tints of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of stunted pines was
the only forest in sight, though Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port,
and some schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous pine
plank. The steamboat-wharf was all astir with the liveliest toil and
leisure. The boat was taking on wood, which was brought in wheelbarrows
to the top of the steep, smooth gangway-planking, where the _habitant_
in charge planted his broad feet for the downward slide, and was hurled
aboard more or less _en masse_ by the fierce velocity of his heavy-laden
wheelbarrow. Amidst the confusion and hazard of this feat a procession
of other habitans marched aboard, each one bearing under his arm a
coffin-shaped wooden box. The rising fear of Colonel Ellison, that these
boxes represented the loss of the whole infant population of Ha-Ha Bay,
was checked by the reflection that the region could not have produced so
many children, and calmed altogether by the purser, who said that they
were full of huckleberries, and that Colonel Ellison could have as many
as he liked for fifteen cents a bushel. This gave him a keen sense of
the poverty of the land, and he bought of the boys who came aboard such
abundance of wild red raspberries, in all manner of birch-bark canoes
and goblets and cornucopias, that he was obliged to make presents of
them to the very dealers whose stock he had exhausted, and he was in
treaty with the local half-wit--very fine, with a hunchback, and a
massive wen on one side of his head--to take charity in the wild fruits
of his native province, when the crowd about him was gently opened by a
person who advanced with a flourishing bow and a sprightly "Good
morning, good morning, sir!" "How do you do?" asked Colonel Ellison; but
the other, intent on business, answered, "I am the only person at Ha-Ha
Bay who speaks English, and I have come to ask if you would not like to
make a promenade in my horse and buggy upon the mountain before
breakfast. You shall be gone as long as you will for one shilling and
sixpence. I will show you all that there is to be seen about the place,