ur, begins to be in a glow of tender longing and
regret for Evangeline as soon as he enters the valley of the
Annapolis River. For myself, I expected to see written over the
railway crossings the legend,

"Look out for Evangeline while the bell rings."

When one rides into a region of romance he does not much notice his
speed or his carriage; but I am obliged to say that we were not
hurried up the valley, and that the cars were not too luxurious for
the plain people, priests, clergymen, and belles of the region, who
rode in them. Evidently the latest fashions had not arrived in the
Provinces, and we had an opportunity of studying anew those that had
long passed away in the States, and of remarking how inappropriate a
fashion is when it has ceased to be the fashion.

The river becomes small shortly after we leave Annapolis and before
we reach Paradise. At this station of happy appellation we looked
for the satirist who named it, but he has probably sold out and
removed. If the effect of wit is produced by the sudden recognition
of a remote resemblance, there was nothing witty in the naming of
this station. Indeed, we looked in vain for the "garden" appearance
of the valley. There was nothing generous in the small meadows or
the thin orchards; and if large trees ever grew on the bordering
hills, they have given place to rather stunted evergreens; the
scraggy firs and balsams, in fact, possess Nova Scotia generally as
we saw it,--and there is nothing more uninteresting and wearisome
than large tracts of these woods. We are bound to believe that Nova
Scotia has somewhere, or had, great pines and hemlocks that murmur,
but we were not blessed with the sight of them. Slightly picturesque
this valley is with its winding river and high hills guarding it, and
perhaps a person would enjoy a foot-tramp down it; but, I think he
would find little peculiar or interesting after he left the
neighborhood of the Basin of Minas.

Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and some
of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide
goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time. The Acadia
College was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said that
it is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a place
described as "one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province."
But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that the
next station was Grand Pre! We