174 OVER ON THE ISLAND

a few equally fine ones in other parts. Here, the Maritimers, the Americans, and people from Ontario and Quebec congregate in large numbers during the summer months.

There is something about a summer hotel, a spacious- ness, a friendliness, that you do not find in any other type of hotel. The people are frankly friendly and interested in each other. Generally speaking, they live a simpler and more healthful life in the great out- doors—swimming, sailing, tanning, golfing, tennis, dancing. They eat plainer food. What better tonic could be found than a clean breeze blowing sweet and clear off the Gulf? I thought I should like to spend the rest of the summer just lying around the beaches of the North Shore listening to the waves pounding their messages on the shores, and the fresh breeze sweeping in with its salty flavour. I thought so at Dalvay

. at Stanhope . . . and later at Brackley

Rustico . . . and Cavendish. The North

Shore has a fascination and a strange loveliness and loneliness that seems indescribable.

Rustico is by far the most attractive fishing village on the Island. We saw it first from the hill, and as we looked down, its white-washed homes reminded us in a strange way of a flock of sea-gulls perched by the water ready to fly off. The Village is nearly on the sea. Half a dozen fishing wharves, and factories on stilts, jut out into the water like cranes wading in search of fish. Behind these buildings is a grand sweep of sand. Then the sea, thinking, perhaps, of the main village left behind, runs back towards it, and connects the two.

There is an exile on the North Shore—a lonely, sad, embittered man. Around the sands of Rustico he