Nova Scotia
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nova Scotia

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Title: Nova Scotia
the province that has been passed by

Author: Beckles Willson

Release date: December 30, 2025 [eBook #77572]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1912

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77572

Credits: Fiona Holmes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive).

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOVA SCOTIA ***

Transcriber’s notes

Changes made are noted at the end of the book.

NOVA SCOTIA

“Towards Scotia’s earliest bonniest chiel,
Across the wild Atlantic wave
I sailed my trig auld Norland keel.”

“A full-fed river winding slow.”

NOVA SCOTIA

THE PROVINCE THAT HAS BEEN PASSED BY

BY

BECKLES WILLSON

AUTHOR OF “THE GREAT FUR COMPANY,” “THE ROMANCE OF CANADA,” ETC.

“I don’t know what more you’d ask: almost an island, indented everywhere with harbours, surrounded with fisheries—the key of the St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, and the West Indies; prime land above, one vast mineral bed beneath, and a climate over all temperate, pleasant and healthy. If that ain’t enough for one place, it’s a pity—that’s all.”—Sam Slick, of Slickville.

REVISED EDITION WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD. 1912

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

INTRODUCTION

By HON. GEORGE H. MURRAY

PRIME MINISTER OF NOVA SCOTIA

All lovers of Nova Scotia will welcome this volume. I have read it with pleasure as recording the impressions a sojourn in this Province has made on a man of culture and acute observation.

It will prove valuable to those who wish to learn something of a portion of Canada that is not yet well known abroad. Those who purpose to emigrate to Canada will read this book with interest and to their advantage, and it will whet their appetites for more information regarding this Province.

Nova Scotia is a country that draws wealth from the ocean, the forest, the farm, the mine and the mill. Our industries are not exotic, but spring directly out of natural conditions. Although Nova Scotia has only about one-fifteenth of the population of Canada, the Province is the predominating factor in the Dominion in fish, coal, and steel. The material development of these industries and of agriculture gives scope to the energies of our people, and the establishment of a complete system of technical education develops the practical powers of the young men, enabling them to conduct and enlarge upon industrial undertakings both at home and abroad.

It has been said that there are two fundamental conditions of industrial well-being. The first is a fit people, and the second a fit country. Both are found in Nova Scotia. The people of Nova Scotia spring from the best blood of the British Isles. In a little over a century they have converted a land of forest into a country of sunny orchards, rich grain fields, glowing furnaces and comfortable homes. I would extend an invitation to our British kinsmen to come over and share in our prosperity.

Nova Scotia possesses a record of substantial achievement and remarkable progress, which inspires its people to greater and more earnest efforts for the future. At the same time we believe that the success of this Province in the years to come will be assured only by the enterprise, intelligence, and industry of its people. We realise that the supremacy of Nova Scotia will rest as much upon intellectual strength and educational training as upon the character and volume of industrial output.

Halifax, Nova Scotia,
June 21, 1912.

PREFACE

I suppose Canadians of the First Immigration should be very well pleased to see their farm lands overrun by the mongrel hordes of Europe who, we are told, are presently to assimilate the manners, institutions, and amenities which our British forefathers so slowly and painfully through the centuries established for us.

It is a magnificent spectacle the West is offering to the world—this great trek of a hundred thousand families a year—these cities arising in a single night, this flux and tumult, this noisy abandonment of effete conventions and ideals. Perhaps it is all going to end, as the optimists tell us it will end, to the glory of the race—our race. But some of them do not deny a certain element of risk in the process. It is a big price we may have to pay. It is the price the Egyptians paid to the Semites; the Greeks paid to the Macedonians; the Romans paid to the Goths; the Persians paid to the Saracens; the Gauls paid to the Franks; and the Americans have paid to the Irish, Italians, and Poles. And always the price is—Character.

“When,” once wrote a distinguished American to me, “I think of the early nineteenth-century promise of New England, of its race of scholars and gentlemen, of its thousands of quiet God-fearing homes, and the contented industry of the countryside, I could wish that a great gulf had cut us off on the West and an impassable barrier had arisen on our Eastern seaboard.” But We are going to win through—We are going to assimilate these alien peoples. Our civilisation will suffer as our neighbours have suffered; our serenity will cloud for a time, and when the contents of the melting-pot have cooled the alloy may be a permanent part of our whole national being. But We shall not falter.

Nor will this restless ethnological flux continue. The current and perhaps necessary methods of to-day will—nay, must—yield to other and higher notions of progress. We shall not always be touting for Slav and Hun and Celtic immigrants, and soon, tout as we may, they will not come. Europe will settle herself. Europe, in turn, will have her own “boom.” And, in the meanwhile, all Canada will not suffer alike, and the part which will longest retain its fundamental likeness to Britain, its moral unity with the people of the Mother island, is that province which is the subject of this book.

Nova Scotia has not been exempt from sacrifices. Great as the boon of Confederation doubtless was, and is, to the Provinces of the Dominion, it has been a small boon to Nova Scotia. She has had to play the part of Cinderella while her sisters went to the ball. But her comparative seclusion, added to her intelligence, her frugality, her gentle character, and far greater natural beauty, may commend her to the thousands of English and Scottish men and women who wish to migrate from the British island to the equally British peninsula on the other side of the ocean—the nearest to them of the provinces of Canada.

Quebec House, Westerham

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | | PAGE
I. | Canada’s “Front Door” | 1
II. | New Scotland’s Beginnings | 11
III. | New Scotland’s Characteristics | 22
IV. | Halifax and the Haligonians | 35
V. | Windsor and “Sam Slick” | 55
VI. | Grand Pré and Evangeline | 66
VII. | Annapolis Royal and Digby | 81
VIII. | Yarmouth and Shipbuilding | 97
IX. | Shelburne and the Loyalists | 116
X. | Bridgewater and Lunenburg | 133
XI. | On the Government’s Farm | 144
XII. | Pictou and New Glasgow | 156
XIII. | Cape Breton | 176
XIV. | The Sydneys | 189
XV. | Louisbourg | 205
XVI. | A New Inverness | 218
XVII. | Amherst | 228
| Appendix | 247

ILLUSTRATIONS

“A full-fed river winding slow” | frontispiece
| Facing Page
Martello Tower at Halifax | 20
Halifax, Boating on the North-West Arm | 27
Halifax and Harbour from the Citadel | 36
Entrance to the Citadel, Halifax | 43
In the Public Gardens, Halifax | 48
In the Environs of Windsor | 55
Bedford Basin | 55
Victoria Park, Windsor, N.S. | 60
Near Lochaber Lake | 60
St. Eulalie, The Residence at Grand Pré of Hon. Sir Robert Weatherbe | 73
The Scene of the Grand Pré Raid of 1754 | 78
A Joy-Ride in “The Valley” | 81
Annapolis—The Oldest Graveyard on the Continent | 87
Annapolis Royal—The Home of Thomas Chandler Haliburton | 87
Off the Pier at Digby | 93
Low Tide at Yarmouth | 93
The Home of Evangeline | 95
At Evangeline’s Well | 95
The Old Governor’s House, Shelburne | 122
A New Scotland Idyll—In the Annapolis Valley | 139
Main Hall—Nova Scotia Agricultural College | 145
At Kingsport | 148
“Calling” a Moose | 148
Truro—The “Joe Howe Falls” | 154
The End of Bruin | 158
Pictou—Norway House | 161
View on the Outskirts of Antigonish | 171
Strait of Canso, Port Mulgrave | 176
A Splendid Moose near Lake Rossignol | 178
King Street, Shelburne (the Town of the Loyalists) | 183
The Road to Louisbourg | 210
Louisbourg—The Last of the Dauphin Gate | 210
Louisbourg—The Obelisk Commemorating the First Siege | 217
La Bras d’Or Lake (Cape Breton) | 220
Landscape near Stellarton | 227
The Site of Fort Lawrence | 239
On its Last Legs—Cumberland House, near Amherst, N.S. | 240
A Fine Catch near the Mira River | 242

NOVA SCOTIA

CHAPTER I

CANADA’S “FRONT DOOR”

“And if he took ship, lo! it was the wrong ship; and when he had got upon the land the road led him backward, or to the right or to the left, so that with doubling and turning he was full twenty years upon his journey. And all this while, if he could but have seen it, the land of Salabat lay straight before him, likewise the castle of the Princess Zobeide, which he could not behold because of the cloud the genie had caused to float before it.”

Some of us laughed when we recalled that Arabian tale on our pilgrimage to New Scotland, for there was a man on board who dwelt at Sydney; and he told us how, on his visit to London, he had engaged a taxicab at the Mansion House, and told the driver to take him to Piccadilly Circus. After an hour or so he waxed impatient, and putting his head out of the window asked the driver where they were.

“Hammersmith,” was the reply.

“But that’s the other end of London, isn’t it? I told you Piccadilly Circus.”

Whereat the man was aggrieved.

“Ain’t I driving you to Piccadilly Circus?” he asked. “You didn’t say you wanted a short cut?”

“There’s Sydney yonder,” concluded the Nova Scotian, with the glass to his eye, “and we might be at Halifax this evening. There is the gleaming Bras d’Or, and the trout streams of the Mira River, and my wife and children are on the pier at Sydney; and I’m sailing on and on a thousand miles to Montreal, and then a thousand miles back by rail, because the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and the Government of Canada, and ‘all the powers of the air, and the water, and the road’ don’t know that I want a short cut.”

Of the nine Canadian Provinces stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboard, the one of which Englishmen might be expected, from its origin, its proximity, its history, and its resources, to know most about they know least. This is a puzzle I have often had to explain. Go down into Kent or into Wiltshire, and you will find villagers talking glibly of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The ale-house wiseacre can give you off-hand all the salient peculiarities of the Far West. I have heard a farm labourer near Westerham expatiating upon the grazing lands of the Bow River, and the duties of the mounted police, five thousand miles away, never forgetting to refer to the Canadian Pacific Railway—tout court—as the C.P.R. To hear him one would suppose he had already made his venture into those far occidental regions of the Empire; but no! it was only in prospect, when he had “saved up a bit more.”

“Why in the name of commonsense do you go so far?” I asked. “What’s the matter with Nova Scotia?”

The worthy fellow stared and scratched his chin.

“Nova Scotia,” he replied, not without difficulty, “an’ where might that be, sir?”

Here his intelligent little niece—a half-baked product of the Board School, came to the rescue.

“Don’t you see, uncle Bob, the gentleman’s only ’aving a little joke with you? Nova Scotia is an unin’abited island in the Arctic Ocean!”

Now, Saskatchewan is between 4000 and 5000 miles from England; Nova Scotia is less than half the distance, long-peopled, storied, picturesque to the eye. Both are Canada—both are crying out for immigrants. Yet the one stands almost solely for Canada in the mind of the prospective emigrant, and the other he confuses with Nova Zembla! Could you demand a more striking tribute to the powers of advertisement? For alone of the Canadian Provinces those on the Atlantic seaboard had not shared in the astounding uplift, “the spectacular development,” which has characterised the Dominion since 1896. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants poured into the country, past the forests, orchards, and valleys of what has been aptly called “Canada’s front door.” It was decreed that they should be carried on to where there were lands to sell and wheat to be freighted; and so they travelled westward—“gone farther and fared worse” in many cases, although serving an undeniably good end in buttressing and giving body to the lately invertebrate trunk of the Dominion, of which Nova Scotia is undeniably the “head.”

But this condition could not endure: the reaction has come at last;[1] and this beautiful Province is now commanding that attention which is her due.

[1] For advanced legislation dealing with the problem of land settlement in Nova Scotia recently enacted, see Appendix A.

To me as a Canadian, the pageant of New Scotland and Acadia has been familiar from my earliest years, and as the steamer ploughed its way through the waters of the Gulf, I had abundant leisure to let my fancy dwell upon those scenes of the past.

Full of adventurous story are the annals of this Province—erstwhile Acadia and the Markland of Leif the Lucky. It was our kinsfolk, the Norsemen from Iceland, who landed on the peninsula nine centuries ago.

One stops to marvel sometimes how the course of the history of the world would have run if Leif and his men had remained and settled Markland, and Vinland, and the New World. Instead of the Crusades, Europe would have poured her militant hordes into this hemisphere five centuries before Columbus; and instead of conquering England such spirits as William of Normandy would have found such a field for their energies as Pizarro and Cortez later found. Or it may be that the Scandinavians, with their western possessions, would have forged ahead of Latin Europe, and New Christianas, New Stockholms, and New Copenhagens would have replaced the Bostons, New Yorks, and Chicagos of far later times.

But the Norsemen sailed back, leaving Markland unsettled; and in a few generations the story of their adventurous voyage was forgotten, or enshrined only in the sagas of their poets, where it became dim and legendary. The centuries passed. Markland was given over to the tribes of wild Micmacs, who inhabited its coasts and roamed its interior in search of the moose and caribou, paddled their canoes, and sang their songs of love, and war, and the chase; who offered sacrifices to their gods in the light of a thousand lodge fires. Then Columbus came. Five years after the daring Genoan had sighted the West Indian islands from English shores, John Cabot set forth, crossed the Atlantic, landed on the Markland coast, and, by virtue of his charter from King Henry VII., founded the claim of England to Markland and to the whole Continent Columbus never saw. But England’s day for expansion was not yet. Cortereal, a slave-hunter, appeared on the Labrador coast in 1500, and there kidnapped a cargo of natives. Eighteen years later, a Frenchman, Baron de Léry, landed some of his followers and a few head of cattle on Sable Island, off the Markland coast. But although this attempt failed, some of the cattle thrived, and their descendants were found running wild on this bleak sandy island eighty years afterwards. After de Léry none came to colonise these northern lands until Jacques Cartier, the hardy St. Malo mariner, sailed with his men into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and up the river to Stadacona. On the heels of Cartier, from whom and other sailors they had tidings of the wealth of the New World fisheries, came a horde of English, Norman, Basque, and Breton fishermen, who plied their calling off the Markland coasts, and returned laden with cod in the autumn. Many of these landed and dried their fish on the shore, and during most of the sixteenth century that was all Europe knew of or dealt with Markland. True, under a charter granted by Elizabeth, Sir Humphrey Gilbert landed in Newfoundland and took possession of all land six hundred miles in every direction from St. Johns, comprising therefore what is to-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and part of Labrador. But his flagship, the Squirrel, sank with all on board in Nova Scotian waters, and nothing more came of Gilbert’s colonising scheme.

