Forest Life in Acadie. Sketches of sport and natural history in the Canadian Dominion

Front matter

FOKEST LIFE IN ACADIE "Hrj-iiii-u-l n-iTomolil}. THE AMERICAN BROOK TROUT Salnu> Fontmolvs FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. SKETCHES OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE LOWER PROVINCES OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION. BY CAPTAIN CAMPBELL HARDY, ROYAL ARTILLERY AUTHOR OF " SPORTING ADVI NTURFS IN THE NEW WORID." View on Gold River, N.S. LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1869. Tin Riijhl of Translation is Reserved PKEFACE. The Author having brought out several years since a work on sporting in Atlantic America, which was favourably received, is induced to present the present volume of more recent experiences, especially as the interval since elapsed has been unmarked by the produc tion of any English publication of a similar kind. Many inquiries concerning the sports and physical features of the British Provinces bordering on the Atlantic, evidently made by those who meditate seeking a transatlantic home, appear from time to time in the columns of sporting periodicals, and elicit various and uncertain replies.

The Author's sojourn in the Acadian Provinces having extended over a period of fifteen years, he trusts that the information here afforded will prove useful to such querists. It will appear evident that he has formed a strong attachment to the country, its scenery and wild sports, and by some it will probably be said that the pleasures of forest life are exaggerated in his descriptions of a country possessing neither grandeur of landscape nor inducements to the "sensational" sportsman. There is, however, a quiet, ever-growing charm to be found in the

Preface

. VI woodlands or on the waters of Acadie, which those who have resided there will readily admit. Many who have touched at its shores as visitors within the Author's recollection, have made it their home ; whilst those of his vocation who have been called away, have almost invariably expressed a hope of speedy return. Several of the descriptive sporting scenes found in this work will be recognised as having appeared in " The Field," and the Author begs to express his appreciation of the Editor's courtesy in permitting their republication. The notices on the natural history of the Elk and Beaver are reproduced, with slight alterations, from the pages of " Land and Water," with the kind consent of the managers, the articles having appeared therein over the signature of " Alces." The acknowledgments of the Author are also due to several old friends across the Atlantic — -to " The Old Hunter," for anecdotes of camp life, and to Dr. Ber nard Gilpin for his valuable assistance in describing the game fish, and in preparing the illustration of the American Brook Trout. CONTENTS.

Appendix

. NOCTURNAL LIFE OF ANIMALS IN THE FOREST . . . 33G ACCLIMATISATION IN ACADIE 344 MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND ANECDOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. SALMO FONTINALIS (COLOURED). Frontispiece. VIEW ON GOLD RIVER, N.S. Vignette for Title Page. THE LUMBERER'S CAMP IN WINTER . . . To face Page 28 ELMS IN AN INTERVALE „ 44 MOOSE RIDING-DOWN A TREE .... „ 72 MOOSE-CALLING BY NIGHT „ 105 HORNS OF THE CARIBOO . ... . . „ 128 ON THE BARRENS „ 155 BEAVER-DAM ON THE TOBIADUC ..... „ 173 MUSQUODOBOIT HARBOUR . . ' . . . „ 227 THE PABINEAU FALLS, RIVER NEPISIGUIT . . „ 244 THE GRAND FALLS, NEPISIGUIT .... „ FOKEST LIFE IN ACADIE.

Chapter I. The Maritime Provinces

Paddling down a picturesque Nova-Scotian stream called the Shubenacadie some ten years since in an Indian canoe, it occurred to me to ask the steersman the proper Micmac pronunciation of the name. He replied, " We call 'em ' Segeebenacadie.' Plenty wild potatoes — segeeben — once grew here." " Well, ' acadie,' Paul, what does that mean ? " I inquired. " Means — where you find 'em," said the Indian. The termination, therefore, of acadie, signifying a place where this or that is found, being of frequent occurrence in the old Indian names of places, seems to have been readily adopted by the first permanent settlers in Nova Scotia to designate an extensive district, though one with uncertain limits — the Acadie of the followers of Mons. De Monts in the first decade of the seventeenth century comprising the present provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, with a portion of the State of B ■2 Maine* The peninsula of Nova Scotia was, however, Acadie proper, and herein was laid the scene of the expulsion of the French neutrals from their settlements by the shores of Minas Basin and elsewhere — an event round which has centred so much misconceived sym pathy of authors and poets, but which has since been shown to have been a most justifiable and necessary * Having had access since these lines were written to Dr. Dawson's second edition of "Acadian Geology," recently published by Macmillan and Co., I was at once struck with the author's account of the derivation of the term " Acadie," which he has given in language so similar to my own (even to instancing the Indian name of the same river), that I think it but just to notice this fact — his work being produced some time prior to my own.

