I was showing a collection of autographs to a gentleman at a party in a well-known Canadian city, when the volume opened upon the majestic signature of Cromwell. I paused as I pointed to it, expecting a burst of enthusiasm. “Who is Cromwell?” he asked; an ignorance which I should have believed counterfeit had it not been too painfully and obviously genuine.

A yeoman friend in England, on being told that I had arrived safely at Boston, after encountering great danger in a gale, “reckoned that it was somewhere down in Lincolnshire.”

With these instances of ignorance, and many more which I could name, fresh in my recollection, I am not at all surprised that few persons should be acquainted with the locality of a spot of earth so comparatively obscure as Prince Edward Island. When I named my destination to my friends prior to my departure from England, it was supposed by some that I was going to the Pacific, and by others that I was going to the north-west coast of America, while one or two, on consulting their maps, found no such island indicated in the part of the ocean where I described it to be placed.

Now, Prince Edward Island is the abode of seventy thousand human beings. It had a garrison, though now the loyalty of its inhabitants is considered a sufficient protection. It has a Governor, a House of Assembly, a Legislative Council, and a Constitution.