ls. After all, it
is a question whether the greatest and noblest impulses of man are not
awakened rather by the sympathy we feel for the oppressed, than by the
hatred engendered by the acts of the oppressor?

I wish I could shake off these useless reflections of a bygone period. But
who can help it?

"This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe when it hears in the woodland the voice of the
huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roof village, the home of Acadian farmers--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!"

CHAPTER XX.

The Valley of Acadia--A Morning Ride to the Dykes--An unexpected Wild-duck
Chase--High Tides--The Gasperau--Sunset--The Lamp of History--Conclusion.

The eastern sun glittered on roof and window-pane next morning. Neat
houses in the midst of trim gardens, rise tier above tier on the
hill-slopes that overlook the prairie lands. A green expanse, several
miles in width, extends to the edge of the dykes, and in the distance,
upon its verge, here and there a farmhouse looms up in the warm haze of a
summer morning. On the left hand the meadows roll away until they are
merged in the bases of the cliffs that, stretching forth over the blue
water of the Basin, end abruptly at Cape Blomidon. These cliffs are
precise counterparts of our own Palisades, on the Hudson. Then to the
right, again, the vision follows the hazy coast-line until it melts in the
indistinct outline of wave and vapor, back of which rises the Gasperau
mountain, that protects the valley on the east with corresponding barriers
of rock and forest. Within this hemicycle lie the waters of Minas,
bounded on the north by the horizon-line, the clouds and the sky.

Once happy Acadia nestled in this valley. Does it not seem incredible that
even Puritan tyranny could have looked with hard and pitiless eyes upon
such a scene, and invade with rapine, sword and fire, the peace and
serenity of a land so fair?

A morning ride across the Grand-Pre convinced me that the natural opulence
of the valley had not been exaggerated. These once desolate and bitter
marshes, reclaimed from the sea by the patient labor of the French
peasant, are about three miles broad by twenty miles long. The prairie
grass, even at this time of year, is knee-deep, and, as I was informed,
yields, without cultiva