Two years ere the century closed, the French again awoke to the possibilities of North American settlement; and the Marquis de la Roche sailed forth for Markland with a cargo of convicts for colonists, for volunteers were chary of accompanying him. La Roche steered westward until he came to that long crescent of sand which the opposite currents off the Markland coast had formed, whose treacherous shallows were just hidden by the waves as if designed to lure ships to their destruction. It was the same Sable Island upon which de Léry had landed eighty years before. Fearing the aborigines on the mainland, La Roche disembarked his convicts while he went to reconnoitre. Awaiting the Marquis’s return, the convicts roamed the island, and came upon herds of wild cattle, whose ancestors had come out from France with de Léry: they tramped by the solitary lagoon of fresh water, through the dark grasses, startling the flocks of wild duck, but never a shelter they saw. And they drew themselves together at dusk, and dug holes in the mud and sand, and waited for the ships to come and take them away, even back to the gaols and galleys of France. There are few more tragic incidents in New Scotland story than this, one of the earliest. For the Marquis de la Roche had been driven back across the Atlantic by an autumn hurricane, and the forty unhappy wretches in their despair, after ravening like wolves, and fighting and slaying each other, when other sustenance was gone, snared the wild cattle and ate the flesh raw, clothed their bodies in the hides, and out of the wreckage on the shore fashioned themselves a shelter from the terrible winter. Meanwhile, La Roche had been flung by a powerful rival into prison, and it was some time before he could get the ear of the Court to explain the plight of the men on Sable Island. At last a ship went out to take them home, and the twelve wild-eyed survivors, clad in shaggy hides, and with matted hair and beards, were got on board and carried back to France, where the King saw and set them free. A few years later another French noble, Pierre du Gast, the Sieur de Monts, the founder of Acadia, procured from the monarch a monopoly of North American trade, set forth in two ships filled with cavaliers and convicts, to people the territory named in his grant. This was Acadia, of no very definite limits, but comprising the entire north-eastern portion of the Continent. With de Monts sailed Champlain and a Picardy nobleman, the Baron de Poutrincourt; and, after sighting Cape la Hêve (near Lunenburg), and entering Port Rossignol, the party skirted the Acadian coasts (losing a sheep overboard in another harbour, which de Monts promptly named Port Mouton), explored the Bay of Fundy, and finally landed and spent the winter on a small island at the mouth of the St. Croix River. When spring came, de Monts abandoned this settlement for a far better site, on the shores of a beautiful harbour on the eastern side of the Bay of Fundy, which they christened Port Royal.

“The most commodious, pleasant place that we had yet seen in this country,” wrote Champlain. While the colony was industriously preparing a settlement further down the coast for the winter, Champlain went off exploring the coast in his ship, sailing up and down what was destined to become ere long the territory of New England.

Poutrincourt’s first choice, Port Royal, was found far superior to the tentative one at St. Croix River, and there in late spring they began to construct a town near what is now called Annapolis. De Monts and Poutrincourt, returning in the autumn to France, managed to induce a large number of mechanics and workers to emigrate to Acadia, and Poutrincourt’s ship, the Jonas, sailed from Rochelle in May 1606. Amongst the new emigrants was the active Lescarbot, lawyer and poet, and man of affairs.

A peal of cannon from the little fort at Port Royal testified to the joy of its inmates at the advent of the Jonas. Poutrincourt broached a hogshead of wine, and Port Royal became a scene of mirth and festivity. When, in the absence of Champlain and Poutrincourt on further exploration, Lescarbot was left in charge of the colony, he set to work briskly, ordering crops of wheat, rye, and barley to be sown in the rich meadows, and gardens to be planted. Some he cheered, others he shamed into industry. Not a day passed but some new and useful work was begun: water-mills, brick kilns, and furnaces for making tar and turpentine. When the explorers returned to Port Royal, rather dispirited, Lescarbot arranged a masquerade to welcome them back, and all the ensuing winter, which was extremely mild, was given up to content and good cheer. Then it was that Champlain started his famous “Order of a Good Time,” of which many stories have been transmitted to us. The members of this order were the fifteen leading men of Port Royal. They met in Poutrincourt’s great hall, where the great log fire roared merrily. For a single day each of the members was saluted by the rest as Grand Master, and wore round his neck the splendid collar of office, while he busied himself with the duty of providing dinner and entertainment. One and all declared the fish and game were better than in Paris, and plenty of wine there was to toast the King and one another in turn. “At the right hand of the Grand Master sat the guest of honour, the wrinkled sagamore, an aged Indian chief Membertou, his eyes gleaming with amusement as toast, song, and tale followed one another. On the floor squatted other Indians who joined in the gay revels. As a final item on the programme, the pipe of peace, with its huge lobster-like bowl, went round, and all smoked it in turn until the tobacco in its fiery oven was exhausted. Then, and not till then, the long winter evening was over.”

But in the spring a ship came from St. Malo with the tidings that the King had revoked de Monts’ charter, and after efforts on the part of Poutrincourt and his son, Biencourt, to linger and retain their hold upon Acadia, the French were forced for a time to retire. The English, meanwhile, had got a footing in Virginia, and an adventurer named Argall came from thence and utterly destroyed Port Royal, as encroaching upon the territories of the English. He even caused the names of de Monts and other officers and the fleur-de-lis to be defaced with pick and chisel from the massive stone upon which they had been graven. Biencourt fled to the forest, and for a time consorted with the Indians, leading a semi-savage existence. From this dates the long struggle, lasting for a century and a half, for the possession of Acadia—a conflict that was not ended until Wolfe’s victory at Quebec and the surrender of New France.

Eight years after Argall’s inroad in 1621, James VI. of Scotland conferred on one of his courtiers, Sir William Alexander, the whole territory which the French dominated Acadia.

But in lieu of joining with them to build up a New England, he resolved, by the favour of the King, to engage his countrymen in extending the glory of their native land by founding a New Scotland across the ocean. “Being much encouraged hereunto by Sir Ferdinando Gorge[2] and some others of the undertakers for New England, I show them that my countrymen would never adventure in such an enterprise, unless it were as there was a New France, a New Spain, and a New England, that they might likewise have a New Scotland.”

[2] Sir Frederick Gorges, Governor of New Plymouth.

CHAPTER II

NEW SCOTLAND’S BEGINNINGS

It is a fact worth emphasis, but too little considered, that New Scotland sprang, as it were, direct from the loins of Old Scotland, and that both Old and New England looked on as non-agents passively.

To-day of the Provinces which make up the Dominion of Canada, New Scotland is the only one boasting a flag of its own, owing nothing in its composition to either the flag of England or that of France. Here one may see unfurled a white flag with a blue St. Andrew’s Cross (saltier) dividing the “field” in four, while in the centre is the double-tressured lion of Scotland, the ruddy lion rampant in gold. This is the flag of New Scotland, and these were the arms of Sir William Alexander, still figuring in part of the arms of the Baronets of Nova Scotia, to which famed order Sir Arthur Wardour, one remembers, was proud to owe allegiance.

To Sir William Alexander the grant was made by James VI. of Scotland of lands lying between New England and Newfoundland, “to be holden of us from our Kingdom of Scotland as a part thereof;”[3] on the 29th September, 1621, the Charter passed under the Great Seal. Sir William Alexander was appointed hereditary Lieutenant-General of the colony, which was in all future time to have the name of New Scotland, or, as appears in the courtly Latin of the charter, Nova Scotia, the first time such name appears in history, and at this day itself the only permanent memorial of the undertaking.

[3] Sir William Alexander and the Scottish attempt to colonise Acadia, by the Rev. George Patterson, D.D.

The charter goes on to say: “As it is very important that all our beloved subjects who inhabit the said Province of New Scotland or its borders may live in the fear of Almighty God, and at the same time in His true worship, and may have an earnest purpose to establish the Christian religion therein, and also to cultivate peace and quiet with the native inhabitants and savage aborigines of these lands, so that they, and any others trading there, may safely, pleasantly, and quietly hold what they have got with great labour and peril. We ... give and grant to the said Sir William Alexander and foresaids ... free and absolute power of arranging and securing peace, alliance, friendship, mutual conferences, assistance, intercourse, &c.” The charter also granted the power of attacking suddenly, invading, expelling, and by arms driving away ... all and singly those who without their special license should attempt to occupy these lands, or trade in the said Province of New Scotland. Authorisation was also given them to construct “forts, fortresses, castles, &c., with posts and naval stations, and also ships of war:” to “establish garrisons of soldiers, and generally to do all things for the acquisition, increase, and introduction of people and persons to preserve and govern New Scotland ... as the King might do if present in person.” The right of regulating and coining money was also granted: and these and other privileges involved only the annual payment of “one penny of Scottish money, if so much be demanded.”

Sir William, soon after obtaining his patent, arranged for the transfer of his rights in the island of Cape Breton, which originally was included in the Province of New Scotland, to his friend Sir Robert Gordon, of Lochinvar. The latter, with his son Robert, obtained a royal charter (dated 8th November, 1621) to this, which was styled the barony of New Galloway.

No time was lost by Sir William in taking the necessary steps for the settling of his territory. Fitting out a ship in London, in March, 1622, he sent it round the coast to Kirkcudbright, hoping to obtain there a body of emigrants, through the influence of Sir Robert Gordon, whose lands lay in that direction. The meagre inducements offered, however, could hardly attract persons possessed of the ordinary comforts of home life. Purchasers of land were the only ones to have any rights in the soil. Farmers might obtain leases; but all, after a specified time, were constrained to pay a one-thirteenth part of the revenue from the land to the Lieutenant-General. Artisans might receive holdings, but only for their lives. So it is recorded that there was only one artisan, a blacksmith, took part in the expedition, the other emigrants being generally agricultural labourers of the lowest class. It is unlikely, however, that more favourable terms were offered in any of the early attempts at settlement in America, or that the material engaged in them was any better. If Sir William had offered lands in fee his prospective emigrants would probably have been of an altogether different class—of the class of men who, being possessed of the means of subsistence, could have become attached to the soil, and who in time would have built up a free and prosperous society. But a system such as this was totally opposed to the social ideas of the times—times when the most prevalent idea was to establish overseas a state of society similar to that of mediæval Europe, the soil in the possession of certain lords paramount, and the settlers holding their lands in a condition little above that of serfs.

The two colonising expeditions undertaken in consequence of the charter cost Alexander a large sum of money, and both ended in failure, owing to ill-management. This failure by no means dampened Sir William’s zeal. In 1624 he issued a small work entitled, An Encouragement to Colonies, which was furnished with a map of New Scotland. The names given on this show the determination to reproduce the peculiarities of Scotland, even in minor ways. In this manner the St. Croix River appears as the Tweed, while another, flowing from its head into the St. Lawrence, is named the Solway. The river doubtless intended for the St. John is called the Clyde, and the inlet of the sea on the coast of New Brunswick is put down as the Forth.

In this work Sir William depicts New Scotland as having “very delecate meadowes,” “with roses white and red,” and “very good, fat earth,” as the voyagers in the St. Luke had seen it along the coast. As a further inducement for early occupation, he added a mention of rich grains, and an abundance of fowls and fishes. Scotland he referred to as like a bee-hive, sending out swarms of her people yearly, who expended their energies in foreign wars. He then invited Scotsmen to settle in a new country, where successful commerce might be prosecuted by the merchant, where the sportsman might enter into a paradise of his own, and where the Christian might have ample scope for missionary enterprise.

“Where,” was his argument, “was euer Ambition baited with greater hopes than here, or where euer had Vertue so large a field to reape the fruits of Glory, since any man who doth goe thither of good qualitie, able at first to transport a hundred persons with him, furnished with things necessary, shall have as much Bounds as may serve for a great Man, whereupon he may build a Towne of his owne, giving it what forme or name he will, and being the first Founder of a new estate, which a pleasing industry may quickly bring to a perfection, may leaue a faire inheritance to his posteritie, who shall claime unto him as the author of their Nobilitie there, rather than to any of his Ancestours that had preceded him, though neuer so nobly borne elsewhere?”

But despite the glowing prospects enumerated in this Encouragement to Colonies, little enthusiasm was excited on behalf of the undertaking. When the English treasury refused to compensate Alexander for losses in a matter in which it had no concern, a new method was suggested, whereby his embarrassments might be relieved and the undertaking carried on. James, since his accession to the English throne, had systematically replenished his revenues by the simple method of selling titles. A particular instance of this was the colonisation of Ulster; when he shortly before created an order of knights baronets, of which English landowners might become members on their paying into the exchequer the sum of £1100. By this means some 205 persons had obtained the new dignity between 1611 and 1622, the profit to the treasury being £225,000. This suggested to Sir William that the expenses of his colony might be provided for by the establishment of a new order—the baronets of New Scotland—while less costly terms might serve as inducements for the Scottish landowners and the sons of the Scottish nobility to become members. His recommendation of this plan in due course brought forth a royal letter, which informed the Privy Council of Scotland that the King had determined to take a personal interest in the colonisation of New Scotland, and to establish a new order of baronets in connection therewith. The Privy Council were invited to assist in the carrying out of the royal intention.

The council, influenced by Sir William, approved the royal order, and replied to the King on the 23rd November, 1624, indicating a scheme for following His Majesty’s wishes. “We are given to understand that the country of New Scotland, being dividit into twa Provinces and eache Province into several Dioceises or Bishoprikis, and each Diocese in thrie Counteyis, and each Countey into ten Baroneyis, every baronie being three myle long vpon the coast and ten myle up into the countrie, dividit into sax paroches, and each paroche contening sax thousand aikars of land; and that every Baronett is to be ane Barone of some one or other of the saidis Barroneis, and is to haif therein ten thousand aikars of propertie, besidis his sax thousand aikars belonging to his burt (burgh) of baronie, to be holden free blanshe, and in a free baronie of His Majesty as the baronies of the kingdome.” The conditions imposed were “the setting furth of six men towardis His Maiestie’s Royall Colonie, armed, apparelld and victualled for two yeares, and every baronet paying Sir William ane thousand markis Scottis money only toward his past charges and endevouris.”

As for these Nova Scotia baronetcies, great efforts were made to induce likely persons to accept them. In 1629 six were created and thirteen in the two years following. The Commissioners were impowered to fill up the dates of patents at their discretion, “so that those unwilling to occupy a lower place on the rolls might be reckoned amongst the earliest creations.” Nor was the outer attractiveness of the order neglected. Under date of the 17th November, 1629, the King authorises “everie one of them and thare heires male to weare and carry about their neckis, in all time coming, ane orange tauney ribbane, whairon shall hing pendant on a skutchion argent, a saltoire azeur thereon, ane inscutcheune of the armes of Scotland, with ane imperiall croune above the scutchone, and incircled with this motto: ‘Fax Mentis Honestæ Gloria.’” This was to be proclaimed publicly at the market cross of Edinburgh. And any one who should, “out of neglect or contempt, presume to tak place or precedence of the said baronettes, thare wifes or childring, or to weare thare cognoissance,” was in the same paper threatened with fine and imprisonment.

A Scottish settlement was planted on the shores of Annapolis Basin; but the settlers seem to have been little prepared for the rigours of a Nova Scotian winter and the enmity of the Indians, for no fewer than thirty of the pioneers died. Meanwhile, Sir William Alexander’s son, bearing the same name, had succeeded; and, arriving in New Scotland, proceeded to put affairs into better order. He dealt so dexterously with the aborigines, that their chief consented to make a journey to England with his wife and son, where they enjoyed the absurd titles of King, Queen, and Prince of New Scotland. In the December of 1629, Sir James Bagg, Governor of Plymouth, was directed by royal letter to conduct to Court “one of the commanders (or chiefs) of Canada, attended by some others of that countrie.” In a letter from Christ College, dated the 12th of February, 1630, the Rev. Joseph Mead wrote:—

“There came last week to London the king, queen, and young prince of New Scotland. This king comes to be of our king’s religion, and to submit his kingdom to him, and to become his hostage for the same, that he may be protected against the French in Canada. Those savages arrived at Plymouth, were a while entertained at my Lord Poulet’s in Somersetshire, much made of, especially my lady of the savage queen. She came with her to the coach, when they were come to London, put a chain about her neck with a diamond valued by some at near £20. The savages took all in good part, but for thanks or acknowledgment made no sign or expression at all.”

