FINDING that their new acquaintance was so very friendly, and communicative, and all that, the boys thought that it would be a good thing to find out from him something about the various islands which they proposed visiting. Ferguson declared that he knew as much about the Gulf of St. Lawrence as any man living, and could tell them all they wanted to know. “What sort of a place is St. Paul’s Island,” asked Arthur. The skipper shook his head in silence. “Is St. Pierre worth visiting?” “Well--scarcely,” said the other. “What sort of a place is Anticosti?” asked Bruce. “Well, you’d best not go within fifty miles of that thar island.” “What sort of a place is Sable Island?” asked Bart. “Sable Island!” exclaimed the skipper, staring at them in astonishment. “Yes, Sable Island.” “You mean Cape Sable Island.” “No; we mean Sable Island.” The skipper looked at them all with a solemn face. “Well, boys,” said he, “as to visiting Sable Island, all I’ve got to say is, I hope you’ll never begin to try it on Sable Island. Why, Sable Island’s one of the places that seafarin’ men try never to visit, and pray never to get nearer than a hundred miles to. Sable Island! Boys,” he continued, after a pause, “don’t ever speak of that again; don’t even think of it. Give it up at once and forever. I only hope that you won’t be brought to pay a visit there in spite of yourselves, a thing which I’m afraid you’re very likely to do if you go cruisin’ about in an old tub like that much longer. Not but what Sable Island mightn’t be improved--that is, if the inhabitants only had any enterprise, and the government that owns it was alive to the wants of the age.” “‘Inhabitants!” said Bart; “why, there’s only the keeper and his family.” The skipper waved his hand. “Grant all that,” said he. “Very well. They’re a nucleus, at any rate, and can give tone and character to the future Sable Islanders. Now, what your government ought to do with Sable Island is this. They’d ought to make a good breakwater, first and foremost, so as to have decent harbor accommodation for passing vessels. Then they’d ought to connect it with the main land with a submarine cable, so that the place needn’t be quite so isolated, and have regular lines of steamers runnin’ backard and forard. Well, then they ought to get up a judicious emigration scheme, and that thar island would begin to go ahead in a style that would make you fairly open your eyes. Why, in ten years, if this plan was carried out, they’d be building a railroad,--a thing that is needed there more than most anywheres, the island bein so uncommon long and narrow,--and that bein done, why, Sable Island would begin to come abreast of the nineteenth century, instead of hanging back in the middle ages.” After some further conversation of a similar character, the skipper proposed to show the boys about the country, and introduce them to some of the “aristocracy.”