CHAPTER II

An inhospitable reception--Halifax and the Blue Noses--The heat--
Disappointed expectations--The great departed--What the Blue Noses might
be--What the coach was not--Nova Scotia and its capabilities--The roads
and their annoyances--A tea dinner--A night journey and a Highland cabin--
A nautical catastrophe--A joyful reunion.


The Cunard steamers are powerful, punctual, and safe, their _cuisine_
excellent, their arrangements admirable, till they reach Halifax, which is
usually the destination of many of the passengers. I will suppose that the
voyage has been propitious, and our guns have thundered forth the
announcement that the news of the Old World has reached the New; that the
stewards have been _fee'd_ and the captain complimented; and that we have
parted on the best possible terms with the Company, the ship, and our
fellow-passengers. The steamer generally remains for two or three hours at
Halifax to coal, and unship a portion of her cargo, and there is a very
natural desire on the part of the passengers to leave what to many is at
best a floating prison, and set foot on firm ground, even for an hour.
Those who, like ourselves, land at Halifax for the interior, are anxious
to obtain rooms at the hotel, and all who have nothing else to do hurry to
the ice-shop, where the luxury of a tumbler of raspberry-cream ice can be
obtained for threepence. Besides the hurried rush of those who with these
varied objects in view leave the steamer, there are crowds of incomers in
the shape of porters, visitors, and coalheavers, and passengers for the
States, who prefer the comfort and known punctuality of the Royal Mail