s; the cut paper
chimney-apron; the old sofa; the cheerful lamp, and the well-polished
table. And I remember, too, the happy, tranquil feeling of lying in the
snow-white sheets at night, and talking with Picton of our overland journey
from Louisburgh; of McGibbet and Malcolm; and then we branched out on the
great subject of Indian rights, and Indian wrongs; of squaws and pappooses;
of wigwams and canoes, until at last I dropped off in a doze, and heard
only a repetition of Micmac--Micmac--Micmac--Mic--Mac----Mic------Mac! To
this day I am unable to say whether the sound I heard came from Picton, or
the great house-clock in the corner.

CHAPTER X.

Over the Bay--A Gigantic Dumb Waiter--Erebus--Reflections--White and Black
Squares of the Chess-board--Leave-taking--An Interruption--The Aibstract
Preencipels of Feenance.

Bright and early next morning we arose for an expedition across the bay to
North Sydney and the coal-mines. A fresh breakfast in a sunny room, a
brisk walk to the breezy, grass-grown parapet, that defends the harbor; a
thought of the first expedition to lay down the telegraph line between the
old and new hemispheres, for here lie the coils of the sub-marine cable,
as they were left after the stormy essay of the steamer "James Adger," a
year before--what a theme for a poet!

"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some spark, now dormant, of electric fire:
News, that the board of brokers might have swayed,
Or broke the banks that trembled with the wire."

--and we take an airy seat on the poop-deck of the little English steamer,
and are wafted across the harbor, five miles, to a small sea-port, where
coal-schutes and railways run out over the wharfs, and coasters, both
fore-and-aft, and square-rigged, are gathered in profusion. A glass of
English ale at a right salt-sea tavern, a bay horse, and two-wheeled
"jumper" for the road, and away we roll towards the mines. Now up hill and
down; now passing another Micmac camp on the green margin of the beach;
now by trim gardens without flowers; now getting nearer to the mines,
which we know by the increasing blackness of the road; until at last we
bowl past rows of one story dingy tenements of brick, with miners' wives
and children clustered about them like funereal flowers; until we see the
forges and jets of steam, and davits uplifted in the air; and hear the
rattle of the iron trucks and the rush of the coal as it runs through the
s