vermin?--Were our prison ships in Boston
or Salem ever known to be lousy? Shame on, you Britons!

The buildings on Melville Island are constructed of wood. Beside the
prison, there is a cooking house, barracks for soldiers, and a
store-house; a house for the officers, and another for the surgeon.
There are a couple of cannon pointing towards the prison; and a
telegraph, for the purpose of giving intelligence to the fort, which
overlooks this island and the town of Halifax. These buildings are
painted red, and have upon the whole, a neat appearance. The prison
itself is two hundred feet in length, and fifty in breadth. It is two
stories high; the upper one is for officers, and for the infirmary and
dispensary; while the lower part is divided into two prisons, one for
the French, the other for Americans. The prison yard is little more
than an acre--the whole island being little more than five acres. It
is connected on the south side with the main land by a bridge. The
parade, so called, is between the turnkey's house and the barracks.
From all which it may be gathered that Melville Island is a very
humble garrison, and a very dreary spot for the officer who commands
there.

The view from the prison exhibits a range of dreary hills. On the
northern side are a few scattered dwellings, and some attempts at
cultivation; on the southern nothing appears but immense piles of
rocks, with bushes, scattered here and there in their hollows and
crevices; if their summer appearance conveys the idea of barrenness,
their winter appearance must be dreadful in this region of almost
everlasting frost and snow. This unfruitful country is rightly named
_New Scotland_.--Barren and unfruitful as old Scotland is, our _Nova
Scotia_ is worse. If Churchill were alive, what might he not say of
this rude and unfinished part of creation, that glories in the name of
"_New Scotland?_" The picture would here be complete if it were set
off with here and there a meagre and dried up highlander, without
shoes, stockings or breeches, with a ragged plaid, a little blue flat
bonnet, sitting on a bleak rock playing a bag-pipe, and singing the
glories of a country that never was conquered! To finish the picture,
you have only to imagine a dozen more ragged, raw-boned Scotchmen,
sitting on the bare rocks around the piper, knitting stockings to send
to England and America, where they can afford to wear them. Such is
Scotia, old and new, whose sons are remarkable