Meanwhile Biencourt, the representative of De Monts and the original French settlers, together with two enterprising spirits named De la Tour, father and son, were holding on for King Louis in Acadia. When Biencourt died, Charles De la Tour meditated striking a blow for French supremacy. In this he was perpetually foiled, his father was captured by Admiral Kirke and taken to England, where he was caressed and cajoled, married a Court lady, and was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia. As Sir Claude he went out to New Scotland to endeavour to seduce his son Charles from his allegiance, but in vain. New Scotland, as a British settlement, was doomed. In 1632 the blow fell. By the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Nova Scotia and Canada were ceded back to France by Charles I., who by this act of treachery achieved what French force had hitherto failed to accomplish. Nevertheless, the King wrote a letter to the Privy Council, in which he says: “lest any mistaking should ensure thereupon, we have thought it good to declare unto you that it (the Treaty) is in no ways for quitting the title right or possession of New Scotland or of any part thereof.” But this, in view of the actual terms of the Treaty, and of its consequences, was empty language. The settlers of New Scotland dispersed or mingled with the French, and the first attempt to establish a New Scotland ended in failure.

I have dwelt somewhat fully upon this project—the beginnings of New Scotland—because it is one almost invariably slurred over by historians, and about which much ignorance exists. I shall have occasion in later pages to speak of the essentially Scottish character of New Scotland, and it is as well to recall its early planting by the Alexanders, the Frasers, the Gordons, and the MacNeills.

Of the subsequent history of Nova Scotia I can here touch upon only briefly. England’s next ruler, Oliver Cromwell, recovered what Charles had basely surrendered, and Acadia became again Nova Scotia: but this position was again changed in 1667, when Charles II. gave away what Cromwell had won, that is to say, “all the country called Acadia situated in America which the Most Christian King had formerly enjoyed.” Another war, however, soon came between England and France, after the expulsion of James II. Port Royal was compelled to surrender to a British force from Boston, and Nova Scotia had again changed hands. The country reverted to the French through a Treaty of King William III.’s in 1697; but at the end of a further war, in 1713, the mainland of Nova Scotia had again passed into the possession of the British, a position which has never since changed. France retained her hold on Cape Breton Island and the neighbouring Isle St. Jean (now Prince Edward Island), until Canada was conquered in 1759.

To reach these results many battles were fought, and many interesting historical events happened in New Scotland—as, for instance, the two sieges of Louisbourg, and the famous expulsion of the Acadians, celebrated in Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline.”

Martello Tower at Halifax.

When the French power was finally shattered, the total white population of Nova Scotia was only some 13,000, of which 2000 were French. The capital, Halifax, was a little garrison town only fourteen years old, and comprising some 500 families. Settlers from the neighbouring New England colonies caused a considerable increase in this number, and additions came from King George’s German kingdom of Hanover. Afterward, when the American colonies had thrown off their allegiance, some 20,000, who either would not or could not remain in their old homes under a new flag, migrated to Nova Scotia, calling themselves the United Empire Loyalists. Many of these, however, settled on the north-west side of the Bay of Fundy—a region which, then under the Governor of Nova Scotia, was afterwards formed into a separate Province, now known to us as New Brunswick. From that time to the present day Nova Scotia’s history has been one of uninterrupted peace.

Thus briefly have I presented to the reader the salient features in Provincial history, a subject upon which more than one interesting volume has been penned. Of its romance—and it is a land teeming with romance—there is hardly a hill or a valley, a lake, an island, or a headland, that has not some tradition, some legend, some story of massacre, of sacrifice, of heroism, or of devotion—I have so far hinted but little. Its shrines are visited by thousands of Americans annually. This is the land past which the British visitor to Canada finds himself whirled, and is soon at the heart of the great Dominion of the West, without having seen its smiling crest, or touched its outstretched hand.

CHAPTER III

NEW SCOTLAND’S CHARACTERISTICS

One finds it difficult, briefly by means of analogy, to describe this peninsula of New Scotland. Yet it may not unfairly be compared to Old Scotland. Many of the features of the land are the same, nor is the climate unlike. But when we come to the human element we have no difficulty at all. Mixed as the population is, the Scots predominate. The late Lieutenant-Governor was a Fraser. The present holder of the office is a Macgregor, the Premier is a Murray, the Mayor of Halifax is a Chisholm. The Frasers, Macdonalds, M’Gillivrays, Wallaces, and M’Inneses furnish forth the bench, the bar, journalism, and the learned professions; and it is perhaps needless to tell you that the Scot here, as elsewhere in Canada, more than holds his own—“and maybe that of ither folk”—in the commercial world.

But this is not saying enough about New Scotland considered as a transatlantic habitation and hunting-ground of the Old Scot. Here are still Gaelic communities where the Sassenach tongue is not heard. On the eve of the American Revolution a tide of emigration had set in from the old Scotland to the new, the first to arrive being a shipload of Highlanders in 1773. For many years, despite the terrible conditions of an ocean passage in those days, the tide flowed on. Emigrants, in the old days, were forced to spend weeks or even months on the voyage, pent like cattle in ships frequently infected by small-pox and scurvy.

Some 25,000 Scottish peasants settled on Cape Breton Island alone, while numbers landed on the shores of Northumberland Strait, in the counties now known as Pictou and Antigonish. Their hardships were not over when they landed; but with indomitable pluck they persevered until they had carved homes for themselves out of the forest.

From one end of the peninsula to the other the cemeteries are filled with the tombs of the Frasers and the Macdonalds, the Macleans and the M’Nabs. At Shelburne, that “dead city” of the Loyalists, I copied out a lengthy inscription on a granite stone to a Loyalist heroine:

THE WIFE OF JOHN MACLEAN
WHO DIED 28TH MARCH, 1791, AGED 32 YEARS

She left her native country, Scotland, and numerous friends and companions, to follow the fortunes of her husband during the war with America in 1780. And when New York became no longer an asylum to loyalty, she joined him again on the rugged shore of Nova Scotia as an affectionate and faithful wife, a cheerful and social friend, humane and charitable, and pious as became a good Christian.

Another elsewhere oddly records that: “Here lies Angus M’Donald and his five sons, who lived ever on the side of the King, and died on this side of the Ocean.”

No; New Scotland is no misnomer; and the Patron Saint of the Province is—and may it long continue so to be—St. Andrew.

Although the Scots thus prevail, the other inhabitants of the Province are an eighteenth century mixture of the Old and New Worlds—of three great European races. Cape Breton and the eastern part of the peninsula is Scotch, the extreme west is French-Acadian, there is a settlement of Germans in the middle, and the rest of the population, save for a small sprinkling of aboriginal Micmacs, is English—the fruit of the Loyalist immigration from America.

Nova Scotia, which is connected with the North American Continent by a narrow isthmus, lies roughly within the same degrees north latitude as the territory between the Pyrenees and Lake Geneva. It is 360 miles long, with an average breadth of 65 miles, and covers an area of 20,900 square miles, i.e. over two-thirds that of Scotland. No part of the entire peninsula is more than thirty miles from the sea. The surface of the country is very undulating, though not mountainous, the highest ridge not being 1200 feet in height. Yet the Province boasts several of these ridges or chains of hills, to which it gives the name of mountains, generally running parallel to its length. Its picturesqueness is chiefly attributable to its numerous and beautiful lakes, its harbours dotted with islands, its rivers and streams, and a pleasing variety of highland and valley. Looked at from the Atlantic side, the country seems barren and rocky.

The seaward coast of the Province has been likened to a granite wall, indented by innumerable bays, fiords, and inlets. Wide and sandy beaches sweep gradually towards the firm soil, from headland to headland; quaint and quiet fishing villages and hamlets underlie the rocks, sentinelled by countless islands along the coast. At every point, too, history and legend are here to throw a mantle over the scene—to mingle its rays with those of the sun and moon. Here are tales of French and English adventure, of Indian raid, storm, wreck, of buccaneers and buried treasure, all the way from Cape North to Cape Sable. But if the Atlantic shore is seemingly sterile and iron-bound, bearing in this respect a striking resemblance to the east coast of Old Scotland, it is far otherwise with the interior. The peach and the grape ripen in the open air, and the growth of maize and root crops might well excite the envy of a farmer in Perthshire or Elgin. Even in those districts where the scorched and leafless stems of giant pines rear their arms upward as if in appeal to Heaven, if the traveller will leave the railway and penetrate to the land beneath, he will see a vegetation almost rank, of raspberry, wild rhododendron, alder and crimson sumach, telling of the fertility of the soil. Where the surface is not fertile, the riches are beneath, in the form of coal, iron, gypsum, and other minerals: but there are few parts of the Province where grass suitable for sheep and cattle raising does not abound.

Then when we get on the North, or “Fundy Side,” of the peninsula, we meet the broad alluvial plains, intersected by tortuous rivers or indented by wide and crooked basins, floored with red mud which the ebb-tide reveals, as though each were a ruddy gash in the bosom of Mother Earth. This is the land of the monstrous Fundy tides, whose high-mounting, foaming “bore,” or tidal wave, sweeps irresistibly shoreward, making the smallest creeks to fill like turbulent rivers, but met and baffled along the low-lying shore by the “dykes” which were first reared by the Norman peasants three centuries ago, reclaiming the rich marsh land from the salt tide, and only here and there permitting the fertilising ocean to trickle in at certain seasons to reinvigorate the soil. Here is situated, too, that “hundred miles of apple-blossoms,” otherwise known as the Annapolis Valley, sheltered between the North and South Mountains, and also the famous marshes of Tantramar.

At the other and eastern end of this peninsula stands Cape Breton Island, a province in itself, cut off by the Strait of Causo, one of the most picturesque of regions, itself reversing, as has been said, the definition of an island, inasmuch as it is land surrounding a body of water. That golden arm of the sea—the Bras d’Or lakes—nearly divides the land into two halves—both rich in the natural diversifications of hill and dale, crag and fell, forest and moor, and many streams and islets.

Everywhere are the shores indented, often to the extent of several miles, with harbours, rivers, coves, and bays, usually connecting with the interior waters. The loftiest cliffs, about 500 feet high, lie on the coast between Mahone and Margaret’s Bay, and is generally the first land descried by voyagers from Europe or the West Indies. From the summit of Ardoise Hill, between Halifax and Windsor, which is 700 feet high, one may command a prospect of Windsor, Falmouth, Newport, Wolfeville, and the basin of Minas country. Further on to the west are the Horton Mountains, running nearly north and south, and twenty miles beyond begins another chain of hills, traversing east and west, the North Mountain and the South Mountain, the former of which is washed by the Bay of Fundy. Between these two ridges lie the fertile Annapolis and Cornwallis valleys.

Halifax—Boating on the North-West arm.

To the great inequality of the surface of the soil is due the prevalence of so many lakes, the largest in the peninsula being Rossignol, twenty miles from Liverpool up the Mersey River. There used to be a great uncertainty concerning the dimensions of this inland lake—which Haliburton thought was thirty miles long; but it is now known to be twelve miles in length by eight broad. The difficulty seems to have arisen by confusing it with adjoining lakes, of which there are numerous others in the vicinity. About Yarmouth, at the southern extremity of the Province, there are no fewer than eighty; while, as to Cape Breton Island, the whole interior of the southern half is one vast lake. A chain of lakes almost crosses the Province between Halifax and Cobequid Bay, suggesting many years ago a junction by canal. A company was formed and work begun, but nothing came of it. Another such chain nearly unites the source of the Gaspereaux in King’s Country with that of Gold River in Lunenburg. Many of these thousand and one lakes which bejewel the entire interior of New Scotland are of great beauty, containing timbered islands, whose foliage, together with that of the surrounding hills, is most variegated and attractive, especially in autumn, when the scarlet of the maple, the yellow of the birch, and gradations of green of the oak, elm, and pine, present a truly gorgeous spectacle. Even in winter, when the ground is covered with snow, the presence of enormous numbers of evergreens is an agreeable feature of the landscape in most parts of the Province. There are, however, others, which are either stony and barren, or boggy, or where the forest has been the prey of fire. In the latter parts, the “burnt lands,” the tall dead trees remain upright, black and forbidding, the picture of desolation. But in these cases, although it is a long time, owing to the fire having destroyed the soil and the seeds within it, before a new growth appears, yet this is easily afforested or converted into good arable land. The arable lands, in spite of all that has been done to foster agriculture, still remain only a fraction of the total cultivable part of New Scotland, and these are chiefly confined as yet to the vicinity of the rivers, harbours, and coasts, and the oldest townships. In these, however, the aspect is luxuriant, extensive, and various, reminding one here of the Scottish lowlands, there of Kent or Devonshire, in respect of cultivation and picturesqueness. Even the hedgerows, unknown in America, occasionally greet the eye.

New Scotland is divided into counties, which are themselves parcelled into districts and townships. The Scottish origin and element, I am bound to say, do not come out very strong in the names of these counties, such as Halifax, Sydney, Cumberland, Hants, King’s, Lunenburg, Liverpool, Shelburne, &c., albeit there are some Scottish names in the districts and townships.

When all is said of the products of New Scotland, of her coal, her iron, her fish, and her fruit, it still remains that her chief and most notable product is that which is Old Scotland’s proudest boast—her men. Is it that a seafaring folk are always superior to those who are bred far inland? Is it that there is a wider outlook, a sense of vicissitude and adventure for the people who are in touch with that vast, restless flood, itself touching far-off climes and changing zones? Who if they do not sail a ship themselves or battle with storm and breaker, mix with the men who do, who know what it is to grapple with a wreck, what the cry of the widows and orphans of a lost crew is like? Surely this must breed a stronger soul: or is it, as a Manitoban hinted to me when acknowledging the intellectual superiority of the Nova Scotians, that to a fish diet must be ascribed that which for a century has been so manifest in the history of British North America?

Proud is New Scotland of the men who have sprung from her loins. This cherishing of the memory of their worthy forerunners is perhaps the most marked characteristic of Nova Scotians to-day, the one in which this people differs in spirit from their neighbours.

The term “Blue-nose,” long a current one applied to the Nova Scotians, brings me to the New York and New England irruption into the Province at the period of the American Revolution. As is now widely conceded, the best blood of the American Colonies—the oldest, the wealthiest, and the best educated—were United Empire Loyalists.

