ses, all generous and noble
suggestions, all light and shade, all warmth and color, must give place to
these dry husks of reason.

"Confound the Scotch interloper," said Picton, after our visitor had
retired, "what business had he to impose upon our good nature, with his
threadbare 'aibstract preencepels?' Confound him and his beggarly high
cheek-bones, and his Caledonian pock-pits. I am sorry that I ever came to
this part of the world; it has ruined a taste which I had acquired, with
much labor, for Scottish poetry; and I shall never see 'Burns's Works'
again without a sickening shudder."

CHAPTER XI.

The Bras d'Or Road--Farewell to Picton--Home sweet Home--The Rob Roys of
Cape Breton--Note and Query--Chapel Island--St. Peter's--Enterprise--The
Strait of Canseau--West River--The last Out-post of the Scottish Chiefs.

The road that skirts the Arm of Gold is about one hundred miles in length.
After leaving Sydney, you ride beside the Spanish River a short distance,
until you come to the portage, which separates it from the lake, and then
you follow the delicious curve of the great beach until you arrive at St.
Peter's. From St. Peter's you travel across a narrow strip of land until
you reach the shore upon the extreme westerly end of the island of Cape
Breton, where you cross the Strait of Canseau, and then you are upon the
mainland of Nova Scotia. I had fondly hoped to voyage upon the Bras d'Or,
instead of beside it; but was obliged to forego that pleasure. Romance, at
one dollar per mile, is a dear piece of extravagance, even in so ethereal
a vehicle as a birch-bark canoe. Therefore I engaged a seat in the Cape
Breton stage, instead of the aboriginal conveyance, in which you have to
sit or lie in the bottom, at the risk of an upset, and trust to fair
weather and the dip of the paddle.

At day-break (two o'clock in the morning in these high latitudes) the
stage drove up to the door of our pleasant inn. I was speedily dressed,
and ready--and now--"Good bye, Picton!"

The traveller stretched out a hand from the warm nest in which he was
buried.

"Good bye," he said, with a hearty hand-shake, and so we parted.

It was painful to leave such an agreeable companion, but then what a
relief it was to escape from the cannie Scots! The first inhalation of the
foggy air went tingling through every vein; the first movement of the
stage, as we rolled westward, was indescribable happiness; I was at last
homeward bou