Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house is one of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms, chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decay and untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has a low back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden, damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travel rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that this was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making and frolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt lovers sat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond of each other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon the traces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air of the hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maids at table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-made dishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hotel and lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make a little romance about its history. While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. We hastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey. But haste was not called for. The steamboat would not sail on her return till morning. No one could tell why. It was not on account of freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of more passengers, for they were all on board. But if the boat had returned that night to Pictou, some of the passengers might have left her and gone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days lounging through Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of Prince Edward Island. If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we could catch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the officials were aware of this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac. We mention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn to possess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not run for his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize him with the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientific reader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in these regions. Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth moves through space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles an hour. This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of the most rapid express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotive in an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a line nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of the earth in the same time. But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait without a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an express train. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincial steamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from Port