it was a pleasure to see him as he walked along the
high pier, his broad hat flapping, and the wind blowing his long skirts
away from his ecclesiastical legs.

It was one of the coincidences of life, for which no one can account,
that when we descended upon these coasts, the Governor-General of the
Dominion was abroad in his Provinces. There was an air of expectation of
him everywhere, and of preparation for his coming; his lordship was the
subject of conversation on the Digby boat, his movements were chronicled
in the newspapers, and the gracious bearing of the Governor and Lady
Dufferin at the civic receptions, balls, and picnics was recorded with
loyal satisfaction; even a literary flavor was given to the provincial
journals by quotations from his lordship's condescension to letters in
the "High Latitudes." It was not without pain, however, that even in
this un-American region we discovered the old Adam of journalism in the
disposition of the newspapers of St. John toward sarcasm touching
the well-meant attempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the
provincial town of Halifax,--a disposition to turn, in short, upon the
demonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule. There were
those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take part in the
civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as we were going
in the same direction, we shared in the feeling of satisfaction which
proximity to the Great often excites.

We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction. We were sailing along
the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the Annapolis Basin,
and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we were about to
enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call the Garden of Nova
Scotia. This favored vale, skirted by low ranges of hills on either
hand, and watered most of the way by the Annapolis River, extends from
the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor on the river Avon. We
expected to see something like the fertile valleys of the Connecticut
or the Mohawk. We should also pass through those meadows on the Basin of
Minas which Mr. Longfellow has made more sadly poetical than any other
spot on the Western Continent. It is,--this valley of the Annapolis,--in
the belief of provincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the
world, with a soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair
meadows, orchards, and vines. It was doubtless our own fault that