From this standard work on the Geology of the British Provinces, I will also quote a few passages in further exemplification of the subject. The author is informed by the Bev. Mr. Eand, the zealous Indian Missionary of the Acadian Indians, who has made their ways and language his whole study for a long period of years, and translated into their tongue the greater portion of Scripture, that " the word in its original form is Kady or Cadie, and that it is equivalent to region, field, ground, land, or place, but that when joined to an adjective, or to a noun with the force of an adjective, it denotes that the place referred to is the appropriate or special place of the object expressed by the noun or noun-adjective. Now in Micmac, adjectives of this kind are formed by suffixing ' a ' or ' wa ' to the noun.

Thus Segubbun is a ground-nut ; Segubbuna, of or relating to ground-nuts ; and Segubbuna-Kaddy is the place or region of ground-nuts, or the place in which these are to be found in abundance." As further examples of this common termination of the old Indian names of places, Dr. Dawson gives the following : — Soona-Kaddy (Sunacadie). Place of cranberries. Kata-Kaddy. Eel-ground. Tulluk-Kaddy (Tracadie). Probably place of residence ; dwelling place. Buna-Kaddy (Bunacadie, or Benacadie). Is the place of brinffin^ forth ■ a place resorted to by the moose at the calving-tinie. Segoonuma-Kaddy. Place of Gaspereaux ; Gaspereaux or Alewife river. Again, " Quodiah or Codiah is merely a modification of Kaddy in the language of the Maliceets " (a neighbouring tribe dwelling in New Brunswick, principally on the banks of the St. John), " and replacing the other form in certain compounds.

Thus Nooda-Kwoddy (Noodiquoddy or Winchelsea Harbour) is a place of seals, or, more literally, place of seal-hunting. Pestumoo-Kwoddy (Passamaquoddy), Pollock-ground &c. &c." step, from their unceasing plottings with the Indians against British dominancy, receiving, of course, strong support from the French, who still held Louisburg and Quebec. Most interesting, and indeed romantic, as is the early history of Acadie during her constant change of rulers untd the English obtained a lasting possession of Nova Scotia in 1713, and finally in 1763 were ridded of their troublesome rivals in Cape Breton by the cession on the part of the French of all their possessions in Canada and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a history political and statis tical of the Lower Provinces would be quite irrelevant to the general contents of a work like the present.

The subject has been ably and exhaustively treated by the great historian of Nova Scotia, Judge Haliburton, and more recently, and in greater bulk, by Mr. Murdoch. Of their works the colonists are justly proud, and when one reads the abundant events of interest with which the whole history of Nova Scotia is chequered, of its steady progress and loyalty as a colony, and of the men it has produced, one cannot wonder at the present distaste evinced by its population on being compelled to merge their compact history and individuality in that of the New Dominion. An outline sketch of the physical geography of Acadie is what is here attempted, and a description of some of the striking features of this interesting locale. Nova Scotia is a peninsula 256 miles in length, and about 100 in breadth ; a low plateau, sixteen mdes wide, connects it with the continental province of New Bruns wick.

The greatest extension of the peninsula, like that E of similar geographical conformations in all parts of the earth, is towards the south. The actual trend of its At lantic coast is from north-east to south-west — a direction in which are extended its principal geological formations agreeing with the course of the St. Lawrence and of the Apellachian chain of mountains which terminate at Cape Gaspe\ Its dependency, Cape Breton, is an island, 100 mdes long, and eighty broad, separated from Nova Scotia by the narrow, canal-like Gut of Canseau, in places but half a mile in width — " a narrow transverse valley," says the author of " Acadian Geology," " excavated by the currents of the drift period." The largest and the greater proportion of the rivers flow across the province, through often parallel basins, into the Atlantic, indicating a general slope at right angles to the longer axis.

