rench provinces. In
the present woman revival, may we not hope that the heroic women of our
colonial history will have the prominence that is their right, and that
woman's achievements will assume their proper place in affairs? When
women write history, some of our popular men heroes will, we trust,
be made to acknowledge the female sources of their wisdom and their
courage. But at present women do not much affect history, and they are
more indifferent to the careers of the noted of their own sex than men
are.

We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest. It had
been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in our projected
tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, we expected to swing
around the Provinces. Upon the map it was so attractive, that we once
resolved to go no farther than there. It once seemed to us that, if we
ever reached it, we should be contented to abide there, in a place so
remote, in a port so picturesque and foreign. But returning from the
real east, our late interest in Shediac seemed unaccountable to us.
Firmly resolved as I was to note our entrance into the harbor, I could
not keep the place in mind; and while we were in our state-room and
before we knew it, the steamboat Jay at the wharf. Shediac appeared
to be nothing but a wharf with a railway train on it, and a few shanty
buildings, a part of them devoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap
lodgings. This landing, however, is called Point du Chene, and the
village of Shediac is two or three miles distant from it; we had a
pleasant glimpse of it from the car windows, and saw nothing in its
situation to hinder its growth. The country about it is perfectly level,
and stripped of its forests. At Painsec Junction we waited for the
train from Halifax, and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of
intercolonial travel. Why people should travel here, or why they should
be excited about it, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling
of the unreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had
no right to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonial
railway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into
the Provinces. We are free to say, however, that nothing can be
less interesting than the line of this road until it strikes the
Kennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admire
the Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would like to
praise