In the western valley of that part of French Acadia, now known as Nova Scotia, not only do we tread on historic ground, but we see in these days a landscape of more varied beauty than that which so delighted the gentlemen-adventurers of old France nearly three centuries ago. In this country, which the poem conceived by Longfellow amid the elms of Cambridge has made so famous, we see the rich lands reclaimed from the sea, which glistens a few miles to the north, and every day comes rushing up its estuaries. There to the north is dark, lofty Blomidon--whose name is probably a memorial of a Portuguese voyager--with its overhanging cliff under which the tumultuous tides struggle and foam. Here, in a meadow close by, is a long row of Lombardy poplars, pointing to another race and another country. There, on a slight acclivity, among the trees, is a pile of white college buildings, there a tall white spire {52} rises into the pure blue sky. We see cottages covered with honeysuckle and grapevine; with their gardens of roses and lilies, and many old-fashioned flowers. In the spring, the country is one mass of pink and white blossoms, which load the passing breeze with delicate fragrance; in autumn the trees bend beneath rosy and yellow apples. We drive through a fertile valley, where runs a placid river amid many meadows, gardens, and orchards, until at last it empties into a picturesque basin, where the landscape shows a harmonious blending of mountain and water, of cultivated fields and ancient forest trees. Here we see a quiet old town, whose roofs are green with the moss of many years, where willows and grassy mounds tell of a historic past, where the bells of ox-teams tinkle in the streets, and commerce itself wears a look of reminiscence. For we have come to the banks of that basin where the French, in the first years of the seventeenth century, laid the foundations of a settlement which, despite all its early misfortunes, has lasted until the present time, though it is the English tongue that is now spoken and the Englishman who is now the occupant. Early in the leafy month of June, 1604, the French under De Monts sailed into this spacious basin, and saw for the first time its grassy meadows, its numerous streams, its cascades tumbling from the hills, its forest-clad mountains. "This," said Champlain, who called it Port Royal, "was the most commodious and pleasant place that we had yet seen in this country." {53}