PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

Charlottetown from Southport

bad humor when he designated what is now known as the Garden

of the Gulf as a “rascally heap of sand, rock and swamp, called Prince

Edward Island, in the horrible Gulf of St. Lawrence." That was

in 1830, but the world to-day knows more about this country than was known then, and the Island now needs no defender of its soil and climate. Each season it grows more in favor with the summer tourist as one of the most attractive places on the whole coast of America.

The only part of the indictment which is now recognized as truth is that which asserts there is sand on the island. 50 there is, but it is not the dry, barren sand of Nantucket and such islands, but a very fertile quality of fine soil from which simply marvellous crops are produced. There is no swamp worth mentioning, and as for rock there is so little that most of the stone for building purposes is imported. Prince Edward Island is, indeed, one of the most fair and fertile areas in America. It has a history unique in the annals of the English colonies in the new world. The Indians called it Abegweit—cradled on the wavesfiand when Cham lain came he gave it the title of 1’Ile St. Jean. It kept this name, in the rench or English form, for nearly two hundred years, but in 1800 it received its present designation in honor of Edward. Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria.

When the island was ceded to England, in 1764, the government sent a surveyor to find out what kind of a place it was. If he had taken the view

THE celebrated William Cobbett appears to have been in a particularly