FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 5 



diciilar. Then, relenting a little, the line sloped 

 to the waves at a gentler angle, but one still too 

 steep for human foot to ascend. This was 

 Blomidon, simple, majestic, inspiring. 



The distant northern shore of the basin was 

 plainly indicated by a line of blue mountains, 

 the Cobequid range, and we knew that between 

 us and its rugged coast-line the mighty, pent-up 

 tides of Fundy raced each day and night into 

 the comparative calm of Minas, and spread 

 themselves there over the red sands and up to 

 the dikes which the Acadian peasants had built 

 round about Grand Pre. After receiving the 

 image of Blomidon into the deepest corners of 

 our memories, we looked next at Grand Pre, 

 and, looking, gave up all previous impressions 

 of it gained from Longfellow's poem. The 

 Grand Pre which he imagined and painted 

 without ever visiting the Gaspereaux country is 

 not the dike land of reality. Both are charm- 

 ing, but around the vast level of green grass 

 which lay below us there were no whispering 

 pines or hemlocks, no suggestion of the primeval 

 forest. To the low undidating or level fields 

 which bordered the Gaspereaux, the Pereavix, 

 the Grand Habitant, and other rivers of this 

 region, the Acadian farmers added by degrees 

 marsh lands naturally swept by the tides, but 

 from which they carefully and permanently ex- 