The Shubenacadie is, however, a singular exception, rising close to Halifax harbour on the Atlantic side of the pro vince, and crossing with a sluggish and even current through a fertde intervale country to the Bay of Fundy. The Atlantic coasts of Nova Scotia are indented to a wonderful extent by creeks and arms of the sea, often running far inland — miniature representations of the Scandinavian fiords. As might be expected, as accom paniments to such a jagged coast-line, there are numerous islands, shoals, and reefs, which render navigation dan gerous, and necessitate frequent light-houses. The outlines of the western shores are much more reo-ular. with steep cliffs and few inlets, somewhat similar on comparison with the same features of the continent itself as displayed on its Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

To these harbours and to the fisheries may be attributed the position of the capital of Halifax on the Atlantic side. All, or nearly all, the best portion of the country, in an agricultural point of view, lies in the interior and to the westward. The old capital, Port Royal, afterwards named by the English Annapolis Royal, has a most picturesque position at the head of a beautiful bay, termed Anna polis Basin, on the western side of the province, and is backed by the garden of Nova Scotia, the Annapolis Valley, which extends in a direction parallel to the coast, sheltered on both sides by steep hills crowned with maple forests for more than sixty miles, when it terminates on the shores of Minas Basin in the Grand Pre of the French Acadians. The whole surface of the country is dotted with countless lakes.

Often occurring in chains, these give rise to the larger rivers which flow into the Atlantic. In fact, all the rivers issue directly from lakes as their head waters ; these latter, again, being supplied by forest brooks rising in elevated swamps. In the hollows of the high lands are likewise embosomed lakes of every variety of form, and often quite isolated. Deep and intensely blue, their shores fringed with rock boulders, and gene rally containing several islands, they do much to diversify the monotony of the forest by their frequency and picturesque scenery. In a paper read before the Nova- Scotian Institute in 1865, the writer, Mr. Belt, believes that the conformation of the larger lake basins of Nova- Scotia is due to glaciation, evidenced by the deep furrows and scratchings on their exposed rocks, the rounding of protuberant bosses, and the transportation of huge boulders — the Grand Lake of the Shubenacadie chain being a notable instance.

Although the country is most uneven, sometimes boldly undulating, at others broken up in extremely irregular forms, the only absolute levels being marginal on the alluvial rivers, ,there are no lofty mountains in Nova Scotia. The Cobequid Hills, skirting Minas Basin towards the junction of the province with New Bruns wick, are the most elevated, rising to 1200 feet above the sea. This chain runs for more than 100 miles nearly due east and west. No bare peaks protrude ; it is everywhere clothed with a tall luxuriant forest, with a predominance of beech and sugar-maple. Very similar in its general physical features to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick is distinguished by bolder scenery, larger rivers, and greater dimensions of the more important conifers. From the forests in its northern part arise sugar-loaf mountains with naked summits — - outlying peaks of the Alleghanies — which occur also in Maine, more frequently, and on a still larger scale.

The mountain scenery where the Restigonche divides the Gaspe chain from the high lands of northern New Bruns wick is magnificent ; and the aspects of Sussex Vale, and of the long valley of the Miramichi, are as charming as those of the intervales of Nova Scotia. The little red sandstone island of Prince Edward, lying in a crescent-shape, in accordance with the coast lines of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in a deep southern bay of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is the most fertile of the three provinces, and possesses the attractive scenery of high cultivation pleasantly alternating with wood and water. The area of the Acadian provinces is as follows : — Of Nova Scotia, with Cape Breton, 18,600 square miles ; of New Brunswick, 27,100 square mdes; and of Prince Edward Island, 2137 square miles. Their population, respectively, being nearly 332,000, 252,000, and 81,000.

To the Geologist, the most interesting feature of modern discovery in a country long famous for its mineral wealth, is the wide dissemination of gold in the quartz veins of the metamorphic rocks, which occur on the Atlantic shore of Nova Scotia, stretching from Cape Sable to the Gut of Canseau, and extending to a great distance across the province. Its first discovery is currently supposed to have been made in 1861 in a brook near Tangier harbour, about sixty miles from Halifax, and to have been brought about by a man, stopping to drink, perceiving a particle of the precious metal shining amongst the pebbles. This led to an extended research, soon rewarded by dis covery of the matrix, and general operations accompanied by fresh discoveries in widely distant points, and thus, perhaps, was fairly started gold mining in Nova Scotia.

