opinion, most inhumanly, and upon pretences that, in the eye of an honest man, are not worth a farthing, root out this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or to reconcile gave us no sort of right to extirpate." The sad story of Grand Pré and of Evangeline was historic before Longfellow's day, but he made it immortal. MINAS TO HALIFAX. The Basin of Minas, in the Micmac Indian tradition, was the beaver-pond and favorite abiding-place of their divinity, Glooscap. On the great promontory of Cape Blomidon, which stretches northward to enclose the Basin on its western side, he had his home. The ridge of the cape turns sharply to the westward and ends in Cape Split, alongside the Minas Channel. This formation has been compared to the curved handle of a huge walking-stick, the long North Mountain stretching far away being the stick. The Micmacs tell us that this ridge, now bent around to the westward, was Glooscap's beaver-dam, which he beneficently swung open, so that the surplus waters might run out and not overflow the meadows around the Basin of Minas. In swinging it around, however, the terminal cliff of Cape Split was broken off, and now rises in a promontory four hundred feet high just beyond the main ridge. Glooscap, we are told, began a conflict in the Basin with the Great Beaver, and threw at him the five vast rocks now known as the Five Islands on the northern shore to the eastward of Parrsboro'. The Beaver was chased out of the Basin, westward through the Minas Channel, and as a parting salute Glooscap threw his kettle at him, which overturning, became Spencer's Island, on the northern shore beyond Cape Split. The enormous tides run through the Minas Channel at eight miles an hour, and they helped to drive the Great Beaver over to St. John, where Glooscap finally conquered and killed him.