wheels were locked, and drivers were vehemently expostulating in the rich
brogue of Erin; people were jostling each other in their haste, or diving
into the dimly-lighted custom-house, and it must have been fully half an
hour before we had extricated ourselves from this chaos of mismanagement
and disorder, by scrambling over gravel-heaps and piles of timber, into
the dirty, unlighted streets of Halifax.

Dirty they were then, though the weather was very dry, for oyster-shells,
fish heads and bones, potato-skins, and cabbage-stalks littered the roads;
but dirty was a word which does not give the faintest description of the
almost impassable state in which I found them, when I waded through them
ankle-deep in mud some months afterwards.

We took apartments for two days at the Waverley House, a most comfortless
place, yet the best inn at Halifax. Three hours after we landed, the
_Canada_ fired her guns, and steamed off to Boston; and as I saw her
coloured lights disappear round the heads of the harbour, I did not feel
the slightest regret at having taken leave of her for ever. We remained
for two days at Halifax, and saw the little which was worth seeing in the
Nova-Scotian capital. I was disappointed to find the description of the
lassitude and want of enterprise of the Nova-Scotians, given by Judge
Halliburton, so painfully correct. Halifax possesses one of the deepest
and most commodious harbours in the world, and is so safe that ships need
no other guide into it than their charts. There are several small
fortified islands at its mouth, which assist in its defence without
impeding the navigation. These formidable forts protect the entrance, and
defend the largest naval depot which we possess in North America. The town
itself, which contains about 25,000 people, is on a small peninsula, and
stands on a slope rising from the water's edge to the citadel, which is
heavily armed, and amply sufficient for every purpose of defence. There