und it, following all its incursions into the
land. The hills about it are never more than five or six hundred
feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, and offer
everywhere pleasing lines.

What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by the driver,
Hogamah Bay. At its entrance were long, wooded islands, beyond which
we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes of some poetic
sea-coast. The bay narrowed to a mile in width where we came upon it,
and ran several miles inland to a swamp, round the head of which we must
go. Opposite was the village of Hogamah. I had my suspicions from the
beginning about this name, and now asked the driver, who was liberally
educated for a driver, how he spelled "Hogamah."

"Why-ko-ko-magh. Hogamah."

Sometimes it is called Wykogamah. Thus the innocent traveler is misled.
Along the Whykokomagh Bay we come to a permanent encampment of the
Micmac Indians,--a dozen wigwams in the pine woods. Though lumber is
plenty, they refuse to live in houses. The wigwams, however, are
more picturesque than the square frame houses of the whites. Built up
conically of poles, with a hole in the top for the smoke to escape, and
often set up a little from the ground on a timber foundation, they are
as pleasing to the eye as a Chinese or Turkish dwelling. They may be
cold in winter, but blessed be the tenacity of barbarism, which retains
this agreeable architecture. The men live by hunting in the season,
and the women support the family by making moccasins and baskets. These
Indians are most of them good Catholics, and they try to go once a year
to mass and a sort of religious festival held at St. Peter's, where
their sins are forgiven in a yearly lump.

At Whykokomagh, a neat fishing village of white houses, we stopped for
dinner at the Inverness House. The house was very clean, and the tidy
landlady gave us as good a dinner as she could of the inevitable green
tea, toast, and salt fish. She was Gaelic, but Protestant, as the
village is, and showed us with pride her Gaelic Bible and hymn-book. A
peaceful place, this Whykokomagh; the lapsing waters of Bras d'Or made
a summer music all along the quiet street; the bay lay smiling with its
islands in front, and an amphitheater of hills rose behind. But for the
line of telegraph poles one might have fancied he could have security
and repose here.

We put a fresh pony into the shafts, a beast born with an everlasting
uneasines