Acadia 
these rivers. Queer gashes in the soil with 
their streams constantly turned by the god- 
dess who rules the tides, Acadia would not 
be Acadia without them. 
Think of having to consult the almanac or 
look out of the window to see whether the 
river that flows through your town happens 
to be running up stream or down, or not at 
all ! Yet this is what the dweller in Acadia 
must do when he wishes to float his boat. 
Fortunately for the Habitant, the Canard, 
and the CornwaUis, there is a good deal of 
red tape involved in building a new dike, so 
they may breathe freely for yet a time. May 
they long continue to run uphill, then run 
down, then run dry, in their present agreeable 
fashion ! Not all of them run dry, however ; 
some have a fresh-water stream of their own ; 
and where this is the case they can never be 
diked wholly out of existence. 
We had noticed very little wild life of any 
kind in Nova Scotia. Birds there may be in 
the spring, but at this time their forms were 
seldom seen. The most noticeable creatures 
were small grasshoppers with large ideas of 
the value of noise. Each appeared to be pos- 
45 
