Down North and Up Along 
plush of shorn meadows or the silvery, tawny 
grass. 
At one place we passed a village lying in the 
stony bed of an ancient water-course, the little 
silver stream purling adown its spine being 
the only remnant of a once mighty torrent 
that had carved out the valley. Instead of 
the flood of long ago elm-trees now occupy 
the dry river-bed. They stood about the 
houses, fair, foreign forms in this stern land of 
fir-trees. 
hviii^onish ! the accent of all these names 
ending in nish or mish is on the last syllable. 
Sandy sings it out powerfully, but it does not 
dance like the light-hearted Merigomish. 
It is a pleasant enough place, but one might 
pass it unheeded, did one not know that here 
dwells the Bishop of Arichat, that here is the 
St. Francis Xavier College, and here the Cathe- 
dral of St. Ninian, one of the finest in Canada. 
Here, too, are large cheese-factories that minis- 
ter to the temporal needs of the people. Here, 
moreover, the people are descendants of the 
Scotch Highlanders who settled these shores 
in the early part of the century, and here the 
wild Gaelic speech may yet be heard, the cathe- 
154 
