January 10, 1864, to the care of Captain Field, then residing at the Tremont House.  We may add that the eight finest of these specimens are now lying on the table before us, their mottled sides thickly crusted with arsenical pyrites and streaked through and through with veins and splashes of twenty-two-carat gold.  Incredulity, when raised to its highest pitch, might perhaps discredit all written testimony, whether official or scientific; but we have as yet seen no case so confirmed that the sight of these extraordinary fragments did not compel belief.

In drawing our narrative from the authorities above cited, we shall prefer to follow as closely as possible the precise statements of the documents themselves,—­interspersed only with such remarks of our own as may be necessary best to preserve an intelligible connection between the different portions.  The agreement between all the authorities is so substantial, and in fact entire, that we shall experience none of the usual difficulties in the reconciling of contradictions or the balancing of conflicting theories or statements.

* * * * *

The gold-fields of Nova Scotia consist of some ten or twelve districts of quite limited area in themselves, but lying scattered along almost the whole southeastern coast of the Province.  The whole of this coast, from Cape Sable on the west to Cape Canso on the east, a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, is bordered by a fringe of hard, slaty rocks,—­slate and sandstone in irregular alternations,—­sometimes argillaceous, and occasionally granitic.  These rocks, originally deposited on the grandest scale of Nature, are always, when stratified, found standing at a high angle,—­sometimes almost vertical,—­and with a course, in the main, very nearly due east and west.  They seldom rise to any great elevation,—­the promontory of Aspatogon, about five hundred feet high, being the highest land on the Atlantic coast of the Province.  The general aspect of the shore is low, rocky, and desolate, strewn often with huge boulders of granite or quartzite,—­and where not bleak and rocky, it is covered with thick forests of spruce and white birch.

The picture is not enticing,—­but this is, nevertheless, the true arida nutrix of the splendid masses before us.  The zone of metamorphic rocks which lines this inhospitable coast varies in width from six or eight miles at its eastern extremity to forty or fifty at its widest points,—­presenting in its northern boundary only a rude parallelism with its southern margin,—­and comprising, over about six thousand square miles of surface, the general outline of what may, geologically speaking, be called the Gold-Region of Nova Scotia.