SCOTIA 



tect v trie interval land from the encroaching wave ; the wide orchards 

 bask in sunshine, the quiet villages sleep peacefully under grey 

 church steeples, and on either side the hill-slopes, chequered with 

 cultivation and crested with dark forest, look down protectingly, 

 while a wreath of fog hanging over Blomindon suggests the stress 

 and disquiet of a cold world that lies beyond this dreamland.' 

 Every American schoolgirl of the past generation was taught to 

 recite Longfellow's solemn hexameters following the sad fortunes 

 of the lovely heroine and her people, with virtue and innocence 

 not unworthy the fabled golden age of mankind, truly marvellous 

 in a scratch lot of Brittany emigrants. As we survey the slow full 

 river winding through long fertile meadows, we perceive the view 



THE FARM-COTTAGE IN NOVA SCOTIA I DIGBY, ANNAPOLIS BASIN. 



faithfully rendered by Longfellow from the shores of the Basin 

 of Minas, and we can almost forgive the sentimental vapourings 

 which gave birth to the historical delusion, not yet awarded its 

 quietus, that the English authorities could possibly have acted 

 otherwise than they did when war had once more broken out with 

 France, in the matter of the expulsion of the malcontent peasantry. 



Vast meadows stretched to the eastward, 



Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number. 

 Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labour incessant, 

 Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the floodgates 

 Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows. 

 West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields 

 Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain, and away to the northward 



