Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/32

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14
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

in the cup of tea proffered by the master of the train if it is lunch hour in the caboose, or in the informing chat with a blue-overalled handy-man who relates moose stories, scraps of folk-lore, or news of mining and agricultural ventures with the same facility with which he uncouples a freight.

There are minor railways whose gait would exercise a Russian's patience. The vagaries of time-tables which decree the departure of certain trains on different days to specific stations are not always easy of solution. Some schedules, especially those on Prince Edward Island lines, make havoc of early morning naps. But on main roads, travel in the Sea Provinces is an unvexed delight.


Routes.

Halifax and Yarmouth are the portals to mid-Acadia and to historic settlements on the Atlantic coast of lower Nova Scotia,—Lunenburg, Bridgewater, Liverpool, Shelburne. A Grand Tour of the Provinces will include, besides the above-mentioned towns, those of the Annapolis Valley and the Minas Meadows, "which Mr. Longfellow has made more sadly poetical than any other spot on the Western Continent"; a visit to St. John, chief city of New Brunswick, and adjacent resorts; a voyage by the much-vaunted St. John River to Fredericton; a journey through forest wilds to the Grand Falls of the St. John and Nepisiguit and to the Bay de Chaleur; a visit to the Hopewell