our way, talking of every bard who
has said or sung the green wood's glories, whose fancied beauties were
here all realized. As we neared the clearings, we met frequent groups of
blue nose children gathering, with botanical skill, herbs for dyeing, or
carrying sheets of birch bark, which, to be fit for its many uses, must
be peeled from the trees in the full moon of June. On these children,
beautiful as young Greeks, with lustrous eyes and faultless features,
Grace said she could hardly yet look without an instinctive feeling of
awe and pity, cherishing as she did the partiality of her creed and
nation for infant baptism. To her there was something awful, in sight of
those unhallowed creatures, whose brows bore not the first symbol of
christianity. We having passed through the woods, were soon in a large
assemblage of native and adopted colonists.

The greater number of the native population, I think, are baptists, and
their ministers are either raised among themselves, or come from the
United States; or Nova Scotia. Once in every year a general association
is convened of the members of the society throughout the province, the
attendance on which gives ample proof of the greatness of their numbers,
as well as their fervency of feeling. This association is held in a
different part of the province each season--and generally lasts a week.
Reports are here made of the progress of their religion, the state of
funds, and of all other matters connected with the society. There is,
generally, at these conventions a revival of religious feeling, and
during the last days numerous converts are made and received by baptism
into the church. This meeting is looked forward too by the colonists
with many mingled feelings. By the grave and good it is hailed as an
event of sacred importance, and by the gay and thoughtless as a season
of sight-seeing and dress-displaying. Those in whose neighbourhood it
was last year are glad it is not be so this time; and those near the
place it is to be held, are calculating the sheep and poultry, the
molasses and flour it will take to supply the numerous guests they
expect on the occasion--open tables being kept at taverns, and private
houses are so no longer, but hospitably receive all who come. No harvest
is reaped by exorbitant charges for lodging, and all that is expected in
return, is the same clever treatment when their turn comes. This
convocation, occurring in the leisure spell between the end o