On finding that I knew her
birthplace in the Highlands, she became quite talkative, and on wishing
her good bye with the words "Oiche mhaith dhuibh; Beannachd luibh!"
[Footnote: Good night; blessings be with you.] she gave my hand a true
Highland grasp with both of hers; a grasp bringing back visions of home
and friends, and "the bonnie North countrie."
A wild drive we had from this place to Pictou. The road lay through
forests which might have been sown at the beginning of time. Huge hemlocks
threw high their giant arms, and from between their dark stems gleamed the
bark of the silver birch. Elm, beech, and maple flourished; I missed alone
the oak of England.
The solemn silence of these pathless roads was broken only by the note of
the distant bull-frog; meteors fell in streams of fire, the crescent moon
occasionally gleamed behind clouds from which the lightning flashed almost
continually, and the absence of any familiar faces made me realize at
length that I was a stranger in a strange land.
After the subject of the colony had been exhausted, I amused the coachman
with anecdotes of the supernatural - stories of ghosts, wraiths,
apparitions, and second sight; but he professed himself a disbeliever, and
I thought I had failed to make any impression on him, till at last he
started at the crackling of a twig, and the gleaming whiteness of a silver
birch. He would have liked the stories better, he confessed at length, if
the night had not been quite so dark.
The silence of the forest was so solemn, that, remembering the last of the
Mohicans, we should not have been the least surprised if an Indian war-
whoop had burst upon our startled ears.
We were travelling over the possessions of the Red men. Nothing more
formidable occurred than the finding of three tipsy men laid upon the
road; and our coachman had to alight and remove them before the vehicle
could proceed.
We reached Pictou at a quarter past two on a very chilly starlight
morning, and by means of the rude telegraph, which runs along the road,
comfortable rooms had been taken for us at an inn of average cleanliness.
Here we met with a storekeeper from Prince Edward Island, and he told us
that the parents of my cousins, whom we were about to visit, knew nothing
whatever of our intended arrival, and supposed their children to be in
Germany.
As a colonial dinner is an aggregate of dinner and tea, so a colonial
breakfast is a curious complication of breakfast and dinner, combining, I
think, the advantages of both. It is only an extension of the Highland
breakfast; fish of several sorts, meat, eggs, and potatoes, buckwheat
fritters and Johnny cake, being served with the tea and coffee.
