were going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling of
satisfaction which proximity to the Great often excites.

We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction. We were sailing
along the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the Annapolis
Basin, and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we were
about to enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call the
Garden of Nova Scotia. This favored vale, skirted by low ranges of
hills on either hand, and watered most of the way by the Annapolis
River, extends from the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor on
the river Avon. We expected to see something like the fertile
valleys of the Connecticut or the Mohawk. We should also pass
through those meadows on the Basin of Minas which Mr. Longfellow has
made more sadly poetical than any other spot on the Western
Continent. It is,--this valley of the Annapolis,--in the belief of
provincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the world, with
a soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair meadows,
orchards, and vines. It was doubtless our own fault that this land
did not look to us like a garden, as it does to the inhabitants of
Nova Scotia; and it was not until we had traveled over the rest of
the country, that we saw the appropriateness of the designation. The
explanation is, that not so much is required of a garden here as in
some other parts of the world. Excellent apples, none finer, are
exported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoes
is said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here. I should think that
oats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those who
care for it, may be satisfactory. I should judge that the other
products of this garden are fish and building-stone. But we
anticipate. And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and the
hemlocks"? Nobody, I suppose, ever travels here without believing