooded shores which they were approaching. Eastville Cape, a high, rocky promontory, crowned by a white painted light-house and a warm-looking forest of evergreen spruce, flanked the entrance to a spacious cove or bay surrounded by gentle slopes of tilled fields and green spruce bush. The entrance was somewhat devious by reason of numerous underwater ledges on the western side, but the channel was evidently wide enough to be negotiated by a schooner, even with the wind ahead, as one could be seen tacking up the passage abreast of the packet steamer. The Cape faced a twin brother west of the ledges, and the two headlands stood like grey stone sentinels watching the Atlantic and guarding the bay behind.
On either side of the passage, green slopes, flecked with the remains of the winter's snow in the sun-shaded hollows, rose abruptly from the sand and shingle beaches, and nestling among the spruce clumps, white wooden cottages with cedar shingle roofs, peered cosily from out of the wind-break of greenery. A strip of tilled ground invariably flanked the gentler slopes of those cottage estates, and on the beach, dories and boats betokened that the owners farmed both land and sea. "Those are all fishermen's houses," explained Captain Nickerson. "They farm a little, cut spruce logs, and fish alongshore for lobsters, cod, haddock, mackerel and so on in season. Some o' them go vessel fishing on the Banks in summer. It's a pretty place."
It was indeed a pretty place. Donald thought it was magnificent. The clean stone beaches, with here and there a strip of white sand, the rocks, bold and rugged and with verdure growing in the fissures, the grassy slopes at odd intervals and the clumps of evergreen, the all surrounding hills clothed with thick forests of coniferous trees, and the clear pellucid waters of the Bay, made a picture which an artist would itch to portray on canvas.