republican institutions! It
is natural, straightforward, shrewd, and, no doubt, sincere. At the same
time, it affords an example of how much the colonist or satellite form of
government tends to limit the scope of the mind, which under happier skies
and in a wider intelligence might have shone to advantage.

CHAPTER XIX.

Windsor-upon-Avon--Ride to the Gasperau--The Basin of
Minas--Blomidon--This is the Acadian Land--Basil, the Blacksmith--A Yankee
Settlement--Useless Reflections.

Windsor lies upon the river Avon. It is not the Avon which runs by
Stratford's storied banks, but still it is the Avon. There is something in
a name. Witness it, O river of the Blue Noses!

I cannot recall a prettier village than this. If you doubt my word, come
and see it. Yonder we discern a portion of the Basin of Minas; around us
are the rich meadows of Nova Scotia. Intellect has here placed a crowning
college upon a hill; opulence has surrounded it with picturesque villas. A
ride into the country, a visit to a bachelor's lodge, studded with horns
of moose and cariboo, with woodland scenes and Landseer's pictures, and
then--over the bridge, and over the Avon, towards Grand-Pre and the
Gasperau! I suppose, by this time, my dear reader, you are tired of
sketches of lake scenery, mountain scenery, pines and spruces, strawberry
blossoms, and other natural features of the province? For my part, I rode
through a strawberry-bed three hundred miles long--from Sydney to
Halifax--diversified by just such patches of scenery, and was not tired of
it. But it is a different matter when you come to put it on paper. So I
forbear.

Up hill we go, soon to approach the tragic theatre. A crack of the whip, a
stretch of the leaders, and now, suddenly, the whole valley comes in view!
Before us are the great waters of Minas; yonder Blomidon bursts upon the
sight; and below, curving like a scimitar around the edge of the Basin,
and against the distant cliffs that shut out the stormy Bay of Fundy, is
the Acadian land--the idyllic meadows of Grand-Pre lie at our feet.

The Abbe Reynal's account of the colony, as it appeared one hundred years
ago, I take from the pages of Haliburton:

"Hunting and fishing, which had formerly been the delight of the colony,
and might have still supplied it with subsistence, had no further
attraction for a simple and quiet people, and gave way to agriculture,
which had been established in the marshes and low lands, by