I believe, however, that I am right in attributing the honour of being the first gold finder in the province to my friend and quondam companion in the woods, Captain C. L'Estrange of the Royal Artillery, and understand that his claim to priority in this matter has been recently fully recognised by the Provincial Government ; it being satisfactordy shown that he found and brought in specimens of gold in quartz from surface rocks, when moose-hunting in the eastern districts, some time before the discoveries at Tangier. The Oven's Head diggings, near Lunenburg, were discovered during the summer of the same year ; and the sea-beach below the cliffs at this locality afforded for a short time a golden harvest by washing the sand and pounded shale which had been silted into the fissures of the rocks below high water mark.

The gold thus obtained had of course come from the cliff detritus— the result of the incessant dash of Atlantic waves over a long period of time — and was soon exhausted: the claims on the cliff, however have proved valuable. Then followed the discovery of the highly prolific barrel-shaped quartz at Allen's farm, afterwards known as the Waverley diggings, of the Indian Harbour and Wine Harbour gold-fields on the Eastern Coast beyond Tangier, and of others to the westward, at Gold River and La Have. Farther back from the coast, and towards the edge of the slate formation, the precious metal has been found at Mount Uniacke, and in the most northern extension of the granitic metamorphic strata towards the Bay of Fundy, at a place called Little Chester. Though no small excitement naturally attended the simultaneous and hitherto unexpected discovery of such extensive gold areas, the development of the Nova- Scotian gold mines has been conducted with astonishing decorum and order : the robberies and bloodshed incident on such a pursuit in wilder parts of America, or at the Antipodes, have been here totady unknown.

The individuals who prospected and took up claims, soon finding the difficulty of remunerating themselves by their own unaided labour, disposed of them for often very con siderable sums to the companies of Nova-Scotians, Germans, and Americans, which had been formed to work the business methodicady. Though constantly seen glistening as specks in the quartz, close to the surface, the metal was seldom disclosed in nuggets of great value, and the operation of crushing alone (extracting the o-old by amalgamation with quicksilver) proved remunerative in the long run and when carried out extensively. At the commencement of this important era in the economical history of Nova Scotia, the interest attached to the pursuit of gold-digging may be well imagined. Farm labourers, and farmers themselves, deserted their summer's occupation and hastened to the localities pro claimed as gold-fields.

Shanties, camps, and stores appeared amongst the rough rocks which strewed the wilderness in the depths of the forest. At Tangier, when I visited it (the same summer in which gold was first discovered there), a street had risen, with some three hundred inhabitants, composed of rude frame houses, bark camps, and tents. Flags flaunted over the stores and groggeries, and the characteristic American " store " displayed its motley merchandise as in the settlements. Anything could be here purchased, from a pickaxe to a crinoline. A similar scene was shortly afterwards pre sented at the Oven's Head ; whilst at the Waverley diggings, only ten miles distant from the capital of Nova Scotia, a perfect town has sprung up. This latter locality is famous for the singular formation of its gold-bearing quartz lodes, termed " The Barrels."

These barrels were discovered on the hill-side at a small distance below the surface, and consisted of long trunklike shafts of quartz enclosed in quartzite. They were arranged in parallel lines, and looked very like the tops of drains exposed for repair. At first they were found to be exceedingly rich in gold, some really fine nuggets having been displayed ; but subsequent research has proved them a fadure, and the barrel formation has been abandoned for quartz occurring in veins of ordinary position. A German company established here has succeeded in obtaining large profits, working the quartz veins by shafts sunk to a great depth. Their crushing mid, when I visited it, contained sixteen ponderous "stampers" moved by water power. Every three or four weeks an ingot was forwarded by them to Halifax, weighing four or five hundred ounces.

Some beautiful specimens of gold in quartz of the purest white, from this locality, were exhibited by the Commissioners at the last great International Exhi bition. Even at the present time it is impossible to form any just estimation of the value of the Nova-Scotian gold fields. Scientific men have given it as their opinion that the main seat of the treasure has not yet been touched, and that the present workings are but surface pickings. Then, again, we may refer to the immense extent of the Lower Silurian rocks on the Atlantic coast. At one end of the province, stretching back for some fifty miles, the whole area of the formation has been stated to comprise about 7000 square miles. The wide dispersion over this tract of casual gold discoveries and of the centres of actual operations naturally lead to the belief that gold mining is still in its infancy in Nova Scotia.

