TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES. 165 



a wonderfully primitive appearance ; the houses small, poor- 

 looking, and standing apart one from another — a prudent way 

 of building wooden houses in case of fire, and I suppose ground- 

 rent is probably not large. Even in the streets the houses thus 

 stand with yards between ; but I have not seen the fashionable 

 quarter as yet, and so as we should not judge of Dublin by the 

 neighbourhood of Sir John's Quay, perhaps that of the dockyard 

 of Halifax is no fair sample of this colonial city. 



" If I can secure the services of a handy boatman who knows 

 the ground, I hope to do well at the dredging. The long deep 

 quiet bays look well for weeds, and ought also to yield beasts. 

 As we steamed up I could see that the water is full of medusae, 

 but I leave such soft creatures for others to investigate. I find 

 that a botanist whom I expected to meet here, lives some fifty 

 miles off, at Cape Breton. This morning has opened with dense 

 fog, but I think it will end in heat. The climate here strikingly 

 reminds me of that of Zermatt (at four thousand feet elevation), 

 strong sun and brilliant sky alternating with cold and fog in a 

 few hours. 



" Yesterday forenoon I started on my first ramble. Proceeding- 

 through the best part of the town to the country beyond it, I 

 found the streets certainly wider and the houses better than at 

 the other end, but much the same in character; nearly all of 

 wood, wooden churches with wooden spires, only here and there 

 a stone house. On the whole, a queer-looking primitive place, 

 extending a mile or two along the bay. 



" Getting beyond the houses, I pursued my walk along the 

 si lore road, and was attracted over a wall by a pretty little 

 Potentitta growing in a grass-field. I plucked him carefully, 

 but soon found I had gathered the commonest plant in the 

 country, for no sooner had I got a few rods farther, where 

 industry failed and unkempt Nature began, than I found 

 my friend everywhere, and often almost the only green thing 

 (at this time) among the brown. My next acquisition was 

 equally common, but yet a very pretty little shrub — Kalmia 

 glauca, which here grows everywhere through the woods and in 

 half-cleared patches, mixed with two kinds of gale, junipers, 

 whortleberries, Sedum palustre, Andromeda, Empetrum, and 

 several other small evergreens. The Kalmia was still partially 

 in bloom, the others all gone to fruit. Next came a wild rose 



