If Nova Scotia as seen from the sea, with its gloomy coast guarded by numberless black reefs, recalls that of Brittany, the same resemblance strikes the traveller who pushes towards the interior of the country, through its deep and smiling bays; and Halifax Bay in particular, when its fresh and verdant surroundings are lighted up by brilliant sunshine, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of charm.  I saw it thus when I arrived, in all the excitement of a regatta, with the peculiar feature of a race for birch-bark canoes, paddled with incredible vigour by Mic Mac squaws, or Indian women, in blue blouses and floating black hair.  What a splendid colony Nova Scotia is, too!

The advance post of the huge Canadian territory, protected by its almost insular position from the rigours of the northern climate, with all its ports open (not only Halifax, where the fleets of the whole world could find absolute safety, maritime and strategic, at once, but Sydney too, surrounded by immense beds of coal), while the St Lawrence is still choked with ice.

Our short stay in port was wound up by a great dinner given by my gunroom officers to those of the English frigate Winchester.  The meal was of the merriest, if I may judge by the toasts, the cheers, and the songs I heard; and the merriment continued on shore, whither the young people betook themselves together.  One of the English midshipmen, a good-looking lad with a thick crop of carroty hair, returned on board his own ship with beautiful jet black locks, to the great astonishment of the first lieutenant; while I beheld two of my cadets appear at a ball given by the officers of the garrison and indulge in such a remarkable style of dancing, that I was forced to give them immediate orders to return on board the Belle-Poule.  One of these cadets, by the way, was a Turk, called Saly.  His story was rather a strange one.  He was the son of Saly Pasha, the pasha of Athens, and was a child in his mother’s arms when the city was carried by assault by the Greeks and their philhellenic supporters, in I know not which year of the Greek insurrection.  All the defenders were put to the sword, and in the excitement of the fight Saly’s mother was murdered, but she had strength, as she died, to throw her infant into the arms of a Wurtembergian officer.  He, much embarrassed by the gift, passed the child on, having previously christened it Gottlieb, to a French naval lieutenant of the name of Quernel, who commanded a vessel off that coast.  When Quernel returned to Toulon, my Aunt Adelaide heard the incident mentioned.  She interested herself in the little Turk, and had him brought up amongst us.  The boy turned out well, entered the navy, and was a post captain when he died.  From Halifax we went to New York, the frantic bustle and stir in which place contrasted strangely, in my eyes, with the calm of the Newfoundland deserts and the placidity of the Blue Noses, as the inhabitants of Nova Scotia are nicknamed.  We were at New York to do some indispensable revictualling, consequent on the exceptionally rough voyage we had had.  Besides much other damage, we had lost all our sails; they had been carried away one after the other, and it was absolutely necessary to have at least one set in good trim, instead of the patched rags still remaining to us, before undertaking our winter voyage across the ocean.