But to return for a moment to Brown.  I feel that Brown has been let off too easily in the above paragraph.  His conduct, to say the truth, was not such as we expected of a man in whom we had put our entire faith for half a day,—­a long while to trust anybody in these times,—­a man whom we had exalted as an encyclopedia of information, and idealized in every way.  A man of wealth and liberal views and courtly manners we had decided Brown would be.  Perhaps he had a suburban villa on the heights over-looking Kennebeckasis Bay, and, recognizing us as brothers in a common interest in Baddeck, not-withstanding our different nationality, would insist upon taking us to his house, to sip provincial tea with Mrs. Brown and Victoria Louise, his daughter.  When, therefore, Mr. Brown whisked into his dingy office, and, but for our importunity, would have paid no more attention to us than to up-country customers without credit, and when he proved to be willingly, it seemed to us, ignorant of Baddeck, our feelings received a great shock.  It is incomprehensible that a man in the position of Brown with so many boxes of soap and candles to dispose of—­should be so ignorant of a neighboring province.  We had heard of the cordial unity of the Provinces in the New Dominion.  Heaven help it, if it depends upon such fellows as Brown!  Of course, his directing us to Cope was a mere fetch.  For as we have intimated, it would have taken us longer to have given Cope an idea of Baddeck, than it did to enlighten Brown.  But we had no bitter feelings about Cope, for we never had reposed confidence in him.

Our plan of campaign was briefly this:  To take the steamboat at eight o’clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to go by rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn north and east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to push on by stage to the Gut of Canso.  This would carry us over the entire length of Nova Scotia, and, with good luck, land us on Cape Breton Island Saturday morning.  When we should set foot on that island, we trusted that we should be able to make our way to Baddeck, by walking, swimming, or riding, whichever sort of locomotion should be most popular in that province.  Our imaginations were kindled by reading that the “most superb line of stages on the continent” ran from New Glasgow to the Gut of Canso.  If the reader perfectly understands this programme, he has the advantage of the two travelers at the time they made it.

It was a gray morning when we embarked from St. John, and in fact a little drizzle of rain veiled the Martello tower, and checked, like the cross-strokes of a line engraving, the hill on which it stands.  The miscellaneous shining of such a harbor appears best in a golden haze, or in the mist of a morning like this.  We had expected days of fog in this region; but the fog seemed to have gone out with the high tides of the geography.  And it is simple justice to these