ky. And this sort of thing, I suppose, goes on
frequently. These splendors burn and this panorama passes night
after night down at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for the
stage-driver, dozing along on his box, from Antigonish to the strait.

"Here you are," cries the driver, at length, when we have become
wearily indifferent to where we are. We have reached the ferry. The
dawn has not come, but it is not far off. We step out and find a
chilly morning, and the dark waters of the Gut of Canso flowing
before us lighted here and there by a patch of white mist. The
ferryman is asleep, and his door is shut. We call him by all the
names known among men. We pound upon his house, but he makes no
sign. Before he awakes and comes out, growling, the sky in the east
is lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn sparkles less
brilliantly. But the process is slow. The twilight is long. There
is a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the sun for
rising, as there is in the movements of the boatman. Both appear to
be reluctant to begin the day.

The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we step
into the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull us
upstream. The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide is
running strongly, and the water is full of swirls,--the little
whirlpools of the rip-tide. The morning-star is now high in the sky;
the moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silver
shield; along the east is a faint flush of pink. In the increasing
light we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the square
projection of Cape Porcupine below.

On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a black
and white sign,--Telegraph Cable,--we set ashore our companions of
the night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing the
necessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournful
thought that we may never behold them again.

As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep on
the rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing. The
rock is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed.
We pass within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, and
we do not disturb his morning slumbers. For there is no such cruelty
as the waking of anybody out of a morning nap.

When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the white
tavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), th