OF THE BASIN OF MINAS. 173 
ially after stormy weather, amounting to a quarter of an 
inch or more. The layer formed by a night tide is said 
to be thicker than that deposited by a day tide. The 
. mud banks, as well as the flat marsh-lands bordering the 
Basin, especially in Horton and Cornwallis, are composed 
of this material. Where large tracts had reached such a 
height as to be covered by only a few feet of water at 
high tide, the inhabitants, to whom the French Acadians 
set the example, have dyked them in, and as the “marsh 
mud” forms a very fertile soil, these dyked lands are 
very valuable. A little island lay a couple of miles from 
the southern shore of the bay, between the mouth of the 
Avon and Cornwallis. Mud accumulated between it and 
the main land, and as the deposits increased, it at last 
formed a marsh joining the island to the shore. The 
French Acadians dyked this in, and the great meadow 
thus formed was the Grand Pré, where Basil toiled in the 
forge and paid court to Evangeline. 
It is a beautiful day in June: let us pay a visit to 
the Cornwallis River, near Wolfville. The dyked land 
here, planted with oats and grass, potatoes, etc., is but a 
narrow strip bordering the river. We cross it, observ- 
ing the regularly laid-out ditches used to collect the sur- 
face water, and carry it off by sluices through the dykes, 
which is merely a mud wall a few feet in height, sufficient 
to keep out the waves at high tide. Outside this wall we 
find a flat area, in part bare and muddy, partly sedge- 
covered. Deep gullies are cut in it by the water as it is 
drained off, and at their bottoms we see immense num- 
bers of coarse black-looking little shells (Nassa obsoleta 
Say) crawling about. We find also a great many speci- 
mens of a kind of mussel, with a furrowed shell ( Modiola 
plicatula Lamk.), half buried in the mud. Occasionally a 
