FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 17 



after half an hour of darkness, ditches, and 

 cows, we returned to the hotel and its comforts ; 

 but all night long the cowbells tinkled through 

 our dreams. 



For the Margaree drive we took three days, 

 starting from Baddeck early on Thursday, Au- 

 gust 3, in a top buggy behind a six-year-old horse 

 named Jim. The first day we drove twenty-six 

 miles, the second twenty-two, and the third ten, 

 fortunately catching a steamer at Whycocomagh, 

 and so coming back to Baddeck alive, and with 

 Jim still able to feel the whip. We had been 

 told that the Margaree country was entrancing ; 

 but when the trip was over we had reached the 

 conclusion, afterward confirmed by a Cape Breton 

 veteran, that salmon had first drawn the husbands 

 to the Margaree and made them enthusiastic 

 about it, and that later, when the wives invaded 

 the region, they had been taught to find consola- 

 tion in the pretty scenery. In our three days' 

 trip we found but two spots which in the White 

 Mountains would be deemed worthy of special 

 notice. One of these was Loch o' Law, and the 

 other Loch Ainslie. We came to the former 

 near the close of our first day's drive. Worn 

 and weary with flogging Jim, and insisting twice 

 each minute on his return to the middle of the 

 deeply rutted and often dangerously washed road, 

 I had lost all interest in everything save the dim 