Amongst the “True Blues,” the pioneers of Shelburne, was Gideon White, of Salem, descended from the first white child, Peregrine White, born in New England. To-day, Gideon’s grandson, an able lawyer of charming manners, lives in Shelburne, and courteously showed me many of the interesting family papers he still possesses. Shelburne is now a small village, but its spacious, grass-grown streets, its Governor’s mansion, its thickly strewn churchyard, tell the tale of its past glory. But although the “True Blues” left Shelburne, they scattered themselves through the Province, and there are hundreds of families who trace their ancestry back to the Pilgrim Fathers. “You can see they’re ‘True Blue,’” said a Yankee derisively. “Now they’ve gone to live in such a cold country as Nova Scotia they carry their colours in the middle of their faces!” And so the epithet “Blue-nose” stuck, although it is difficult to say why the nasal appendages of Nova Scotians should be of a more azure tint than those which are blown by the pocket-handkerchiefs of the New England folk—since the climate is about the same—if anything, less rigorous in the peninsula.

“Blue-nose,” as I have already hinted, has long been a synonym for sloth amongst the Yankees; but now we hear of Blue-nose booms, Blue-nose “boosters,” and Blue-nose hustlers. The “Flying Blue-nose” express, which runs from the Boston docks at Digby to Halifax, might easily give points to many American express trains, besides itself furnishing proof that the term “Blue-nose” is as acceptable to the New Scotlanders as Yankee (i.e. Anglais) is to the New Englanders, through whose less fertile homesteads the “Flying Yankee” rushes.

Before me as I write is a placard redolent of the new spirit, which is mingling with, yet not destroying the old:—

“BOOST” NOVA SCOTIA!

Do YOU believe that Nova Scotia, acre for acre, is the equal of any other Province of Canada?

Do YOU believe that Nova Scotians, man for man, are the equal in intelligence, industry, and ability, of any of the other inhabitants of this planet?

If so, lend a hand and “boost” Nova Scotia!

“Every town, every county,” remarks a Nova Scotia writer, “cherishes traditions of its old families, its first settlers; of the pious missionary, the minister who gave half his scanty income to redeem the slave; the adventurous sea-captain, whose life reads like one of Smollett’s novels; the man who settled half a county; the evangelist who stirred the souls of men; the founder of the first academy; the man who first resisted the insolence of office; the loyalist who lost all for his flag.”

The Nova Scotians have, more than any other people, been helped to this self-continence, this habit of reverence, by their comparative isolation, by the fact that so many of her sons went out and so few newcomers entered, by there being no destructive spirit of unrest abroad, no substitution of cheaper ideals. No Province in Canada, I had almost written no nation in Canada—for is not this the day of small and separate nationalities?—where memories of the past are sweeter—where yesterday has a magic that to-day can never impart. Far be it from me to deride this sentiment; but as my eye glances down the columns of the Nova Scotian newspapers, I find here and there an insistence upon men and events that belong to yesterday, indeed, rather than to the day before yesterday; which must strike the folk of an older civilisation as very odd. Thus in an Amherst paper I find the following:—

OLD BAGATELLE BOARD

A Relic of the Early Eighties found in the Academy Garret

When the old Academy on Acadia Street was being torn down some years ago, a rude bagatelle board was found away up among the rafters. The finders were mystified, and there was only one of the “Old Boys” in town who could throw light on its existence, although since that time the maker of the board has taken up his residence in Amherst. We refer to Will Casey who taught the class in electricity in our technical school so successfully last winter. Even in boyhood he was a mechanical genius, and the bagatelle board was not his first piece of manual work. Will brought the board to school one morning long before the arrival of the teachers. A ladder was put up to the manhole in the ceiling, the board taken up and the ladder after it. There were four boys late for school that morning. More than one game was played up among the dust and cobwebs. “Len” Wheaton, now a well-known engineer, became an expert; “Hae” Gaetz, son of Rev. Joseph Gaetz, would occasionally take a hand in the game, and a long-limbed chap from Doherty Creek, who now adorns a New York pulpit, was, if we mistake not, once admitted into the sacred precincts of the old garret. There were others too, all scattered abroad, but we would like to see them home this year to talk over some of the episodes of our school life in the early eighties.

All this might have appeared in a Maidstone or Peebles paper, only it would there be descriptive of something which happened in 1830, not in 1880, Here anything that happened a century ago is antiquity indeed, while an occurrence of two or three centuries since is like something before Noah’s Ark, i.e. the Mayflower.

There are some people who never experience a sense of the insignificance of time—of what is called the ages. We all know men of ninety—some of us know centenarians. Twenty such lives and we are back at the beginning of the Christian era—even five such lives as Lord Strathcona’s, and Columbus had not discovered the New World. But those who do not experience this sense of the real modernity of antiquity, turn their eyes back upon a world of awfulness and mystery, as well as of poetry and beauty. The shortest journey of the memory or the imagination backward is bordered by shadows and by dreams. Men and scenes are not the men and scenes we know, but something quite other and heroic. And the best of it is, it may be so. We can by no means reconcile our knowledge of the world to-day with what has come down to us of that world dead and buried even these hundred years. That is where our poetical faith comes in—our refusal to measure the people and customs of long ago by the psychological yard-stick of this our time. We refuse to see in Champlain, Lescarbot, and Poutrincourt, only the seventeenth century equivalent of Mr. Nansen, Dr. Grenfell, and Commander Peary, people who, in spite of their heroic achievements, are surely prosaic folk.

Something of the glamour of the past is already falling upon the figure of Joseph Howe—Nova Scotia’s great hero. Nova Scotians speak of Howe as Americans speak of Abraham Lincoln. Throughout the Province, in the towns, the villages, and the countryside, you will find plenty of old men who remember “Joe” Howe in the flesh, who exchanged greetings with the “patriot, poet, and orator,” who, maybe, held his horse, or fetched him a draught, not, I fear, often from the village pump, but from the village inn, and who, and whose descendants, bear him the same measure of affection which in Ontario is accorded to Sir “John A”—Canada’s first Premier, the gifted, wayward, prescient Macdonald. At Truro, two old cronies stood beside the “Joe Howe” falls—a picturesque cataract in the woods of the public park. “Fluent, eh, Tom?” “Oh, aye, Andrew, fluent.” “Copious, eh, Tom?” “Oh, aye, copious.” “And noisy, eh?” “True, noisy.” “But eternal, Tom?” “Yes, by G——, eternal. Nothing can stop Joe Howe, and nothing can stop these falls. They’ll go on—both of ’em, shining as long as Nova Scotia—as long as the world lasts.”

Of other famous names than Howe’s there is Haliburton’s, of whom I will speak elsewhere in these pages. De Mille, although a native of that former part of the Province known as New Brunswick, wrote here all his novels. There are Sir John Inglis of Lucknow, and General Fenwick Williams of Kars. Samuel Cunard, the first to bridge the Atlantic with a line of steamers, and the founder of the Cunard fleet, was a Halifax merchant. From one single county—Pictou—came five of Canada’s college presidents—Dawson of McGill, Grant and Gordon to Queen’s, and Ross and Forrest to Dalhousie—whereas no other single county probably ever gave so many as two. From Nova Scotia came Sir Charles Tupper and Sir John S. D. Thompson, Prime Ministers of Canada. The present Prime Minister of Canada, Right Honourable Robert Laird Borden, is a Nova Scotian, and represents the constituency of Halifax in the Federal Parliament, and this same province is the birthplace of Mr. William Stevens Fielding, the eminent member of Finance in the cabinet of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

CHAPTER IV

HALIFAX AND THE HALIGONIANS

In the exact middle of the peninsula of Nova Scotia a triangular piece of land juts out into the Atlantic. To this second peninsula is attached a third, and upon this narrow rocky strip, three miles long by a single wide, a century and a half ago was founded the “Cronstadt of Canada.” East and west of Halifax is the sea, but the sea subdued and serene: for on the one hand is the world-famed Halifax harbour, and on the other the river-like north-west arm. In the harbour a thousand ships may ride quietly at anchor: it is always accessible: as it touches the upper end of the town it narrows only to expand again into Bedford Basin—ten square miles of peaceful marine haven. On the eastern slope of the little isthmus, Halifax is built, the ground rising from the harbour’s edge, some two hundred and fifty feet, to where is reared the great stone citadel, a striking spectacle when viewed from the sea—to the ocean-borne traveller striking and significant.

“Into the mist my guardian prows put forth,
Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie,
The Warden of the Honour of the North,
Sleepless and veiled am I!”

Halifax has been for a century and a half the chief naval and military headquarters of British North America, and for some time the sole garrison of regular troops in Canada. Its military spirit dates from its very birth.

There are greetings of every kind and degree in store for the traveller in parts civilised, uncivilised, barbarous, and savage; greetings at the portals of the city, effusive, boisterous, vociferous. There is one time-dishonoured greeting that I could dispense with more freely than all the rest, and it is that which awaits the incomer by rail to the capital of New Scotland. Conjure up in your fancy seventeen shaggy, wild-eyed men, in whose visages Celtic traits predominate, standing in a row, brandishing their outflung fists, bawling at the top of their voices, and only prevented from leaping upon the traveller and forthwith tearing him to pieces by a too-slender wooden barrier—and you have the spectacle which many a time and oft has confronted me at the Halifax railway terminus. For a moment, not understanding the pleasant local custom, with stunned faculties you stand regarding the line of raving madmen, unable to distinguish the diabolical dissyllable they are hurling at your head; and then a glimmering of the truth comes upon you, your hand-bag and umbrella-case fall from your limp grasp, they are caught up by one of the shrieking phalanx, by whom you are hustled into an open victoria and driven at breakneck speed to a hotel. It is pretended that the natives like this custom—that they have grown used to it—that as the local poet sings:

“’Tis sweet to hear the cabman’s honest bark,

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home.”

Halifax and Harbour from the Citadel.

One Scot, thrillingly ingenious, declares that on arriving at Halifax he surrenders himself to a wonderful illusion, one that I dare hardly mention because of its audacity. He half-closes his eyes and imagines himself reinstated in his rightful chieftainship in the fastnesses of his Highland ancestors, and hears the clansmen shouting at him as they shouted at the returned Malcolm Dhu: “Am faic thu sin? Am faic thu sin? Tha mi ‘dol do Chualadh!” and other guttural acclamations, issued with such passionate frenzy and strength of lung as transport him back to the land of his fathers.

Far otherwise is it with the newcomer by sea. The traveller steams into a smooth and spacious harbour, and suddenly his gaze falls upon the city bathed in sunlight, stretching up from the wharves to the citadel crowned by the glorious flag that (with a few slight alterations and additions) for a thousand years “hath braved the battle and the breeze.”

“I was dressing,” wrote Charles Dickens, describing his arrival at Halifax seventy years ago, “about half-past nine next day, when the noise above hurried me on deck. When I had left it over-night it was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now we were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven miles an hour; our colours flying gaily; our crew rigged out in their smartest clothes; our officers in uniform again; the sun shining as on a brilliant April day in England, the land stretched out on either side, streaked with light patches of snow; white wooden houses; people at their doors; telegraphs working; flags hoisted; wharfs appearing; ships; quays crowded with people; distant noises; shouts; men and boys running down steep places towards the pier; all more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces, got alongside and were made fast, after some shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us, along the gangway almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship, and leaped upon the firm, glad earth.

“I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it had been a curiosity of ugly dullness. But I carried away with me a most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came home, without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day.”

“The town,” he goes on to say, “is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to the waterside, and are intersected by cross streets running parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly supplied; and provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was no sleighing; but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and by-places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decorations, might have ‘gone on’ without alteration as triumphal cars in a melodrama at Astley’s. The day was uncommonly fine; the air bracing and healthful; the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriving, and industrious.”

Yet candour compels me to say that the impression made on the visitor by Halifax viewed at close quarters is not as favourable as it might be. One writer does not hesitate to call it “dingy and shabby”; and this effect is without doubt attributable first to the material employed in building the residential streets, and secondly to the utter neglect in the whole Province of which it is the capital, of architectural beauty. And herein Halifax shows not least its true British conservative character, not to say its London and English provincial city character. For given dull yellow brick as a material, I can show you miles upon miles of Halifax in Camden Town and Bayswater, in Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury. As the ballad in the “Arcadians” runs:

“When first I came to London town,

I thought it dingy, old, and brown.”

I can show you Halifaxes in Liverpool and Glasgow. Let no Londoner of the Georgian or Victorian age, whose architectural taste is represented by Gower Street and Smith Square, reproach the “Warden of the Honour of the North.” At the very beginning an attempt was made to copy London; and St. Paul’s Church, long the pro-cathedral, was built in 1750 on the model of St. Peter’s, in Vere Street, Piccadilly. Other houses were constructed on that other Cockney model, which proceeds on the principle that a square wall, with a horizontal upper edge, pierced at mathematical intervals with oblong holes for windows, is a façade.

But an even more serious mistake—perhaps it was at first a necessity—the founders of Halifax made, in which their successors and descendants have persisted to the present day; a fundamental and essential mistake which no amount of shaping, and trimming, and painting will ever correct or atone for—a mistake which, it is painful to have to record, it is difficult to bring Haligonians to recognise as such—they built then and build now their houses entirely of wood. Wooden houses may be cheap, wooden houses may be easy to build, wooden houses may be painted to look like stone or brick, but wooden houses are not for men, but children. People who live in glass houses, we are told, shouldn’t throw stones; and people who live in wooden can’t care for posterity, for it is certain that posterity won’t care for them. It is not as if stone were not cheap, or brick available—the Colonial showed from the first his improvidence and his distrust in his future, by building of wood, and the result is what might be expected. Time has not dignified, but detracted.

“A modern wooden ruin,” Haliburton told his fellow-countrymen, “is of itself the least interesting and at the same time the most depressing object imaginable. The massive structures of antiquity, that are everywhere met with in Europe, exhibit the remains of great strength, and though injured and defaced by the slow and almost imperceptible agency of time, promise to continue thus mutilated for ages to come. They awaken the images of departed generations, and are sanctified by legend and by tale. But a wooden ruin shows rank and rapid decay, concentrates its interest on one family, or one man, and resembles a mangled corpse rather than the monument that covers it. It has no historical importance, no ancestral record. It awakens not the imagination. The poet finds no inspiration in it, and the antiquary no interest. It speaks only of death and decay, and recent calamity and vegetable decomposition. The very air about it is close, dank, and unwholesome. It has no grace, no strength, no beauty, but looks deformed, gross, and repulsive. Even the faded colour of a painted wooden house, the tarnished gilding of its decorations, the corroded iron of its fastenings and its crumbling materials, all indicate recent use and temporary habitation. It is but a short time since this mansion was tenanted by its royal master, and in that brief space how great has been the devastation of the elements! A few years more and all trace of it will have disappeared for ever. Its very site will soon become a matter of doubt. The forest is fast reclaiming its own, and the lawns and ornamented gardens annually sown with seeds scattered by the winds from the surrounding woods, are relapsing into a state of nature, and exhibiting in detached patches a young growth of such trees as are common to the country.”

“The capital of Nova Scotia,” wrote a traveller in 1856, “looks like a town of cards, nearly all the buildings being of wood. There are wooden houses, wooden churches, wooden wharves, wooden slates, and if there are sidewalks these are of wood also. I was pleased at a distance with the appearance of two churches, one of them a Gothic edifice, but on nearer inspection found them to be of wood, and took refuge in the substantial masonry of the really handsome Province Building and Government House.”

“At least,” retorted a Nova Scotian upon a Yankee critic, “we don’t go in for wooden nutmegs.”

