The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies the
interior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slender
tongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into the
recesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements,
the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.
There is very little tide at any time, so that the shores are clean
and sightly for the most part, like those of fresh-water lakes. It
has all the pleasantness of a fresh-water lake, with all the
advantages of a salt one. In the streams which run into it are the
speckled trout, the shad, and the salmon; out of its depths are
hooked the cod and the mackerel, and in its bays fattens the oyster.
This irregular lake is about a hundred miles long, if you measure it
skillfully, and in some places ten miles broad; but so indented is
it, that I am not sure but one would need, as we were informed, to
ride a thousand miles to go round it, following all its incursions
into the land. The hills about it are never more than five or six
hundred feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, and
offer everywhere pleasing lines.
What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by the
driver, Hogamah Bay. At its entrance were long, wooded islands,
beyond which we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes of
some poetic sea-coast.
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