The yield of gold from the quartz veins is exceedingly variable : some will scarcely produce half an ounce, others as much as eight ounces to the ton. I have seen a laro-e quartz pebble picked up on the road side between Halifax and the Waverley diggings, rather larger than a man's head, which was spangled and streaked with gold in every direction, estimated in value at nearly one hundred pounds. It is curious to reflect for how many years that valuable stone had been unwittingly passed by by the needy settler returning from market to his distant farm on the Eastern Road. Now frequent roadside chippings strewed about attest the curiosity of the modern traveller through the gold districts. Of much greater importance, however, to these colonies than the recently discovered gold-fields are their bound less resources as coal-producing countries, paralysed though their works may be at present by the pertinacious refusal on the part of the United States to renew the Reciprocity Treaty.

To this temporary prostration an end must soon be put by the opening up of intercolonial commerce, to be brought about by the speedy completion of an uninterrupted railway communication between the Canadas and the Lower Provinces, and well-established commercial relations throughout the whole of the New Dominion. The coal-fields of Acadie are numerous and of large area, the carboniferous system extending throughout the province of Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton, bounding the metamorphic belt of the Atlantic coast, and passing through the isthmus, which joins the two provinces, into New Brunswick, where it attains its broadest development, In the latter province, however, the actual coal seams are unimportant ; and it is in certain localities in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton where the magnificent codieries of British North America are found, and from which it has been said the whole steam navy of Great Britain might be supplied for centuries to come, as well as the demands of the neighbouring colonies.

It is impossible to over-estimate the political importance accruing from so vast a transatlantic storehouse of this precious mineral both to England and the colonists themselves, whdst singularly enough, on the Pacific side of the continent, and in British possession, occur the prolific coal-fields of Vancouver's Island. "That the eastern and western portals of British America," says Mr. R. G. Haliburton,* " should be so favoured by nature, augurs well for the New Dominion, which, possessing a vast tract of magni ficent agricultural country between these extreme limits, only requires an energetic, self-reliant people, worthy of such a home, to raise it to a high position amongst nations." The grand coal column from the main seam of the Albion mines at Pictou, exhibited at the last Great Exhi bition in London, will be long remembered.

This seam is 37 feet in vertical thickness. With iron of excedent quality found abundantly and in the neighbourhood of her great coal-fields, and fresh discoveries of various other minerals of economic value being constantly made, Acadie has all the elements wherewith to forge for herself the armour-plated bulwark of great commercial prosperity. And yet the shrewd capitalists of the Great Republic are rapidly becoming possessed of the mineral wealth of the country, almost unchallenged by provincial rivalry. Considerably removed from the mainland, with a coast line for some distance conforming to the direction of the Gulf Stream, the northern edge of which closely approaches its shores, the climate of Nova Scotia is necessarily most uncertain; south-westerly winds are continually struo-olino for mastery with the cold blasts which blow over the continent from the north-west.

In comparatively fine -weather in summer, the sea fog, which marks the mino-lino * On the Coal Trade of the New Dominion, by R. G. Haliburton F S A F.R.S.N.A. : from " Proceedings of the N.S. Institute of Nat. Science." of the warm waters of the great Atlantic current with the colder stream wdiich courses down the eastern coast of Newfoundland from the Polar regions, carrying with it troops of icebergs, is almost always hovering off the land, from which it is barely repelled by the gentle west winds from the continent. The funnel-shaped Bay of Fundy, and the bight in the Nova-Scotian coast which merges into the long harbour of Halifax are the strong holds of this obnoxious pad of vapour. A few miles inland the west wind generally prevails ; indeed it is often astonishing with -what suddenness one emerges from the fog on leaving the coast.

A point or two of change in the direction of the wind makes all the difference. I have often made the voyage from Halifax to Cape Race — the exact course of the northern fog line — alternating rapidly between sunshine and dismal and dangerous obscurity as the wind veered in the least degree on either side of our course. Past this, the south easternmost point of Newfoundland, the fog holds on its way tdl the great banks are cleared : it seldom works up the coast to the northwrard, and is of rare occurrence at St. John's. St. John, New Brunswick, seems to be espe cially visited, though it has no footing in the interior of that province. Insidiously drawing around the mariner in these waters in calm summer weather, the fog of the Gulf Stream is always thickest at this season, although the stratum of vapour scarcely reaches over the vessel's tops, the moon or stars being generally visible from the deck at nio-ht.

