AN OUTING IN ACADIA 
Nova Scotia from a Canoe 
BY ALLEN J. HENRY 
ONGFELLOW has 
made the land of Nova 
4 Scotia immortal. His 
beautiful epic has so 
impressed itself on our 
minds that we do not 
think of this country as 
a province of the British 
crown, but as the land 
of Evangeline, that dim, 
sad country whence the 
peaceful Acadians were 
sO aii ae by. order of the English 
king. We wonder at the barbarity of the 
' people who broke up such ideal homes and 
settlements as those must surely have been. 
And again we wonder strangely at the sub- 
stitution of the harsh-sounding name, 
Nova Scotia, for Acadia, beautiful, eu- 
phonious, poetic, exemplifying in its syllables 
all that is happy, contented and peaceful. 
Indeed, the very change in names brings 
before our minds the photacier of the whole 
tragedy. 
Although s since our trip aes Nova 
Scotia my companion and I have felt much 
sympathy for the Acadian exiles, it must be 
confessed that we started for that place with 
no poetic or romantic thoughts of any kind 
in our: heads. .Our main idéa was to live in 
the open air, to fish a little, to shoot a little, 
to eat a great deal, and to return home 
“much benefited by the change,” as the 
railroad circulars say.. We had seen our 
guide, Laurie Mitchell, of Maitland, and 
talked the matter over with him before 
‘deciding to visit this particular country. 
He had assured us of a good time, without 
too heavy a drain on our purses, so that, 
although we .possessed little definite infor- 
mation concerning the nature of the country, 
we were not altogether ‘‘ going it blind.” 
Arrived.at Maitland, a village of four or 
five houses, with the aid of Mitchell we 
packed our camping accessories in two bags, 
leaving the rest in the keeping of the Fords, 

Lake. 
the guide’s friends and proprietors of our 
headquarters. That done, our next job con- 
sisted in the lashing of a brand new canoe 
and our our various impedimenta on a large 
farm wagon. Bynine o’clock on the morning 
after our arrival we were off, with the 
adieus of the good country folk ringing in 
our ears. 
After a tramp of four miles we came to 
the spot where we were to launch the canoe. 
Our original intention “had been to cruise 
along the Liverpool River, through the 
chain of lakes, to Liverpool. A long 
drought, however, had dried up the streams 
to such an extent that this was, out of the 
question, so we decided to follow the river 
as far as Lake Rossignol, where we: would 
strive for the mouth of the Shelburne 
(emptying into Rossignol) and follow it up 
to its source. Here we expected to get fairly 
good fishing. 
Down the stream we glided, until we 
stopped to allow Mitchell to greet an old 
acquaintance of his who was casting from 
a rowboat, drifting along with the current. 
That over, we again faced down stream, and 
ina quarter of an hour emerged into Fairy 
‘Thence we set out in real earnest 
across the lake, heading for the mouth of 
the Liverpool River. It is impossible to see 
the full extent of Fairy Lake, on account of 
the numerous small islands in it. On the 
shores grow small scrub cedars, pines and 
hemlocks, with an occasional maple thrown 
in. 
On the other side of this uninteresting 
lake we entered the mouth of the Liverpool 
River. Dragging the canoe over an eel-weir 
(or-eel-wire, as Nova Scotians call it) built 
many years ago by the Indians,-we were 
fairly started on -the river. part of our 
journey. The scenery here became beauti- 
ful. Tall, stately pines. and - hemlocks 
fringed the curving banks. The intense 
quiet of the forest pervaded everything 
Now and then we would come to rapids” 
