Romantic Canada. Victoria Hayward

by the land, wherein trains may run, but it never seems just an ordinary train to you after its sea-going fling. And so you are quite prepared for the way it skims across the Bras D’Or at “The Narrows” and sets you down there to a “fish supper” in a little restaurant, and waits while you eat.

      At Iona, it stops again, and sets down the passengers for Baddeck. And after that it hugs the lakeshore, till North Sydney reminds one that “business is business” and that one has arrived in the heart of it.

      To speak of North Sydney is to think of coal. Yet, unless you undertake “the mines”, look them up, because you have a fancy to from the viewpoint of Romance, they are not only not intrusive but they actually lend a hand in adding to the “figures” in the harbour. There the picturesque, black-hulled, red-bottomed steamers at anchor, are “colliers” awaiting their turn to load. These steamers make just the contrast needed to set off the fish-schooners riding at anchor, amid dancing reflections, when the setting sun of a calm evening mirrors every spar, rope and sail in the silvery waters of the harbour.

      At Sydney the outlook is easterly. New elements creep into the atmosphere. “Over there,” is Newfoundland. These waters that lap at your feet bring Europe within hail. That little, weather-worn steamer lying there by the wharf-side will to-morrow morning hitch to the Quai in Saint Pierre et Miquelon.

      The “colliers” that came in yesterday, in a day or two may be nosing up the Saint Lawrence in the wake of palatial ocean liners to Quebec. Sydney stands for the extended hand of Canada; extended to Newfoundland as a link in transportation; extended in invitation to the British Isles and to Old Europe to send more settlers of the hardy type of Hieland folk and Breton sailor, who, in the early dawn of her history, stepped into Canada through these portals.

      The interesting fact about Cape Breton is that it has preserved all the characteristics, the language, the customs of its Gallic and Gaelic settlers. Geographically, as well as ethnologically, there is a Gaelic Cape Breton in the North and a Breton Cape Breton in the south. They divide the land between them, and live in the same friendly fashion as did Scotland and France in the days of the Stuarts. Stepping into the northern part of Cape Breton is like adventuring in the Highlands of Auld Scotia. Stepping to the South is an adventure in Brittany.

      There are three main ways of entering the “Highlands”. Finding one’s self in Sydney, take that “character” among coastal traders, the little S.S. “Aspey”. The “Aspey” makes all the harbours between North Sydney and Cape North. Make her acquaintance and she will introduce you to “Who’s Who”, for she knows all the folk who are worth knowing, from Englishtown to Ingonish and from Ingonish to Nail’s Harbour and Dingwall.

      The second way to reach “the land of the Macs” is to take a train of the Inverness Railroad at Port Hawkesbury. By this road, which follows the shore-line of the Gulf side of the Island, you come immediately into the Scotch atmosphere. Scotch place-names stand out bravely from the name-boards of the railroad stations. The very scenery is Highland—mountains and mists