Fog trumpets or lights are to a certain extent useful precautions, yet even the strictest watch from the bowsprit is often insufficient to avert collision. In winter time the propinquity of the Gulf Stream pro duces frequent moderations of temperature. Deep falls of snow are perpetually melting under its warm currents of air when borne inland, though such phases are quickly succeeded by a reassertion of true North American cold, with a return of the north-west wind, arresting the thaw, and encasing the steaming snow with a film of glace ice. During the spring months again, the Arctic currents, accompanied by easterly or north-easterly winds, exercise a chilling influence on the climate of the Atlantic coast of the Lower Provinces. Immense areas of field ice float past the Nova-Scotian shores from the mouth of the St. Lawrence and harbours of the Gulf, often working round into Halifax harbour and obstructing navigation, whdst vegetation is thereby greatly retarded.

The mirage observed on approaching these floating ice plains at sea is very striking — mountains appear to grow out of them, with waterfalls ; towns, castles, and spires, ever fleeting and varying in form. I have observed very similar effects produced in summer, off the coast, on a clear clay, on a distant wall of sea fog, by evaporation. As might be reasonably expected, the commingling of two great currents emanating from such far distant sources as do the Gulf and the Polar streams, must be productive at their point of junction, of phenomena interesting to the ichthyologist. To the student of this branch of natural history Halifax is an excedent position for observation, and from the recorded memoranda of Mr. J. M. Jones we find many curious meetings of northern and southern types in the same waters — for instance that of the albicore and the Greenland shark (Thynnus vulgaris and Scymnus borealis) — the former a wed-known inhabitant of the tropics, the latter a true boreal form.

Tropical forms of fish are of frequent occurrence in the Halifax market, and shoals of flying fish have been observed by Admiral Sir Alexander Milne in the Gulf Stream as far as 37 deg. 50 min. N. A sketch, however slight, of the physical geography of the Acadian Provinces would be incomplete were notice to be omitted of the famous Bay of Fundy tide — a page of modern geological history much to be studied in elucidation of phenomena of ages long past, as pointed out by Dr. Dawson, the well-known author of a valuable scientific work termed " Acadian Geology." On the Atlantic seaboard at Halifax the rise of the spring tide is about six feet, a height attained at high water with but little variation throughout this coast. After passing Cape Sable, the southernmost extremity of the province, the portals of the bay may be said to be gained ; and here an appreciable rise occurs in the tidal wave of about three feet.

Farther round, at Yarmouth, sixteen feet is the height at high water in spring tides, reaching to twenty-seven feet at Digby Gut, forty-three feet at Parsboro, and, at the mouth of the Shubenacadie River at the head of Cobequid Bay, occasionady attaining the extraordinary elevation of seventy feet above low watermark. In this, as wed as in several other rivers discharging into the bay, the tide rushes up the channel for a considerable distance into the interior with an attendant phenomenon termed " the Bore," — an advanced wave or wad of surging waters, some four feet above the level of the descending fresh water stream. The spec tator, standing on the river bank, presently sees a procession of barges, boats, or Indian canoes, taking advantage of this natural " Express " from the ocean, whirling past him at some seven or eight miles per hour, whilst the long shelving banks of red mud are quickly hidden by the eager impulsive current.

Out, in the open bay, the eddying " rips " over the flats as the rising waters cover them, or the tumultuous seas wdiich rise where the great tide is restrained by jutting headlands afford stdl greater spectacles. With a strong wind blowing in an opposite direction to the tide, the navigation of the Bay of Fundy is perilous on a dark night, and many are the victims engulfed with their little fishing smacks in its treacherous and ever-shifting shoals. It wears a beautiful aspect, however, in fine summer weather — a soft chalky hue quite different from the stern blue of the sea on the Atlantic shores, and somewhat approaching the summer tints of the Channel on the coasts of England. The surrounding scenery too is beautiful ; and the twelve hours' steam voyage from Windsor, Nova Scotia, to St. John, the capital of New Brunswick, past the picturesque headlands of Blomidon, Cape Split, and Parsboro, in fine wTeather most enjoyable.