“You’re not smart enough,” was the retort, “your very heads are of wood.”

“I fear,” remarked a distinguished Episcopal visitor on being shown the city, “your people are not orthodox. They make an idol of wood.”

“My Lord,” was Sir Robert Weatherbe’s witty rejoinder, “we attach little importance to material things. And remember,

‘The heathen in their blindness,

Bow down to wood and stone.’”

On Citadel Hill, the crowning height of Halifax, are to be seen obsolete fortifications, begun by the Duke of Kent, and as time went on altered and improved to keep pace with the rapid advances of scientific warfare. In and around Halifax there is now a thoroughly modern system of fortifications; and improvements and additions to these works are continually being made. The prominent points on the shores and the neighbouring islands are completely equipped with modern quick-firing and disappearing guns, and other forms of defence are not neglected.

The annual naval and military manœuvres, of which Halifax used to be the scene, were a great source of interest, and attracted throngs of tourists. One saw the North Atlantic Squadron anchored peacefully in the harbour.

Entrance to the Citadel, Halifax.

Suddenly there rang out the shrill boatswain’s whistle, and there ensued a vision of crews swarming up the rigging, the loosening of sails, the hoisting of anchors, and then, in a few moments, the stately fleet steamed majestically down past the city and out to sea. For “war” had been declared, and the fleet which thus went out to meet the enemy, will itself be the “enemy” on its return, and a fierce bombardment be expected unless the pretence that it is blown to fragments by submarines and torpedoes be successful. Meanwhile, the military authorities at the citadel were on the qui vive. The militia was called out, the garrison were at their guns or at the look-out, the submarine and torpedo engineers were busy laying surface mines and inspecting sunken mines and booms. The tension continued through that day and the ensuing night, until at daybreak the booming of cannon on the York Redoubt announces the approach of the enemy and the beginning of the attack. In all this and the attendant military reviews and sham-fights the whole of Halifax participated, and the glory of the manœuvres ended in a ball at Government House.

A change has come over the Imperial aspect of the Province since the Dominion Government took over the naval and military defences of Halifax from the Mother Country. I found Halifax, with its citadel crowned slopes, its wooden houses, its tree-lined avenues bathed in glowing summer sunshine, but Haligonian society with no sunshine in its heart. “Where are the tars of yester-year?” the belles of Halifax seemed to be saying. “Where are the gallant captains, commanders, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, and middies with whom we waltzed, and flirted, and played tennis, and acted and boated within the North-west arm?” I was prepared for this, but not for a similar complaint with regard to the British Army. For on parade, at church, at the Halifax club, were not the regulation uniforms denoting the British officer as much in evidence as ever? “Oh, those!” was the supercilious rejoinder of one fair damsel, lying back in a canoe on the shores of Bedford Basin; “they don’t count. They’re Canadians.”

To me these officers in their spick-and-span khaki, touched with scarlet, were indistinguishable from the Simon-pure insular breed. But trust a fair Haligonian to know the difference. I was reminded of the saying of a recent Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, who did not seem very effusive in his welcome of one who wore his Majesty’s uniform, just arrived at Government House. “I’m sorry the fellow was offended; but nobody interests me who reaches Nova Scotia by land.”

And, indeed, it is only recently that many Nova Scotians have taken kindly to the term Canadian as applied to themselves, resembling in this respect the British Columbians of the pre-Confederation and ultra-conservative school.

It certainly has made a difference, perhaps only temporary, to the tone of Halifax society this substitution of a Canadian for the old Imperial establishment. Nor is the idea of a Canadian Navy taken seriously in these social circles. One had only to mention the Niobe and the Rainbow to excite a smile. The officers may turn out to be good fellows, but they will need all their tact, good looks, and gallantry to overcome the prejudice the fair Haligonians feel towards them as delegates from Ottawa instead of from the British Admiralty. As for the military, I heard many complaints as to how their men had received their appointments at Ottawa, but none as to how they do their work. And what is better still, they have earned the respect of the British “Tommies,” who still form 90 per cent. of the garrison, better paid and better fed than they were under the Imperial régime. And yet such pay and feeding hardly serves to attract the native-born, very few of whom are ready to enlist, so that the garrison is conspicuously undermanned.

But Halifax is a charming place to live in for all that. It has so long been a naval port and a garrison town, that the family ties between its people and those of England continue to be very numerous. Commercial relations between the two countries have grown to such an extent that the natives have now all that is admirable in English business circles and polite society. A visitor, if given the entrée of the best society, must perforce carry away the most kindly recollections of his visit. Whatever his nationality, few places will make more strenuous efforts to give him the greatest enjoyment. And the attractions for the visitor are many, both in and around the town. A favourite drive is along the Point Pleasant Road and up the North-west Arm. A most attractive place is this North-west Arm, and the drive, especially when continued past Melville Island and as far as the Dingle, is a most enjoyable one.

Attending divine service on the day following my arrival, I tried to listen to the reverend gentleman expatiating in a patriarchal, and, I thought, somewhat ungallant way on the duties of women. My eye roved over the interior of the sacred edifice, which is, in many ways, the most interesting in Canada. One of the very first undertakings of the infant colony a century and a half ago was to provide themselves with a place of worship, and in the original plan of the town one square was reserved for a site. They applied to the British Government, who referred it to Lord Halifax, who attended service at St. Peter’s, Vere Street, Piccadilly. His lordship sought out the architect of St. Peter’s, got the plans, and sent them out to Nova Scotia. There the frame and other materials were imported from Boston, and in less than a year the colonists were attending service within an exact replica of the London church, which they named St. Paul’s. For many years it was used by successive bishops as a cathedral, including both the Inglises, father and grandfather of Sir John Inglis of Lucknow. Richer than any other church in Canada is St. Paul’s in mural tablets, and as our eye sweeps the four walls it encounters many historic names. One of these is that of Governor John Parr, the friend and comrade of Wolfe.

I wish I could speak in praise of Halifax’s new cathedral, to which reference will be found elsewhere in these pages. I wish I could plead that as I saw it, merely in process of construction, it would be impossible to render judgment upon it. For to me the whole principle upon which such structures are built is a wrong one. Even the architects have been impelled to issue a kind of manifesto, in which the following interesting statement occurs:—

“Perhaps the greatest disadvantage we of the western world are compelled to undergo in our buildings, in the vast majority of cases at any rate, is the sordid meanness or cheap tawdriness of the surroundings. This condition is so marked in certain portions of America as to quite dishearten the conscientious architect at the very inception of his task. Many noble buildings there are such as would become beautiful situations abroad that here seem contemptible, at odds with their environment.”

It is true they hasten to disclaim such surroundings for Halifax, but go on to say—

“Amid such surroundings any attempt at such glittering splendours as are gathered in, say, the Basilica of Saint Mark at Venice, or such sombre glories of carving and metal as are everywhere present in the cathedral of the debonair city of Seville, would be wholly out of place. Even the unruffled sunlit calm of the English cathedrals may hardly be attempted, much less attained. The city is a northern one, the land one of long winters and deep snows, and over all blows the keen air of the salt sea, that singles out each unprotected bit of masonry, every weak cranny of construction, for attack. Only the hardest and most enduring of materials can undergo such a searching test as the old builders of the town well knew, and much that gives charm to similar buildings of the old world must be frankly dispensed with; the parapets for one, that in every period of the Gothic style as built abroad, heavy and castellated in early work, pieced and lace-like in later times, are almost an integral feature, for these would form pockets for great piles of drifted snow that melting in the spring would surely creep up and into the slates and woodwork of the roof. And the heavy floors of irregular flags that so charm the traveller abroad, must perforce be abandoned, for these should rest upon solid earth, and only in a land where the forces of frost are but puny can this be done, while the same force it is that forbids the employment well, of other architectural details that involve care, labour, and expense. I have never heard a more ingenious and disingenuous defence of flimsiness, the whole truth being that Halifax would have liked a first-rate cathedral, but did not like to spend the requisite sum upon it. If these architects had gone to Russia and Northern Germany, not to mention Old Scotland, I dare say they would find that a cold climate is not altogether antagonistic to sound and even elaborate masonry and even to permanence. The whole point is contained in their conclusion, in which it is confessed:

“The cost of the mediæval cathedrals was lightly met by the people of the past, but the funds which would be incurred in erecting even such a lifeless and soulless replica as we are only capable of to-day, would be far beyond the capacity of any diocese to gather together.”

So much for the great cathedral of Halifax!

Our fellow-citizens in the densely-settled heart of the Empire, you are just beginning to realise the century-old ideals of those in the outer marches. You are just beginning to see the significance of Canadian loyalty—regarded as loyalty to the race, “Because,” as Mr. Kipling once wrote to a friend of mine, a Newfoundlander, “the Empire is Us—We ourselves: and for the white man to explain that he is loyal is almost as unnecessary as for a respectable woman to volunteer the fact that she is chaste.”

In the Public Gardens, Halifax.

In the Public Gardens, Halifax.

As the solidarity of the British race—we ourselves—increases, we can take a greater interest in Colonial origins—we can be entertained by seeing how each colony reached the same political goal—self—government—by a different path.

As Annapolis Royal is the cradle of Canada, so Halifax may be called the cradle of Colonial self-government. Urged by this sentiment, Sir Sandford Fleming, the late engineer-in-chief of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a most notable Imperialist, not long since conceived a truly original and interesting idea. Imperial ideas are not yet so common that significance may be disregarded by any Briton. At his beautiful house on the North-west Arm—that salt-water inlet once called the Sandwich River—the keen-eyed, gentle-voiced octogenarian explained to me his scheme, which has already touched the imagination of the Colonies.

“Whatever,” said he, “may be the latitude and longitude of each community enjoying the freedom, the justice, the protection, the privileges, and advantages that spring from the British system, they must be mutually interested in this.” Helped by the Canadian Club of Halifax, he undertook to erect a memorial tower within the precincts of the city, for the purpose of commemorating the origin here of representative government, and all the benefits which have sprung from it. A few months ago the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia laid the foundation stone of this memorial tower on an ideal site in a pleasant park of one hundred acres, given by Sir Sandford, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the day upon which the first Provincial Assembly was opened at Halifax. Every autonomous portion of the Empire will contribute a commemorative tablet, and the interior of this lofty granite campanile will be a museum bearing upon Colonial history.

I found Nova Scotia very much interested in the question of technical education. Here, as elsewhere, people do not always grasp the details and possibilities of their own trades and the old gibe at the fishermen, “How many fins has a cod”? leaving him perplexed and gasping, has its application to other callings as well.

The Nova Scotia Technical College, which was established by the Provincial Legislature in 1906, is a college of applied science and engineering, and the boast is made for it that it “stands at the head of the first complete system of technical education to be established by any Province or State on the continent.”

The college offers thorough courses in civil, electrical, mechanical, and mining engineering. There is a full free scholarship of a value of seventy-five dollars offered for each county in the province, except Halifax and Cape Breton counties, which have two each. The opportunity is now placed within the reach of every boy in the province who has the ambition and talent to acquire a thorough high class training as an engineer. I paid a visit to the college, which is perhaps the finest building in Halifax, and had an interesting chat with the Principal, Mr. Sexton, who is young, ardent, and competent.

“The college,” he told me, “aims to serve the industrial life of the province in every possible way. Nova Scotians will be trained to develop the great natural resources of the province, and to captain the Nova Scotian industries of the future. Industrial research will be carried on in the laboratories of the college to solve the problems of the mines and manufactures, and all assistance will be granted towards our industries on a thoroughly scientific basis.”

The college is closely affiliated with Acadia, Dalhousie, King’s, Mt. Allison, and St. Francis Xavier colleges. Students in engineering secure there their preliminary two years’ general training in science, mathematics, language, &c., and pursue their last two years of specialised professional work at the Technical College.

The arrangement of dividing the work between the affiliated colleges and the Technical College prevents unnecessary duplication of equipment and expense, obviates educational waste, and is another tribute to the genius of Nova Scotia in education.

The motto of the Technical College not only indicates its fundamental aspiration, but is an interesting tribute to the new Gaelic spirit.

“Science for the common weal.”

“Ealin air son math coitcheann sluaidh.”

Under the Technical College is a whole system of secondary technical schools in practically every industrial centre in Nova Scotia.

There are technical schools for coal miners, technical schools for stationary engineers, technical schools for artisans, technical schools for fishermen, and a Royal Commission on technical education was touring the entire Province at the time of my visit.

When it was first built, the Halifax dry dock was the largest in North America, and is to-day one of the largest commercial docks. It received at the outset a substantial subsidy from the city of Halifax, and was also allowed exemption from taxes for a period of fifteen years. But despite this help, the dock gave little employment, the number of vessels repaired being comparatively small. The Dominion Government at last realising the importance of such docks as this, granted a bonus to dry docks in various parts of Canada, the docks being, for the purposes of the Act, divided into two classes. The largest docks—constituting the first class—get a bonus of 3½ per cent. for thirty-five years. But Halifax does not benefit under this Act, for its dock is only 585 feet long, instead of the 650 feet that is required. The boats in the Canadian trade are fast becoming of greater length.

Canada was only in her infancy when the Halifax dock was built, and the large increase in commerce is shown by the pay roll of the Dry Dock Company, which last year paid out eighty thousand dollars in wages. But the capacity of the dock will not now meet the requirements, and it is felt that an extension to 800 feet will be necessary to take the whole trade of the Atlantic coast. To do this, an immense coffer dam would have to be built in order to extend the dock seawards, involving an expenditure of about a million dollars and a closure of fourteen months, with men working night and day.

But if Halifax is to retain importance it should have a dock which can take and repair the largest ship that sails in the Canadian trade. And this will be the more necessary if Halifax is to be the headquarters for the fast boats of the C.P.R., the Allan Line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern Railway.

On the whole a comfortable, tranquil, pleasant city is Halifax, somewhat qualified, I am inclined to add, by Grafton Street, a unique thoroughfare where bedizened women, negroes, Indians, Chinese, and whites congregate in a sort of extra-barrackian squalor. Such a spectacle is familiar in garrison towns in the tropics, but here in Canada its incongruity is almost disconcerting. A movement is on foot for the eradication of this district.

Apropos of negroes, one sees a great many of these in and about Halifax, and in other parts of the Province.

They came hither, of course, in large numbers from the American Southern States in the ante-bellum slavery days. Nova Scotia was then the favourite asylum of coloured refugees, and their descendants I do not think have degenerated. On the whole they form a dirty, good-humoured, retrograde feature of the population. Eighty years ago Great Britain awarded, on account of their ancestors, the refugees, a donation to America of one million sterling, as compensation to the American planters whose slaves were carried off in order to enjoy the comforts of political freedom and physical starvation under the British flag in Nova Scotia, an award long and properly ridiculed by its beneficiaries, the Americans.

I suppose I need hardly mention that the Nova Scotian negroes are fully as “religious” as their American brethren.

