Chairs to a more recumbent posture, drift off to the Land of
Nod.
With morning comes examination of travelers' possessions at the custom
house, with amusing exhibitions of peculiarly packed boxes and bags,
recalling funny episodes of foreign tours, while giving to this one a
novel character; then the train speeds on for seven hours more.
THE BAY OF FUNDY.
Ere long singular evidence of proximity to the wonderful tides of the
Bay of Fundy is seen, as all the streams show sloping banks,
stupendously muddy; mud reddish brown in color, smooth and oily looking,
gashed with seams, and with a lazily moving rivulet in the bed of the
stream from whence the retreating tide has sucked away the volume of
water.
"What a Paradise for bare-footed boys, and children with a predilection
for mud pies!" exclaims one of the tourists; while the other - the
practical, prosaic - remarks, "It looks like the chocolate frosting of
your cakes!" for which speech a shriveling look is received.
This great arm of the sea, reaching up so far into the land, and which
tried to convert Nova Scotia into an island (as man proposes to make
it, by channeling the isthmus), was known to early explorers as La Baie
Françoise, its present cognomen being a corruption of the French,
Fond-de-la Baie.
