Such was the scene which burst upon the eyes of the boys as they crossed the brook, and ascended the other side of the gully. Familiar that scene was, and yet, in spite of its familiarity, it had never lost its attractions to them; and for a moment they paused involuntarily, and looked out before them. For there is this peculiarity about the scenery of Grand Pré, that it is not possible for it to become familiar, in the common sense of the word. That scene is forever varying, and the variations are so great, that every day has some new prospect to offer. Land, sea, and sky, all undergo incessant changes. There is the Basin of Minas, which is ever changing from red to blue, from a broad sea to a contracted strait, hemmed in by mud flats. There is the sky, with its changes from deepest azure to dreamy haze, or impenetrable mist. There are rivers which change from fulness to emptiness, majestic at the flow of tide, indistinguishable at the ebb. There is Blomidon, which every day is arrayed in some new robe; sometimes pale-green, at other times deep purple; now light-gray, again dark-blue; and thus it goes through innumerable changes, from the pale neutral tints which it catches from the overhanging fogs, down through all possible gradations, to a darkness and a gloom, and a savage grandeur, which throw around it something almost of terror. Then come the seasons, which change the wide plains from brown to green, and from green to yellow, till winter appears, and robes all in white, and piles up for many a mile over the shallow shores, and in the deep channels of the rivers, the ever accumulating masses of heaped-up ice. Yet all the time, through all the seasons, while field and flood, river and mountain, sea and forest, are thus changing their aspect, there hangs over all an atmosphere which brings changes more wonderful than these. The fog is forever struggling for an entrance here. The air in an instant may bring forth its hidden watery vapors. High over Blomidon the mist banks are piled, and roll and writhe at the blast of the winds from the sea. Here the mirage comes, and the eye sees the solid land uplifted into the air; here is the haze, soft and mysterious as that of Southern Italy, which diffuses through all the scene an unutterable sweetness and tenderness. Here, in an instant, a change of wind may whirl all the accumulated mists down from the crest of Blomidon into the vale of Cornwallis, and force vast masses of fog-banks far up into the Basin of Minas, till mountain and valley, and river and plain, and sea and sky, are all alike snatched from view, and lost in the indistinguishable gray of one general fog.