ashions 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 were within three miles of the most poetic
place in North America.

There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he was
born in Grand Pre. It seemed impossible that we should actually be near
a person so felicitously born. He had a justifiable pride in the fact,
as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking to see for
the first time his old home. His local information, imparted to her,
overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read "Evangeline," his
delight in making us acquainted with the scene of that poem was pleasan