Toward Cape Breton 
We had undoubtedly entered a new world. 
The depressing sense of commonplaceness had 
disappeared ; life began to be again original and 
beautiful. The houses were picturesque, and 
so were the well-sweeps that stood against the 
sky. 
There appeared distant blue highlands 
beyond the foreground of tawny hillsides. 
Autumn tints were beginning to soften the 
woods on all sides ; and a long irregular lake 
sparkled down below us, with curving shores 
and fairy-like islands on its blue bosom, the 
whole enveloped in a haze like that which 
comes in Indian summer. 
The country began to look unfamiliar and 
a little foreign. The brakeman's name was 
Sandy, and when he called out West Bemigo- 
mishy with the accent on the last syllable, 
and with a Scotch flavour difficult to transmit, 
we knew we had passed beyond the petty cares 
of a vapid civilisation and were indeed nearing 
those dangerous mountain passes, those marshes 
and Scotch highlands of which we had heard 
and long had dreamed. 
We sped past more rounded hills, often 
shaven and shorn of their hay, and often lovely 
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