To get breath, let us turn again to the mission-mansion, which now, under the effect of sudden contrast, seems too magnificent to be real, as if it had been built by enchantment rather than by the labor of man. This is situated half a dozen rods from the shore, at a slight elevation above it, and looks pleasantly up the bay to the southwest. The site has been happily chosen. Here, for a wonder, is an acre or two of land which one may call level,--broader toward the shore, and tapering to a point as it runs back. To the right, as we face it, the ground rises not very brokenly, giving a small space for the hunch of huts, then falls quickly to the sea; while beyond, and toward the ocean, islands twenty miles deep close in and shelter all. To the left go up again the perpetual hills, hills. Everywhere around the bay save here, on island and main, the immitigable gneiss hills rise bold and sudden from the water, now dimly impurpled with lichen, now in nakedness of rock surface, yet beautified in their bare severity by alternating and finely waving stripes of lightest and darkest gray,--as if to show sympathy with the billowy heaving of the sea. Forward to the mansion. In front a high, strong, neat picket-fence incloses a pretty flower-yard, in which some exotics, tastefully arranged, seem to be flourishing well. We knock; with no manner of haste, and with no seeming of cordial willingness, we are admitted, are shown into a neat room of good size, and entertained by a couple of the brethren. One of these only, and he alone among the missionaries, it appeared, spoke English. This was an elderly, somewhat cold and forbidding personage, of Secession sympathies. He had just returned from Europe after two years' absence, was fresh from London, and put on the true Exeter-Hall whine in calling ours "a n-dreadful n-war." He did not press the matter, however, nor in any manner violate the _role_ of cold courtesy which he had assumed; and it was chiefly by the sudden check and falling of the countenance, when he found us thorough Unionist, that his sympathies were betrayed. Wine and rusks were brought in, both delicious,--the latter seeming like ambrosia, after the dough cannon-balls with which our "head cook at the Tremont House" had regaled us. After a stay of civil brevity we took our leave, and so closed an interview in which we had been treated with irreproachable politeness, but in which the heart was forbidden to have any share.