llage of
Sackville. It is amusing to see the gravity and importance of the
conductor, in uniform frock-coat and with crown and V. R. buttons, as he
paces up and down the platform before starting; and the quiet dignity of
the sixpenny ticket-office; and the busy air of the freight-master,
checking off boxes and bundles for the distant terminus--so distant that
it can barely be distinguished by the naked eye. But it was a pleasant
ride, that by the Basin! Not less pleasant because of the company of an
old friend, who, with wife and children, went with me to the end of the
iron road. Arrived there, we parted, with many a hearty hand-shake, and
thence by stage to Windsor, on the river Avon, forty-five miles or so west
of Halifax.

My fellow-passenger on the stage-top was a pony! Yes, a real pony! not
bigger, however, than a good sized pointer dog, although his head was of
most preposterous horse-like length. This equine Tom Thumb, was one of the
mustangs, or wild horses of Sable Island, some little account of which
here may not be uninteresting. But first let me say, in order not to tax
the credulity of my reader too much, that pony did not stand upright upon
the roof of the coach, as may have been surmised, but was very cleverly
laid upon his side, with his four legs strapped in the form of a saw-buck,
precisely as butchers tie the legs of calves or of sheep together, for
transportation in carts to the shambles, only pony's fetters were not so
cruel--indeed he seemed to be quite at his ease--like the member of the
foreign legion on the road to Dartmouth.

Now then, pony's birth-place is one of the most interesting upon our
coast. Do you remember it, my transatlantic traveller? The little yellow
spot that greets you so far out at sea, and bids you welcome to the
western hemisphere? I hope you have seen it in fine weather; many a goodly
ship has left her bones upon that yellow island in less auspicious
seasons. The first of these misadventurers was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who
was lost in a storm close by; the memorable words with which he hailed his
consort are now familiar to every reader: "Heaven," said he, "is as near
by sea as by land," and so bade the world farewell in the tempest. Legends
of wrecks of buccaneers, of spectres, multiply as we penetrate into the
mysterious history of the yellow island. And its present aspect is
sufficiently tempting to the adventurous, for whom--

"If danger other charms have none,