of it; and as we were not
obliged to stay in the hotel and lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we
could afford to make a little romance about its history.

While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. We hastened
on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey. But haste was
not called for. The steamboat would not sail on her return till morning.
No one could tell why. It was not on account of freight to take in or
discharge; it was not in hope of more passengers, for they were all on
board. But if the boat had returned that night to Pictou, some of the
passengers might have left her and gone west by rail, instead of wasting
two, or three days lounging through Northumberland Sound and idling in
the harbors of Prince Edward Island. If the steamboat would leave at
midnight, we could catch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the
officials were aware of this, and they preferred to have our company
to Shediac. We mention this so that the tourist who comes this way may
learn to possess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not
run for his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize
him with the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientific
reader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in these regions.
Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth moves through
space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles an hour. This is
a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of the most rapid
express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotive in an hour is
represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a line nine feet long
to indicate the corresponding advance of the earth in the same time.
But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait without a wager, moves eleven
hundred times slower than an express train. We have here a basis of
comparison with the provincial steamboats. If we had seen a tortoise
start that night from Port Hawkesbury for the west, we should have
desired to send letters by him.

In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and by
breakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, and
making for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something in the
nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but it had so
few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I thought
it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highly developed
provincial lark. For a certain porti