"contents" tell the nature and topics of each document, and will thus facilitate research, and prevent much injurious turning over of the manuscripts. The work, too long delayed, has been happily commenced. Its neglect was felt to be a fault and a reproach, and serious loss was known to impend; but still it was put off, and spoken lightly of, and sneered at, and a very mistaken economy pretended, until last legislative session, when it was adopted by accident apparently, and is now in successful operation. The next questions are, how will the arranged documents be preserved? who will have them in charge? will they be allowed to be scattered about in the hands of privileged persons, to be lost wholesale? or will they, as they should, be sacredly conserved, a store to which all shall have a common but well-guarded light of access and research.--_Halifax Sun_, _Dec. 9, 1857_. But now we approach the station of the great Nova Scotia Railway, nine and three-quarter miles in length, that skirts the margin of Bedford Basin, and ends at the head of that blue sheet of water in the village of Sackville. It is amusing to see the gravity and importance of the conductor, in uniform frock-coat and with crown and V. R. buttons, as he paces up and down the platform before starting; and the quiet dignity of the sixpenny ticket-office; and the busy air of the freight-master, checking off boxes and bundles for the distant terminus--so distant that it can barely be distinguished by the naked eye. But it was a pleasant ride, that by the Basin! Not less pleasant because of the company of an old friend, who, with wife and children, went with me to the end of the iron road. Arrived there, we parted, with many a hearty hand-shake, and thence by stage to Windsor, on the river Avon, forty-five miles or so west of Halifax. My fellow-passenger on the stage-top was a pony! Yes, a real pony! not bigger, however, than a good sized pointer dog, although his head was of most preposterous horse-like length. This equine Tom Thumb, was one of the mustangs, or wild horses of Sable Island, some little account of which here may not be uninteresting. But first let me say, in order not to tax the credulity of my reader too much, that pony did not stand upright upon the roof of the coach, as may have been surmised, but was very cleverly laid upon his side, with his four legs strapped in the form of a saw-buck, precisely as butchers tie the legs of calves or of sheep together, for transportation in carts to the shambles, only pony's fetters were not so cruel--indeed he seemed to be quite at his ease--like the member of the foreign legion on the road to Dartmouth.