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t, within a few miles of the city.
But with the early dawn, we awoke to hear the welcome sounds of the engines in motion, and when we reached the deck, the mist was drifted with sunlight, and rose and fell in luminous billows on water and shore, and then lifted, lingered, and vanished!
"And this is Halifax?" said I, as that quaint, mouldy old town poked its wooden gables through the fog of the second morning. "This is Halifax? This the capital of Nova Scotia? This the city that harbored those loyal heroes of the Revolution, who gallantly and gayly fought, and bled, and ran for their king? Ah! you brave old Tories; you staunch upholders of the crown; cavaliers without ringlets or feathers, russet boots or steeple-crown hats, it seems as if you were still hovering over this venerable tabernacle of seven hundred gables, and wreathing each particular ridge-pole, pigeon-hole, and shingle with a halo of fog."
The plank was laid, and the passengers left the steamer. There were a few vehicles on the wharf for the accommodation of strangers; square, black, funereal-like, wheeled sarcophagi, eminently suggestive of burials and crape. Of course I did not ride in one, on account of unpleasant associations; but, placing my trunk in charge of a cart-boy with a long-tailed dray, and a diminutive pony, I walked through the silent streets towards "The Waverley."
It was an inspiriting morning, that which I met upon the well-docked shores of Halifax, and although the side-walks of the city were neither bricked nor paved with flags, and the middle street was in its original and aboriginal clay, yet there was novelty in making its acquaintance. Everybody was asleep in that early fog; and when everybody woke up, it was done so quietly that the change was scarcely apparent.
But the "Merlin," British mailer, is to sail at noon for the Shakspeare Island, and breakfast must be discussed, and then once more I am with you, my anti-bilious ocean. It chanced, however, I heard at breakfast, that the "Curlew,"