It was in 1796 that between five and six hundred Maroons were brought here from Jamaica. In that island they had been wild and desperate rebels. Descendants of the original African slaves, they had escaped and made their home in the glens and caves of the mountains, sallying down to rob and plunder the white settlements and deriding all attempts at capture. At length a number of Cuban dogs were requisitioned to hunt down these outlaw Maroons, who, panic-stricken at this, surrendered, and were ordered to be carried to Nova Scotia. At Halifax they were lodged in tents on the outskirts of the town, but were later transferred to Preston, where the Jamaican Government granted them a sum of money towards their support. The experience of a few winters showed how utterly helpless they were, and the bulk of them were ordered off to Sierra Leone.

Years ago I talked with an aged Sierra Leone darkey, who, though unable to read or write, and had relapsed into many of the savage ways of his ancestors, yet asked after Halifax with affection. “Me member him well,” he said, “me born there. Me go back some day.” That was twenty years ago, and my sable Haligonian has probably long been gathered to his fathers. Albeit, not all the Maroons left for Africa. Some remained, and their descendants occasionally muster in great force about the city, especially on market days, and they may also be seen brooding about the wharves.

Bedford Basin near Halifax.

In the Environs of Windsor.

CHAPTER V

WINDSOR AND “SAM SLICK”

How many towns are there which make one regret that necessity which compels the visitor to approach them froml their ugliest side. One can enter Oxford or Canterbury, to mention two English instances, so as to offend one’s æsthetic sense, and to impart an impression which it takes many hours spent in contemplation of more favourable surroundings to efface. So it is with the Nova Scotian town of Windsor. It is all part of the tyranny of railways. It will not happen in the coming day of the airship and air-skiff, when the eager tourist can choose his own spot to alight, and give a wide berth to the purlieus which depress, and the human and architectural crudities which exasperate.

Windsor is one of the pleasantest towns in the Province, the seat of King’s College and other institutions of learning, and everlastingly associated with that rare spirit, Thomas Chandler Haliburton. But one must banish its Main Street, thronged with loafers, and its unspeakable Victoria Hotel, where the proprietor sells cigars, presides over the “register,” and carries ice-water to his guests in his shirtsleeves, before one can appreciate that these are only excrescences upon Windsor.

With a high tide in the beautiful Avon River, dotted with sails, I should first descend in my aerial craft, not amidst the pleasing ruins of Fort Edward, now a flourishing golf club, but a mile further away, on a wooded hill at the bottom of the wide shaded drive, facing the brown columned porticoes of King’s College. Here, book or cricket-bat in hand, I see eager-faced, alert young figures moving, fine types of Canadian youth, who will presently go out to furnish forth the pulpits and colleges, the bench and the bar of Canada’s to-morrow. It is a great wooden building, with Ionic portico, flanked by other buildings, the chapel, and hall and library. All have an old-world look, especially the spacious hall where many paintings adorn the walls. The college was chartered by George III. in 1788, and has in its time turned out many distinguished graduates. Its library is particularly strong in theological works.

Talking with a King’s College professor, he said to me:

“I cannot help feeling a particular love for this place, where my father and grandfather were before me educated. I know all its walks and groves, and to me the country round about is the most beautiful in the world. When I think of the stream of graduates dear old King’s has sent to all parts of Canada and the United States, I am filled with pride. But there are many things we want to make us a living force to-day. Too much of the educational resources of this Province is frittered away. There are too many small colleges. We want wider activities, and for these we sadly need endowments. We recognise the changing spirit of the age, but we at King’s will resist to the death anything which will stultify our principles or destroy the fabric so slowly built up, substituting gymnastics and Esperanto for that real education which leads the mind of the student along the paths of righteous conduct and character.”[4]

[4] Haliburton remarks that the “diffusion through the country of a well-educated body of clergymen like those of the Establishment, has had a strong tendency to raise the standard of qualification among those who differ from them; while the habits, manners, and regular conduct of so respectable a body of men naturally and unconsciously modulate and influence those of their neighbours, who may not, perhaps, attend their ministrations. It is, therefore, doubtless owing in a great measure to the exertions and salutary example of the Church in the colonies, that a higher tone of moral feeling exists in the British provinces than in the neighbouring States.”

From which statement I gather that there will be no “hustling” spirit manifesting itself at King’s.

Hard by the old college is a flourishing collegiate school for boys, and a little further on in our return to the town of Windsor is the Edgehill Seminary, a largely attended Church school for girls.

The superior culture and refinement of the people of Windsor is exhibited in the streets and houses. In front of these latter stretch beautifully kept lawns; that at the Anglican rectory, in its trim terraces, being as fine as I have ever seen in England. A famous place for prosperous-looking churches is Windsor—all denominations seem to vie with one another, not only in erecting fine edifices, but in keeping them in an order so irreproachable as to pulpit, chancel, lectern, carpets, cushions, and appointments as would send a thrill of envy through many a harassed English vicar’s bosom.

All the dwellings bespeak a degree of easy comfort and considerable taste, built in a style inferior, it is true, to the houses of the old Colonial period, but superior to the bald and shapeless Noah’s Arks which have gone up in their thousands and tens of thousands in the towns and villages of Canada since Confederation.

Can there be, I have often speculated, any occult connection between Canadian domestic architecture and the political cohesion of the Provinces? Why, when the Federal edifice was consummated, did the half million or so little brick or timber edifices which housed the Canadian population suddenly fall down as if at the blast of a trumpet, and a half million colourless, clap-boarded, slant-roofed structures—they are not houses or cottages—start up instead—making home a derision? I have heard aged inhabitants tell of, and have seen with my own eyes, pre-Confederation houses which it would be a pleasure to dwell in—houses built by the merchants and shipbuilders who grew rich in the war of 1812—houses that were built by men who built houses and not barns. But am I not making my complaint too particular? Is it the case in rural England as well? Compare the graceful, low-browed, hip-roofed cottages of the past with the yellow brick or cement villas of the present! How much better is a rude log-hut, half-masked in glowing creeper, than such as these, with their straitened entrys and stairways, and a dozen little square chambers when four generously planned ones would suffice!

One of the best built houses I ever saw in my life is in Pictou, walls a foot and a half thick, fine fat timbers, plenty of honest freestone, heaps of cupboard room, and a great dry cellar. A right good, tight good house, built by an old Scotsman in New Scotland nearly a hundred years ago, and as sturdy to-day as the day he built it, although alas, to-day untenanted. There are plenty of other houses, too, pleasant old-fashioned ones, with wood panelled walls within instead of paper. That is the best place for wood in a house—inside—inside on the walls, and a great log of it blazing on the hearth. I never can understand why the New Scotlanders go on building wooden houses, when stone is so plentiful and lasts for ever.

“I’ll tell you why,” said a native Nova Scotian to me. “One reason is, we haven’t any stone-masons to show us how, and the other reason is we’re in too much of a hurry. In ten years—in five, perhaps in less time, we are prepared to move—to sell our house and go into another one. We never look ahead more than ten years. After that, it is posterity; and Canadians don’t worry much about posterity.”

In many places I was struck by the haste with which houses and shops arose and churches were run up. The Roman Catholics of Annapolis Royal wanted of a sudden a new church. The moment their mind was made up they rushed off to a builder and got an estimate for the construction of a two-aisled church in pine-wood. I wish you could have seen, as I saw daily, that skeleton of naked timbers arise. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars would be spent by these pious communicants on a wilderness of scantling poles, covered with thin planks, roofed in with tin, painted a sepulchral white, hung within by the portraits of saints, illuminated by candles, and reverberating with American-organic harmony. To the eye all is well. Appearances are kept up, and the worshipper may, if he is a man of strong imagination, hug the illusion that he is worshipping God in a temple altogether adequate to the Almighty. In the capital I saw a cathedral built, as to its interior, of cement, moulded and embossed to simulate stone. Great slabs of a dough-like mixture were scored across longitudinally in order to counterfeit the seams filled with mortar. A few months of labour, and a cheap and colourable imitation of Wells Cathedral resulted. Now all this sort of architectural hypocrisy and makeshift is very well for a Shepherd’s Bush Exhibition, in its nature ephemeral, but how will it appear to the eyes of the twenty-first century, not to mention the thirtieth or the fortieth? Would the old builders, who aforetime reared such stately and beautiful fabrics, who were far poorer than we, and lived in smaller towns and even villages, would they have worked this way and in this spirit? Rather were they content to add a single stone a day, seven stones a week, three hundred and sixty-five stones a year; until slowly and surely a holy building arose, to defy time and the elements, and to be a blessed sanctuary for ages yet unborn. What, gentlemen, and O ye pious ladies (whom I suspect of knowing as much about architecture as a Hottentot knows of an Elzevir) what is your hurry? Do you think the Christian religion and the practice of public worship will not outlast your time, that you are in such haste to quit the old church, chapel, or meeting-house, and run up a showy successor (generally mortgaged), which may deceive a tourist at forty rods, an architect at half a mile, but will never deceive God Almighty or the lawyer who holds a mortgage for it in his pocket, and can only foster a spirit of hypocrisy in the congregation? Better far worship in the open fields than be surrounded by such pitiful architectural mockery. And in the same way, I conjure you, better live in comfortable log cabins, than build an apology for a house, with all “modern conveniences,” that you will afterwards come to be ashamed of—or if you don’t you ought to be.

Victoria Park, Windsor, N.S.

Near Lochaber Lake.

All the foregoing train of reflection has been started by a contemplation of a sweet and gentle and unpretentious cottage at Windsor. It is at the end of a short wide avenue of elms. It is low and spacious within. It is the kind of house a poet should live in, and it is now fast going to decay; nothing is spent by its absentee owner to preserve it, and it is occupied at present by a couple of poor Irish families. This is the house built by, and where once dwelt, Haliburton, Nova Scotia’s sole literary celebrity of international renown. When his book, “The Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick of Slickville” appeared, the whole literary world was taken by surprise, and Christopher North could not praise it enough in the pages of Blackwood.

Haliburton was a Nova Scotian judge who, with wide reading and a capital literary style, added to a native fund of humour, knew his native Province as none has done before or since. Sam Slick, as a pure literary creation, vies with any of the characters of Dickens. He may be described as a compound of Sam Weller, Alfred Jingle, and Jefferson Brick, and the whole book, or series of books, penned by Haliburton, profess chiefly to give this vulgar, loquacious, astute Yankee pedlar’s opinions on American, British, and Nova Scotian men, manners, and institutions. For the biting satire contained in these productions Haliburton was widely blamed; and in reply to the charge of holding the Yankee up to ridicule, he thus condescended to explain his object:

“In the Canadas,” he wrote in 1838, “there is a party advocating republican institutions and hostility to everything British. In doing so they exaggerate all the advantages of such a form of government, and depreciate the blessings of a limited monarchy. In England this party unfortunately finds too many supporters, either from a misapprehension of the true state of the case, or from a participation in their treasonable views. The sketches continued in the present and preceding series of the Clockmaker, it is hoped, will throw some light on the topics of the day, as connected with the design of the anti-English party. The object is purely patriotic.”

In exposing the faults and the follies of the Nova Scotians, Haliburton claimed that he had “done a good deal of good. It has made more people hear of Nova Scotia than ever heard tell of it afore by a long chalk; it has given it a character in the world it never had afore, and raised the valley of real property there considerable.”

At all events, Sam Slick soon became a household word, and so high was he held in the esteem of the Yankees that, long after Haliburton had left the Province, long indeed after his death, thousands of Americans came to pay a visit to his dwelling here in Windsor, long known as the “Sam Slick house.” Many to-day know of Sam Slick who do not know of Haliburton. His writings present an admirable picture of the Province seventy or eighty years ago; and much of what he described then is true to-day. It cannot be said that he was a neglected author, or that he lacked a due appreciation of his own merit. In one of his own chapters he boldly recommends himself to preferment at the hands of the British Government, as a clever Colonial author who is worth being taken notice of.

“The natives,” he makes his hero say, “are considerable proud of him, and if you want to make an impartial deal to tie the Nova Scotians to you forever to make your own name descend to posterity with honour, and to prevent the inhabitants from ever thinking of Yankee connexion (mind that hint, say a good deal about that, for it’s a tender point that, adjoining of our union, and fear is plaguy sight stronger than love any time) you’ll jist sarve him as you sarved Earl Mulgrave (though his writins ain’t to be compared to the Clockmaker, no more than chalk is to cheese), you give him the governorship of Jamaica and arterwards of Ireland. John Russell’s writins got him the berth of leader in the House of Commons. Well, Francis Head, for his writins you made him Governor of Canada, and Walter Scott you made a baronet of, and Bulwer you did for too, and a great many others you have got the other side of the water you sarved the same way. Now, minister, fair play is a jewel, says you: if you can reward your writers to home with governorships and baronetcies and all sorts o’ snug things, let’s have a taste o’ the good things this side o’ the water too. You needn’t be afraid o’ bein too often troubled that way by authors from this country (it will make him larf that, and there’s many a true word said in joke), but we’ve got a sweet tooth here as well as you have. Poor pickins in this country, and colonists are as hungry as hawks. The Yankees made Washington Irvin a minister plenipo, to honour him; and Blackwood, last November, in his magazine, says that are Yankee’s books ain’t fit to be named in the same day with the Clockmaker—that they’re nothin but Jeremiads. So, minister, says you, jist tip a stave to the Governor of Nova Scotia, order him to inquire out the Author, and to tell that man, that distinguished man, that Her Majesty delights to reward merit and honour talent, and that if he will come home, she’ll make a man of him for ever, for the sake of her royal father, who lived so long among the Blue-noses, who can’t forget him very soon.”

Haliburton duly went to England, was elected member of Parliament for Launceston, and, had he lived long enough, would have seen his son, who died the other day, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Lord Haliburton. Sam Slick’s author himself died in 1865 in his seventieth year.

But we must take leave of Windsor, which was formerly the prosperous Acadian village of Pisiquid (“Junction of the Waters”) long before the expulsion of 1755. Fort Edward here played a prominent part in all the internecine struggles of the period.

I have alluded above to the existing remains of Fort Edward. Standing on the disused battlements one’s glance sweeps across the waters it commands to Avonport on the opposite shore. But I write “waters”—can I now speak of the waters of the Avon? For, lo! the tide has fallen and there is now but a mighty waste of red, red mud “an ugly rent in the land,” where but two hours or so ago a teeming river flowed a spectacle to remind us that we are now in the land of the “fluvial bore,” and are watching the action of the far-famed double tides of the Bay of Fundy.

CHAPTER VI

GRAND PRÉ AND EVANGELINE

One of the pleasantest features of New Scotland is the number and variety of its wild-flowers. Outside the dwellings in “the Valley” one’s eye constantly met with and was refreshed by the sight of the white rose. The woods are full of violets. The ponds and marshes reek with perfume and colour, I shall never forget the advent at each station on the line of half-a-dozen vociferous urchins bearing bunches of long-stemmed water lilies. “Pond lilies—fresh picked pond lilies. Fifteen cents a bunch!” Behind this youth came another, at an interval of five paces. “Beautiful fresh pond lilies. Ten cents a bunch.” And still another. “Pond lilies, five cents a bunch.” The train was about to move. “All aboard!” shouted the conductor. The flower merchants showed a sudden parity and unanimity in their demands. “Pond lilies—five a bunch,” they cried in chorus. Then, as the train began to move, one small boy, rather pale and bright-eyed, looking as if his chief and favourite nutriment were chewing-gum,[5]

[5] Of this delectable composition, one of those blessings which, like the phonograph and the sky-scraper, the world owes to America, the variety now most in vogue is called, for some mysterious reason known to its maker “chiclets.” A waiter at the Halifax Hotel informed me that an English lady had ordered a pair of “chiclets”—broiled—for luncheon, under the impression that it was the poultry par excellence of the country, like Maryland squab or reed birds.

looked up into my face, extended his scented wares under my very nose, and blurted out breathlessly: “Here, take ’em, mister. Beautiful and fresh. Two bunches for five!”

