"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;
for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there is
between the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of the
Dominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in the
Provinces for the name to be a reproach to them. I wish I had
thought of something more insulting to say.

By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through a
country where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won at
all; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a place
exhibiting more thrift than any we have seen. A pleasant enough
country, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up the
Salmon and down the East River. New Glasgow is not many miles from
Pictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants build
vessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboring
coal mines. Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride of
eighty miles to the Gut of Canso.

The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the most
unwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize its
condition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he will
scarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions. There seems to be a
fashion in diet which endures. The early travelers as well as the
later in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,
limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;
though authorities differ in regard to the third element for
discouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimes
it is ham. Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman of
this part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become now
a tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and the