Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and some of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time.  The Acadia College was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said that it is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a place described as “one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province.”  But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that the next station was Grand Pre!  We were within three miles of the most poetic place in North America.

There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he was born in Grand Pre.  It seemed impossible that we should actually be near a person so felicitously born.  He had a justifiable pride in the fact, as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking to see for the first time his old home.  His local information, imparted to her, overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read “Evangeline,” his delight in making us acquainted with the scene of that poem was pleasant to see.  The village of Grand Pre is a mile from the station; and perhaps the reader would like to know exactly what the traveler, hastening on to Baddeck, can see of the famous locality.

We looked over a well-grassed meadow, seamed here and there by beds of streams left bare by the receding tide, to a gentle swell in the ground upon which is a not heavy forest growth.  The trees partly conceal the street of Grand Pre, which is only a road bordered by common houses.  Beyond is the Basin of Minas, with its sedgy shore, its dreary flats; and beyond that projects a bold headland, standing perpendicular against the sky.  This is the Cape Blomidon, and it gives a certain dignity to the picture.

The old Normandy picturesqueness has departed from the village of Grand Pre.  Yankee settlers, we were told, possess it now, and there are no descendants of the French Acadians in this valley.  I believe that Mr. Cozzens found some of them in humble circumstances in a village on the other coast, not far from Halifax, and it is there, probably, that the

“Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline’s story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”

At any rate, there is nothing here now except a faint tradition of the French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments that they were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear their flocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicity of ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is to the expulsion he owes “Evangeline” and the luxury of his romantic grief.  So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soul faithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as he passes through this region of sorrow.