I tossed him a coin, but my journey was long, the cars were crowded, and the dank and dripping lilies would have been an embarrassment; so I left them in his hands. But they were very beautiful; and there is no scent in all the world for me—save the scent of lilac—so pregnant with charm, so redolent of poetry unwritten.

But the water-lily is not the flower of the Province. That is the sweet scented, rich-hued trailing arbutus—the far-famed Mayflower, so rare in other parts of Canada, here so plentiful that it has become the emblem of New Scotland, from which is derived the poetic and significant motto of the Province: “We bloom amid the snows.” No flower is so popular. One commonly meets with large parties of young people in the woods, in quest of the Mayflower; they are worn in corsage and button-hole, or carried as a bouquet in the hand by shoppers and pedestrians. The country people, Acadians, Indians, and Negroes, gather them into little bunches and bring them to market, or hawk them about the capital. So that, while it is in season, it is all-pervasive in drawing-room, parlour window, and office. So jealous are the Nova Scotians of their prior rights in this flower that a decade since, impelled by the claims of the Massachusetts folk, who seem somehow to have confounded the blossom with the name of that truly Leviathan ship the Mayflower, which bore thither the Pilgrim Fathers, that they passed in legislature “An Act respecting the Floral Emblem of Nova Scotia. Edward, Sect. 1, cap. x.,” which duly sets forth their priority for all future generations.

Speaking of the vessel of the Pilgrim Fathers, a gentleman at Liverpool, who showed me a piece of her timbers, a cherished heirloom in the family, said:

“There never was a ship like the Mayflower, or an instance which so shows the untrustworthiness of contemporary testimony. We know her now to have been one of the marine wonders of the seventeenth century, far larger than the Lusitania or the Mauretania, or any modern ship. To find her equal we must go back to Noah’s Ark, unless, indeed, the Royal George, which survives to-day in the form of at least a million chairs, tables, wardrobes, and settees, were larger. The mere fact that she carried over a thousand families, including many of Irish and German origin, is a proof of her dimensions!”

Westward from Windsor, on the edge of the Basin of Minas, lies the great marsh meadow—Grand Pré—a district over which the genius of a poet has thrown a film of magic, making it, even at noonday, a region of perpetual twilight. It is strange to think that in Haliburton’s day, Grand Pré, unheard of as a village, was merely the Grand Prairie situated in Horton township, and that Evangeline had never been heard of. Crossing the Avon, one is confronted with a range of hills called the Horton Mountains. The view from the roadway on the summit is unmatched in Nova Scotia. It includes four counties, including the thousands of acres of marsh meadow reclaimed by the Acadians. Before one’s eyes stretch the verdant and populous vales of the Gaspereaux and Cornwallis, with their wooded groves and tilled fields: the waters of five rivers may be seen flowing into the basin. Travellers are fond of comparing it to the valley of the Dee, near Aberdeen, but that view lacks the wondrous Cape Blomidon, a majestic promontory 670 feet high, which forms the abrupt eastern termination of the North Mountain chain.

Where Blomidon’s blue crest looks down upon the valley land.

How many poets have seen and sung of Blomidon and Grand Pré? But one may see with the eye of the mind and with the eye of the body, and the best description of the district is still that of the poet who himself never set foot in Acadia.

“... Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,
Giving the village its name and pasture to flocks without number;
Dikes that the hands of the farmers had raised with labour incessant,
Shut out the turbulent waves; but at stated seasons the flood-gates
Opened and welcomed the sea, to wander at will o’er the meadows.
West and South there were fields of flax and orchards and corn-fields,
Spreading afar and unfenced o’er the plain; and away to the northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the happy valley, but ne’er from their station descended.”

Do you remember the visitor to Abbotsford, who, remembering the beautiful lines

“He who would see fair Melrose aright,

Must visit it by the pale moonlight;”

inquired:

“Did you often visit it by moonlight, Sir Walter?”

“Alas, never!” confessed the poet.

Emerson says somewhere that we write by aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience, and the one writing may be as true as the other. Critical persons there may be, who seize upon passages in “Evangeline” as contrary to “facts.” Personally, I found few discrepancies between Longfellow and Baedeker.

Strikingly in evidence is the great increase in the number of tourists to the land of Evangeline. It is one of the wonders of literature, certainly without parallel on this side of the Atlantic, how Longfellow’s hexameters have fenced in this Acadian valley, and even peopled it with poetic ghosts. Thither in their thousands come the living twentieth-century flesh-and-blood to pay their tribute to the genius loci. I came across them lingering by Evangeline’s Well, and gazing sentimentally upon the spot where stood the forge of Basil. But they are, almost without exception, New England, not Old England pilgrims.

On the crest of the highroad stands the white-painted old chapel of the Scottish Covenanters, the high pulpit and the old-fashioned pews within, and no barer now than when the voice of the stern-faced preacher rang out his exhortations and his remonstrances against the world, the flesh, and the devil, to the meek self-denying flock in whose bosoms the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil, was fleeting, remote, and exiguous indeed! These Scots were the successors by one remove, of the banished Acadians, and to them this land of Grand Pré must have been Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey; for owing to its sheltered situation and the marshes and many silt-conveying rivers, the soil is very fertile.

Along the road my driver urged his spirited mare. We turned presently sharp to the left, through a quaint stone gateway, with an appearance of such antiquity as if it might be coeval with the Round Tower of Newport, and through an avenue of apple-trees, which developed into a thickly planted orchard, so thick that the trees might almost have been an army, close-ranked for action (quære: a Pomeranian army?), and then winding in and out beneath the golden fruit, a house bursts on the view, a house of rambling pattern, many-winged and gabled, covered with flaming creeper; and in this house I passed several delightful days. Under that roof I listened to the pleasing gossip and animated reminiscence of an old judge who knew New Scotland well from Cape North to Cape Sable; who had for nigh fifty years travelled on circuit by good roads and bad, populous and lonely, by night and day, in summer and winter; who knew the people, especially the farmers, as Haliburton knew them; and who had many tales to tell of their customs and their manners, their hopes and their disappointments, their diversions, schemes, and oddities. There was in all this flow of talk no narrowness of vision—no pettiness; but much aspiration towards the broader, more generous point of view, much humour, much courtesy. And as I sat at dinner sipping, not cider, not tea, not “fire-water and bubbles,” but bumpers of champagne of noble vintage,[6] listening to the hale old judge,

Lowell’s words came to me, and I thought “The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for, and be buried in.” I thought of that often in New Scotland when I met some of her sons, and marked their characters and noted their talk—men of dignity, and ripeness, and gentleness, and kindliness, such men as my host, the old judge, of the present Chief Justice of the Province, of Sir Charles Tupper, still with us, of amiable Sir Malachy, of Judge S., and of many more. Of many, many more.

[6] I fancy this champagne was some of that carried by a French ship bound for St. Pierre, which was wrecked off a prohibition village on the south-east coast. The ship was making a return voyage loaded chiefly with French wines. As case after case was brought ashore the inhabitants looked blank. Every sturdy teetotaller suspected his neighbour, and nobody felt quite easy in his mind until an enterprising Yankee patent-medicine pedlar had carted away the whole stock, and Satan, speaking with a strong Rheims and Epernay accent, was placed at defiance.

“The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for, and be buried in.” O ye in England—at the heart of the Empire—deem not all the culture, all the innate courtesy and gentleness of manhood and womanhood is within the confines of your own little island, reckoning the folk overseas as all crude, and brusque, and unpolished, because of the examples that come out of the rough and strenuous West. There are thousands—Colonial-born, as were their fathers and grandfathers before them—who do not come back and sit at the Imperial Mother’s knee, who may not be seen careering up and down Regent Street, or imbibing strange beverages at the Hotel Cecil, who are the true sons of the Old Land, and better represent the qualities which have made her great than all the loud shouters from Toronto, the hustlers of Winnipeg, and the boosters of Vancouver. These others are of the type of men which make Canadian soil good to be born on—who carry on the tradition of the loyal, self-denying, idealistic spirit in which British Canada was founded; and I thank God they are not yet extinct.

St. Eulalie. The Residence at Grand Pré of Hon. Sir Robert Weatherbe.

All this time I am forgetting my hostess, whose sweet and gracious presence is often in my thoughts, a descendant of one of the earliest pioneers, herself the daughter of a judge, who has given six stalwart sons to the Province and the Empire, one to the army, one to the Civil Service, two to medicine, another to science, scattered thousands of miles apart—the true breed of British mother who is, after all, Britain’s greatest glory.

Readers of Longfellow’s poems will not question the appropriateness with which this house has been named. It is “St. Eulalie.” In the very heart of the old Acadian settlement it stands. A tablet within the porch states:

“Here stood the village of Melançon, where, on the night of de Villiers memorable arrival in 1747, was celebrated an Acadian wedding attended by the villagers from Grand Pré.

“After being here warmed by huge fires and regaled with cakes and cider, the French and Indians marched through blinding snows under the guidance of returning guests, who disclosed at Grand Pré the several houses in which the British slept.

“Afterwards de Villiers, wounded in the attack, caused himself to be carried back for treatment by the surgeon here encamped.”

All the walks and drives hereabout are full of the charm of scenery—of the magic of historic association. On a hummock by the river I came across a tall tree, upon which was fixed the following inscription: “Near this spot Coulon de Villiers with about 20 French officers and 400 Canadians and Indians on the night of 10th Feb. 1747, from Beauséjour, crossed the river in a snowstorm to attack Colonel Noble with a force of 500 New Englanders at Grand Pré.”

The expulsion of the Acadians is perhaps the most striking and pathetic passage in New Scotland’s history. The British authorities could not treat all these thousands of people as rebels, for the great majority of them had not fought against them at Beauséjour and elsewhere, but had sulked quietly in their villages. But the long patience of the Provincial Government was exhausted. Repeatedly Governor Lawrence urged them to take the oath, repeatedly and stubbornly they refused.

Then and not till then did the decree of exile go forth. Ignorant of the trades and callings by which they could earn a livelihood in those countries, the Acadians could not be shipped to France or England. Colonists they were, and the sons of colonists, suited only for a colonial life, and on banishment they could only be distributed in batches amongst the English colonies along the Pacific coast.

Many hearts, even amongst the soldiers, warmly compassioned the fate of the unhappy Acadians. Those who had taken the oath were safe in their homesteads. A number fled into the forest. As for the rest the military officers were given their instructions, At Beauséjour 400 men were seized, and without warning the people, Colonel Winslow marched rapidly to Grand Pré. He summoned the men of the village to meet him in the chapel, and there read to them the decree of banishment. In vain they tried to escape; the doors were shut and guarded by English soldiers. The people of village after village were seized, until 6000 souls had been gathered together. For a long time they had to wait for transports to bear them away. Many had forcibly to be conducted on board the ships. Old and young men, women, and children, were marched to the beach. A few members of the same family became separated from each other, never to meet again. But the soldiers strove their best to perform their painful duty as humanely as possible, and no unnecessary harshness marked their operations.

From Minas, Chignecto, and Annapolis, ship after ship bore their weeping burdens southward. Many, long years afterwards, returned again to Acadia, where, when Quebec and the French flag had fallen, they were no longer a danger to the Government. Such of the Acadians as reached Quebec were treated with inhumanity by the French officials there, and nearly perished of famine. It is said that they were reduced to four ounces of bread per day, and sought in the gutters of Quebec to appease their hunger. Smallpox broke out amongst them, and many entire families were destroyed. Such, alas! was the fate of those unhappy beings “whose attachment to their mother country was only equalled by her indifference.”

The expulsion of the Acadians may seem to us a cruel act, but it was forced upon the English by the hardest necessity—the necessity of self-protection,[7] and in spite of all that has since been written to the contrary, no impartial student of history can perceive in what other way than the deportation of these irreconcilables could the peace of New Scotland have been assured, a peace which has lasted to this day.

[7] I am aware that a hysterical gentleman of the name of Richard, a descendant of one of the Acadian families, has sought in two octavo volumes to prove otherwise. I have perused his volumes attacking Mr. Parkman with a freedom of invective and wealth of epithet that goes far to damage his case, with no other emotion than that of renewed pity for the fate of the Acadians and a renewed certainty of its absolute necessity.

Of Grand Pré it has been said that it boasts a threefold attraction—beauty, fertility, and sentiment. Originally Grand Pré was a long straggling Acadian settlement beginning at what is now the Grand Pré railway station, three miles east of Wolfeville, with Horton Landing one mile away. The salient features of the landscape to-day is, and the older portions of those dikes are, relics of the Acadian occupation.

A group of old willows in one part of this great meadow, undoubtedly planted by the original French inhabitants, the well supposed to have been part of the village’s water-supply, and the reputed sites of the forge of Basil the blacksmith and of the house of Father Felicien, are duly shown to the visitor. I have already mentioned the place where a body of New England troops were massacred by the French and their Indian allies nine years before the expulsion.

A recent discovery at Grand Pré revealed portions of the foundations of the Acadian Church of St. Charles. Most of the stone had been removed, either to be used in other foundations built by the English settlers after the deportation, or had been removed to enable the owner to plough over the church site, but enough has been exposed to determine the size of the church.

Excavations have brought to light also the remains of the fireplace and foundations of the chimney built by the soldiers who were quartered in the church. After the first removal 600 Acadians had to be kept prisoners till ships arrived from Boston to take them away. All Minas was destroyed, save the few houses in Grand Pré needed to shelter these 600 people. Wherefore the soldiers made the church comfortable for themselves during the early winter, till they finally departed.

I had an interesting chat with a descendant of the original Acadians, one Herbin by name, an intelligent and enterprising spirit, who has recently set up business in the Grand Pré district, and seems to prosper at the hands of the numerous tourists to the shrine of Evangeline.

Each morning I arose and gazed across the Basin of Minas at Blomidon, as it lay like some sleeping lion. And the sun shone, and the summer wind rippled the tall marsh grass as if it were pale green sea. And far beyond the white sails of ships stole in and out of the Basin, bending and veering like seagulls. And once out from an orchard a farmer’s boy sang a selection from “Parsifal” (“Learnt it off a gramaphone. Learnt a lot o’ operatic songs that way”); and my heart, too, sang, and I was glad I had come to Grand Pré.

From Grand Pré I went on to Wolfeville, a pleasant little town which, for some odd reason, is spelt “Wolfville.” When the “e,” which allies its history with the name of the famous young general, was elided, I cannot precisely state, but the town was Wolfeville on the old maps and in Haliburton’s account of the Province.[8] Here is situated the Acadia College, a flourishing Baptist institution, which has recently enjoyed some of Mr. Rockefeller’s favour, and which has long been an eminent seat of learning in this part of the Province. But Wolfeville’s chief asset is the fact of its being a convenient centre for American tourists visiting the “Evangeline District.”

