The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1889-12-28
tho right road. I feel to say with the ole

tho right road. I feel to say with the ole
poet: .
MAN Is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripened by our northern sky"
At this point It Is fitting to relieve the dull
ness Of q purely personal narrative by insert
ing some racy n entertaining statistica
Nova Scotia is els miles long and 100 miles
wide, In greatest extension, but Cape Breton
Ii ITO mics In greatest length, which must b
added The whole province has an area Of
9,9W square miles, and had, by the last CEN
sus, 44O,572 people. OF these ll7,4s7 are
ranked as Roman Catholics, ll2,47 az Pres
b~yterians, 6D,@5 as Church Of England and
80, $50 as Methoiists. The rest are like Billy
Wilson's Zouaves, ''all split up as to ideas,
but their hearts beat true for their native
land" There are 4l,2l9 Acadian French in
the province, and ~, 065 Of German blood; Of
the rest, the Scotch elements have a majority
In all the province there are but &c 5000 per-
sons of foreign birth, and by all accounts at
least ten times that many Nova Scotians are
In the United States Wages are consider
ably above the average in the United States,
but not so high as in the hest sections Of the
northern states
b average Of education 10 very high.
There Is no census Of illiterates, and heard
OF none Last year nearly $1,000 children
were In the sree schools, with some 1900
teachers. every denomination has its colleges.
Oalhousie, at Halifax, Is the university for
the province, and the normal school, at
Truro, Il maintained in great efficiency. The
cost of good living is certainly not more than
half what 1t is In Brooklyn where I ''stay' at
present., the chief saving being in rent, fuel,
fish, potatoes n small fruits, So l must
say that Nova Scotia would be a nice place
to educate q boy or place a family for a long
vacation.
There are communities as Gaelic as any
part Of Invernesshire In the last CEN
fury, and others more Calvinistic than
John Knox; there are little interior val
leys where one may breathe the very air
and live the very homely homo life OF Scot
lands midland shires: there are mining VII
lagos where one may meet Hugh Miller's
characters at every turn, and dairy farms
with every charm which poets have attrib-
uted to pastoral life. No part of the mari
time provinces will better repay the tourist
for a fortnight's visit than Cape Breton
island.
On the mainland df one ma SO call the
peninsula, a disappointment awaited me.
The great Pictou coal mine cannot now be in
spected. 1t is the largest coal seam in the
world-a seam thirty feet thick; but many
years ago there was an explosion ana a fire.
The mine was therefore flooded, and the res
toration is not yet completed At Stellarton,
where | halted a day, is the great twelve foot
seam, on which work is actively prosecuted.
All tho big coal seams Of this section have
considerable slope, some as much as IS degs.,
and rooted In tho "fioor'' of the mine are
often found fossil stumps Of the sigillaria
from six to eighteen inches thick. It is
claimed that the coal measures of Nova Sco-
tia cover 1000 square miles, but of course
less than half Of this area contains proftably
workable coal. | need not recite the local
arguments, seeing that they are much the
same in all coal regions, but Nova Scotia is
certainly a good place to investigate coal
seams for science and pleasure.
The conclusion of the whole matter NAV be
thus set down: One-third of Nova Scotia con-
sists Of very fertile valleys, in which are
produced in great abundance nearly all the
fruits, roots and grains Of the temperate zone;
another third is Of some value for grazing,
and the remainder is rocky wilderness. An
important result is that from any valley one
may turn aside n in an hours walking be
In a pr1nleval wilderness where moose and
black bears are still found, and out Of the
hills flow many streams in which trout are
still abundant.
Government in Nova Scotia, as in all the do
minion, is ''responsible"-that is, tho cabinet
officers, the executive and directing depart
ment, must be of the same politics with the
majority in the house of II q
government measure" is defeated they re-
sign This will hardly be believed in some
parts Of the United States, but it is a solemn
fact. 1t seems to me that such a system
would work badly in the United States and
make havoc III France; but tho British lin
GLIDING Canadians, Australians, etc. secure
conservatism by habit and precedents in
stead of rigid rules. The governor-called
lieutenant governor because he is regarded as
the lieutenant" Of the governor general of
Canada lis not "a part of the government"
is appointed and does not resign.
Lieutenant Governor Mcclellan, with whom
| had a long and interesting talk, is a most
~courtly and digniaed gentleman, we'll in
formed on the affairs Of Canada and the
United States, and pleasantly enthusiastic az
to the future of Canada. Premier Fielding,
head Of the gov ~