12 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



singularly enough, on the Pacific side of the continent, 

 and in British possession, occur the prolific coal-fields of 

 Vancouver's Island. " That the eastern and western 

 portals of British America," says Mr. E. G. Haliburton,^^ 

 " should be so favoured by nature, augurs well for the 

 New Dominion, which, possessing a vast tract of magni- 

 ficent agricultural country between these extreme limits, 

 only requires an energetic, self-reliant people, worthy of 

 such a home, to raise it to a high position amongst 

 nations." 



The grand coal column from the main seam of the 

 Albion mines at Pictou, exhibited at the last Great Exhi- 

 bition in London, will be long remembered. This seam 

 is 37 feet in vertical thickness. With iron of excellent 

 quality found abundantly and in the neighbourhood of 

 her great coal-fields, and fresh discoveries of various other 

 minerals of economic value being constantly made, Acadie 

 has all the elements wherewith to forge for herself the 

 armour-plated bulwark of great commercial prosperity. 

 And yet the shrewd capitalists of the Great Eepublic are 

 rapidly becoming possessed of the mineral wealth of the 

 country, almost unchallenged by provincial rivahy. 



Considerably removed from the mainland, with a coast 

 line for some distance conforming to the direction of the 

 Gulf Stream, the northern edge of which closely approaches 

 its shores, the climate of Nova Scotia is necessarily most 

 uncertain; south-westerly winds are continually struggling 

 for mastery with the cold blasts which blow over the 

 continent from the north-west. In comparatively fine 

 weather in summer, the sea fog, which marks the mingling 



* On tlie Coal Trade of the New Dominion, by E. G. Haliburton, F.S.A., 

 F.KS.N.A. : from " Proceedings of the N.S. Institute of Nat. Science." 



