etty inland village, by name Antigonish.

At Antigonish, we find a bridal party, and the pretty English landlady
offers us wine and cake with hospitable welcome; and a jovial time of it
we have until we are summoned, by crack of whip, to ride over to West
River.

I must say that the natural prejudices we have against Nova Scotia are
ill-placed, unjust, and groundless. The country itself is the great
redeeming feature of the province, and a very large portion of it is
uninfested by Scotchmen. Take for instance the road we are now travelling.
For hours we bowl along a smooth turnpike, in the midst of a deep forest:
although scarce a week has elapsed since these gigantic trees were
leafless, yet the foliage has sprung forth as it were with a touch, and
now the canopy of leaves about us, and overhead, is so dense as scarcely
to afford a twinkle of light from the sun. Sometimes we ride by startling
precipices and winding streams; sometimes overlook an English settlement,
with its rolling pasture-lands, bare of trees and rich in verdure. At last
we approach the precincts of Northumberland Strait, and are cleverly
carried into New Glasgow. It is fast-day, and the shops are closed in
Sabbath stillness; but on the sign-boards of the village one reads the
historic names of "Ross" and "Cameron;" and "Graham," "McGregor" and
"McDonald." What a pleasant thing it must be to live in that village!
Here too I saw for the first time in the province a thistle! But it was a
silver-plated one, in the blue bonnet of a "pothecary's boy." A metallic
effigy of the ORIGINAL PLANT, that had bloomed some generations ago in
native land. There was poetry in it, however, even on the brow of an
incipient apothecary.

When we had put New Glasgow behind us, we felt relieved, and rode along
the marshes on the border of the strait that divides the Province from
Prince Edward's Island, so named in honor of his graceless highness the
Duke of Kent, Edward, father of our Queen Victoria. Thence we came forth
upon higher ground, the coal-mines of Pictou; and here is the great Pictou
railway, from the mines to the town, six miles in length. Then by rolling
hill and dale down to West River, where John Frazer keeps the Twelve-Mile
House. This inn is clean and commodious; only twelve miles from Pictou;
and, reader, I would advise you, as twelve miles is but a short distance,
to go to Pictou without stopping at West River. For John Frazer's is a
house of petty ann