26 



CHAPTER VI. 



OVEMBER 14. I visited, for the first 

 time, the great woods rising from the 

 western side of the Bedford Basin, and 

 running back with but little interruption 

 right into the heart of the province. 



I left the Bedford road, which skirts the 

 shore of the Basin, at a distance of some 

 four miles from Halifax, and taking a 

 narrow forest track, leaving the road at right angles, I 

 ascended gradually until the great misty expanse of 

 water lay far below me. Looking to the northward I 

 could just discern the little town of Bedford, nestling in 

 the valley where the river died away in the waters of 

 the restless Basin ; while out to the eastward I looked 

 right over the harbour to the dim stretch of placid ocean 

 beyond, glittering like burnished gold beneath the rays of 

 the afternoon sun, and with many ships dotting the hazy 

 horizon in the far distance. But I moved on again and 

 soon passed the brow of the hill, and the fair vision faded 

 behind the sombre stretch of forest. 



The greater part of the timber here consists of spruce 

 and hemlock, although other descriptions are interspersed 

 in many places. In some spots the trees rise tall 

 and slender to a considerable height from a swampy 

 bottom covered with a dense growth of moss without a 

 blade of grass visible, while in all directions lie limbs or 

 trunks of trees in every stage of decay some of them, 



