And, indeed, Canseau can have my feeble testimony in confirmation. It is a grand marine highway, having steep hills on the Cape Breton Island side, and lofty mountains on the other shore; a full, broad, mile-wide space between them; and reaching from end to end, fifteen miles, from the Atlantic to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As I took leave of Ear-rings, at Plaister Cove, and wrapped myself up in my cloak in the stern-sheets of the row-boat to cross the strait, the full Acadian moon, larger than any United States moon, rose out of her sea-fog, and touched mountain, height, and billow, with effulgence. It was a scene of Miltonic grandeur. After the ruined walls of Louisburgh, and the dark caverns of Sydney, comes Canseau, with its startling splendors! Truly this is a wonderful country. Another night in a clean Nova-Scotian inn on the mountain-side, a deep sleep, and balmy awakening in the clear air. Yet some exceptions must be taken to the early sun in this latitude. To get up at two o'clock or four; to ride thirty or forty miles to breakfast, with a convalescent appetite, is painful. But yet, "to him, who in the love of Nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language." Admiration and convalescent hunger make a very good team in this beautiful country. You look out upon the unfathomable Gulf of St. Lawrence, and feel as if you were an unfathomable gulf yourself. You ride through lofty woods, with a tantalizing profusion of living edibles in your path; at every moment a cock-rabbit is saying his prayers before the horses; at every bosk and bole a squirrel stares at you with unwinking eyes, and Robin Yellow-bill hops, runs, and flies before the coach within reach of the driver's whip, _sans peur_! And this too is the land of moose and cariboo: here the hunters, on snow-shoes, track the huge animals in the season; and moose and cariboo, in the Halifax markets, are cheaper than beef with us. And to think this place is only a four days' journey from the metropolis, in the languid winter! By the ashes of Nimrod, I will launch myself on a pair of snow-shoes, and shoot a moose in the snow before I am twelve months older, as sure as these ponies carry us to breakfast! "How far are we from breakfast, driver?" "Twenty miles," quoth Jehu.