rprise_.

If I had formed some romantic ideas concerning the new and strange people
we found on the road we were now travelling, the Highlandmen, the Rob Roys
and Vich Ian Vohrs of Nova Scotia, those ideas were soon dissipated. It is
true here were the Celts in their wild settlements, but without bagpipes
or pistols, sporrans or philabegs; there was not even a solitary thistle
to charm the eye; and as for oats, there were at least two Scotchmen to
one oat in this garden of exotics. I have a reasonable amount of respect
for a Highlandman in full costume; but for a carrot-headed, freckled,
high-cheeked animal, in a round hat and breeches, that cannot utter a word
of English, I have no sympathy. One fellow of this complexion, without a
hat, trotted beside our coach for several miles, grunting forth his
infernal Gaelic to John Ormond, with a hah! to every answer of the driver,
that was really painful. When he disappeared in the woods his red head
went out like a torch. But we had scarcely gone by the first Highlandman,
when another darted out upon us from a by-path, and again broke the
sabbath of the woods and waters; and then another followed, so that the
morning ride by the Bras d'Or was fringed with Gaelic. Now I have heard
many languages in my time, and know how to appreciate the luxurious Greek,
the stately Latin, the mellifluous Chinese, the epithetical Sclavic, the
soft Italian, the rich Castilian, the sprightly French, sonorous German,
and good old English, but candor compels me to say, that I do not think
much of the Gaelic. It is not pleasing to the ear.

Yet it was a stately ride, that by the Bras d'Or; in one's own coach, as
it were, traversing such old historic ground. For the very name, and its
associations, carry one back to the earliest discoveries in America, carry
one back behind Plymouth Rock to the earlier French adventurers in this
hemisphere; yea, almost to the times of Richard Crookback; for on the
neighboring shores, as the English claim, Cabot first landed, and named
the place _Prima Vista_, in the days of Henry the Seventh, the "Richmond"
of history and tragedy.

"Le Bras d'Or! John Ormond, do you not think le Bras d'Or sounds much like
Labrador?"

"'Deed does it," answered John.

"And why not? That mysterious, geological coast is only four days' sail
from Sydney, I take it? Labrador! with its auks and puffins, its seals and
sea-tigers, its whales and walruses? Why not an offshoot of le Bras d'