[8] Amongst the pioneers was a family of Wolfe, or De Wolfe, of Irish origin, and distantly connected with the general’s family. Descendants of these still survive.

Wolfeville’s growth has been steady and uninterrupted since the old coaching days of three quarters of a century ago, when a few houses on one street composed the settlement. From this hamlet it grew into a village, and in 1893 into a town.

The Acadia College and its allied institutions have from the first been the chief asset of the place. Adding to its attractiveness as a residential centre, they also bring annually about 400 young men and women here, and pay out to teachers about $30,000 a year. And besides the educational, the natural advantages of Wolfeville are considerable. It is the commercial centre of a fertile and prosperous region where orcharding and dairying is remunerative, and the farming population increasingly prosperous.

With railway facilities there is excellent water communication for domestic and foreign trade, and a daily steamboat service to Kingsport and Parrsboro for nine months in the year, which makes Wolfeville a promising distributing centre.

The scene of the Grand Pré raid of 1754.

This part of Nova Scotia as well as Cape Breton, struck me as eminently adapted to sheep-raising. I am told that where the same care is bestowed upon these animals as is bestowed in other countries, excellent results are attained on Nova Scotia farms. There should be a flock of sheep on, at least, three-quarters of the farms, and the only obstacle which has hitherto militated against success in the parts of the Province best fitted by nature for sheep-raising, has been their destruction by dogs. Until this is rectified by legislation, and I have the Government’s assurance that this will be attempted—it is useless for any farmer to engage in the pursuit. Repeatedly throughout Nova Scotia I have heard stories of canine depredations. The worst was a case at Yarmouth, where a young Englishman had his whole flock of prize sheep destroyed by dogs. When he made complaint to the owner of a ferocious cur demanding that the animal be shot, or chained, or muzzled, it’s owner retorted, “Why should I get rid of my dog? What business have you to keep sheep?” A rigorously enforced tethering or muzzling order for sheep-worrying dogs would meet the difficulty.

Whether Kentville will continue to be the headquarters of the railway rests with the Canadian Pacific authorities. Should that corporation see fit to remove the workshops and offices from the town, it will be a blow not wholly unexpected.

However, the Canadian Pacific always exploits the country its line traverses, so what is the gain of the surrounding district would in time benefit the town.

Kentville ought, I think, not to bestow all its eggs in one basket. Owing to the partial failure of one recent year’s apple crop, this town being in the heart of the fruit district and largely dependent on apples, a good deal less prosperity was experienced in consequence.

From Kentville I motored through the Cornwallis Valley, taking in a number of villages, and seeing on all sides evidences of prosperity, especially in Waterville and Berwick. Besides material prosperity, and even moral, and intellectual, and æsthetic, there is another kind of prosperity—that of years; and a gentleman who came forward to my car and shook hands with me, vigorously enjoyed this kind of prosperity. He was a centenarian. He had long ago undertaken a race with Father Time, and that inexorable personage had not yet succeeded in running my friend to Mother Earth. Let us hope his race will not be run this many a day; for the absurd brevity of our lives is a great and growing grievance with us all.

A “Joy Ride” in “The Valley.”

CHAPTER VII

ANNAPOLIS ROYAL AND DIGBY

The use of oxen for draught purposes is characteristic of Nova Scotia. It is practised by French, Germans, and English, and is so common nowhere in Canada. Along the country roads one sees the oxen coming along at a leisurely pace, swishing their tails; their red hides, touched by the summer sun, blending harmoniously with the landscape; and casting long shadows on the white road. Yes, the ox is the beast of burden up and down the Province. His harness has an unfamiliar look. Of arched yoke and boles he is often ignorant, and the comfort of collar and harness would lull him to slumber. Just behind his ears he carries his yoke, strapped to the base of his horns and around his forehead. He is shod with iron shoes like a horse, and is at once the admiration and the derision of the Yankee, who would not for a moment tolerate such slow progress. He calls the ox the “Blue-nose automobile.” I have heard the patient quadruped spoken of as one of the four characteristics of the Province—apples, oxen, cold nights, and pessimism. For the latter I should now substitute optimism. Besides, the Blue-nose never was pessimistic. At most he was (as you may see by reading “Sam Slick”) merely apathetic—unresponsive, or as other observers have declared, serene.

Here is the eastern gateway of one of the most celebrated apple-growing districts of the world. Long before Tasmania, South Australia, and California began to grow apples, it was the orchard of the Empire. Following the eastern course of the river between North Mountain (which shelters the valley from the Bay of Fundy) and South Mountain, there stretch seventy-five miles of fruit lands and enchanting scenery. Here is grown the luscious apple which is found in all the world’s great markets. The apple-tree is the dominant note in the swelling landscape, and in early June the whole valley is a scene and scent of sheer beauty, comparable only to the orange-groves of Seville or Santa Clara. This apple is not, of course, indigenous; but none can tell who brought the first pommier from Normandy. Perchance it was Lescarbot himself. At all events orchards were flourishing here in abundance long before the expulsion of the Acadians. Ere the building of the Dominion and Atlantic Railway (now taken over by the Canadian Pacific), the apple production of “the Valley” was some twenty thousand barrels annually. Within a few years the output had grown to half a million. In 1911 it reached 1,750,000 barrels.

Last year the apple-growers received a serious check. It was not a good apple year. There was the weather for one thing, not merely of this but of the season of 1909, when the embryo bud was formed. A more serious and more permanent drawback I found to be the want of capital. They complain here that too much British capital is going west. Everything conducted on a large scale needs capital, and the whole situation was clearly explained to me by a leading orchardist in the Valley, who is a man of education and substance, and the argument was echoed by others who follow the industry.

“There is plenty of money in apples,” said he, “and we should be producing not one but thirty millions of barrels a year. The trouble is—and there is no need to disguise it—that while a number of orchards which have constantly been well cultivated, fertilised, and sprayed, always yield the usual crops of the finest fruit, the great bulk of our trees are partially starved and neglected. Far more trees have been grown than can be brought into fruit-bearing with the present skill, labour, and capital.”

To plant and grow trees is a simple and not expensive operation. With such soil as this and proper attention, little or no fertiliser is needed. But the continued production and marketing of the fruit involves much more skill, labour, and capital. Owners of orchards having the means of fertilising 100 to 150 trees, soon found it a difficult matter to grapple with an orchard area of 500 to 1000 trees. Such attempt often resulted in less actual returns than the small orchards had produced. It is simply a question of want of capital, as it would be in lumbering, mining, or fishing.

As a result a very considerable proportion of the apples now produced are discarded as unfit for packing.

“It is out of the question,” continued my informant, “for us to do business with a mere fraction of the capital necessary to produce a proper quantity of the wonderful crops of fruit which twenty or thirty years ago excited the admiration of European pomologists, and gave a world-wide fame to this district.”

In other words, the orchards are vastly greater, but too much of it is with wood, not fruit. However, be it said, that the number of trees now capable of bearing are healthy and vigorous. While orchards in other lands bear earlier, the trees are far less healthy and sooner decay. The Annapolis Valley trees reach a great size, and I have been shown many bearing fruit in profusion at the age of 100 and even 150 years. Labour and capital are the great need of the district.

Even when the yield of the fine fruit is large, there appears a disquieting drawback. Many were the complaints I heard of the greed of the carrier by steamer or railway, or of the middlemen, as if these were in a conspiracy to squeeze the last cent out of this industry. For apples for which the Covent Garden dealer receives 30s. a barrel, the grower has often to be content with 5s. I was told of one middleman who often gains 50,000 dollars in a season; while the last season three middlemen made an average profit of 40,000 dollars each.

I found here, as elsewhere in Nova Scotia, the existence of a deep-seated grievance not yet voiced abroad as it may be. Bitterly does the farmer and the fruit-grower complain of that tide of population promoted out of the Canadian public treasury, which has been not only sweeping in its current tens of thousands from the old country, but the many stalwart youth from the Maritime Provinces as well, whose strength is so much needed at home. The millions spent in Western development are as a thorn in the side of the Nova Scotian. Hence, therefore, the warmth of the welcome he extends to the Canadian Pacific Railway, which this year will formally invade “the Valley.” Yet the action of this great corporation is rather merely a symptom than any cause of that awakening prosperity and general accession of enterprise which I noted throughout this part of the Province.

With regard to fruit, it cannot be pointed out too often that Nova Scotia is nearer the British and other European markets than any other part of the continent. Some of the best fruit growing sections of Canada and the United States are near the Pacific Coast, and the eight or ten days necessary to bring their fruit to Atlantic ports, besides the extra freight charges, must certainly serve as a serious drawback to those States and Provinces from which New Scotland is free.

But not merely British but a great deal of Nova Scotia capital is invested elsewhere—particularly in the Far West. The East is always financing the West. They tell a story of a Kansas man on a visit to the East, who looked with characteristic scorn on its old-fashioned methods and remarked to a New England farmer: “You are surely foolish to stay here where you have to do your spring ploughing with a pickaxe and your planting with a shotgun. Why don’t you come out West? Not a stump, not a stone in sight; soil ten feet deep; crops of one year make you rich.” The New Englander listened with evident interest and then said: “I am holding six mortgages on Kansas farms, and if you fellows will just keep it up, and pay the interest, I will try and pull along very well where I am.”

Just how many mortgages on farms, how many title-deeds to fertile sections of land or valuable city lots in the rapidly developing West are to-day in Nova Scotian hands, and are a source of wealth to the ancient Province by the sea, it would be difficult to compute.

Not so long ago when the citizens of Winnipeg began to negotiate for land on a bend in the Red River in the immediate environs of the city for the purpose of a public park, it was found to be already in the possession of enterprising Nova Scotian capitalists. There are other instances.

In the Annapolis Valley the advent of the Canadian Pacific Railway is the great abiding topic of interest. Reports of its plans and movements are canvassed by all classes and all interests. It is said that the railway has decided to build four new steamers for a fast direct steamship service between Nova Scotia and Boston and New York. These vessels will be larger and faster than any at present engaged in the American or Canadian Atlantic Coast steamship traffic. This is one of the important developments that will follow the taking over of the Dominion Atlantic. These steamers, which will be able to make over 20 knots an hour, are to run between Yarmouth and Boston, Halifax and New York, and Halifax and Boston. There will also be a fast steamship service between Digby and Boston, and across the Bay of Fundy between St. John and Digby. The fleet of six steamers which the great corporation will take over with the Dominion Atlantic road will be placed on the subsidiary services.

Annapolis—The oldest Graveyard on the Continent.

Annapolis Royal—The home of Thomas Chandler Haliburton (“Sam Slick”).

The great corporation will probably build four big hotels in Nova Scotia—one at Yarmouth, one at Digby, one at Halifax, and one at Chester, a branch line from Windsor to Chester, only thirty miles, being contemplated to bring Chester into the Canadian Pacific Railway system.

It seems to be taken for granted that the railway authorities will make an organised effort to increase British immigration to this Province. They recognise that more population is needed, and they are going to do their part, so we are told, to bring in the people, and this with their publicity system ought not to be difficult.

One should not perhaps complain of the perpetual insistence upon lands in the making, of the “possibilities” of the virgin prairie, of the sun-kissed solitudes of the Golden West. But this is the Golden East, the long-settled, pleasant East, where the genius of history muses amidst moss-grown battlements and ancient tombstones. This is Canada—the first Canada—Acadia. Even Quebec yields precedence to Annapolis Royal, the “cradle” of the Canadian Dominion.

Rich indeed in historic and poetic association is Annapolis Royal. What romantic memories cluster about this little town, superbly set at the head of Annapolis Basin! Save Quebec no spot on the entire Continent has a more abiding interest. Three years before a white man’s hut had been built on the site of Quebec, a fort and village were to be found at Port Royal. On the waters of this basin was launched the first vessel built in North America; here, too, was the first mill fashioned. Also the problem of Canadian agriculture was here solved by the successful production of cereal and root crops.

Nor is this all. At old Port Royal was witnessed the first conversion to Christianity; here echoed the first notes of poetic song in Canada—the chanson composed by Lescarbot in honour of Champlain. And here flourished the first social club in the western hemisphere.

So we are carried back to the very beginnings of both French and British rule—to the days of De Monts, Champlain, and Poutrincourt. Founded in 1605, the vicissitudes of the fort and town (renamed in Queen Anne’s honour) have been numerous enough to fill a portly volume.[9]

[9] See Calnek and Savary’s History of Annapolis.

Port Royal once bade fair then to become a great city and Acadia a populous province. I have already told about Champlain and the “Order of a Good Time,” about Membertou and the hopes of the early French settlers. In 1607 De Monts’ charter was revoked by the King, and his friends would support his scheme with no more money. The Indians at Port Royal watched the French depart with sadness, promising to look after the fort and its belongings until the white men should return.

Champlain had chosen another field—the lands far inland on the St. Lawrence; but Poutrincourt resolved, after first dealing a blow at his enemies in France, to return to take deep root in the fertile Acadian soil.

In the spring of 1613 the Jesuits who, in the meantime, had through the influence of Madame De Guercheville got rights in Acadia, despatched an expedition under a courtier named La Saussaye, who, landed at Port Royal, took on board two priests left there, and then sailed on and founded a new colony at Mount Desert, on the coast of Maine.

All Acadia, as well as Canada, was given back to the French by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and King Louis and his Court were now inclined to abandon their policy of indifference and resume the work of colonising. In the spring of 1632 a nephew of Richelieu’s, Captain de Razilly, arrived in Acadia with a shipload of colonists, including artisans, farmers, several Capuchin friars, and some gentry. Amongst the latter were Nicholas Denys, and an extraordinary person, Charles de Menou, Chevalier de Charnisay, whom I commend as a really superb stage villain.

Young De la Tour, who considered himself the rightful lord of Acadia under De Monts’ charter,[10] was naturally jealous of Razilly, thinking the King ought to have appointed him Governor, instead of giving him the mere lordship over a limited territory. Even upon Razilly’s death in the following year, De la Tour’s hopes were frustrated. Razilly had ceded all his rights to Charnisay, his Deputy-Governor, whose first act was to remove from La Hêve to Port Royal, where he built a new fort.

[10] Ante, p. 18.

Now began the astonishing drama of Charnisay and De la Tour. The latter believed it to be Charnisay’s aim to dispossess him of those rights which he had acquired in Acadia by so much energy and sacrifice. The King tried to settle the dispute by fixing the limits of Charnisay’s government at the New England frontiers on the one hand, and at a line north from the Bay of Fundy on the other, westward of this line to be De la Tour’s province. Charnisay’s friends poisoned the King’s mind by alleging that De la Tour was a Huguenot in disguise, and orders were sent to his foe to arrest him and send him a prisoner to France. The young commander strengthened Fort la Tour and defied his enemy to do his worst.

Not until the spring of 1643 was the crafty Charnisay ready to wreak vengeance on the “traitor,” as he called De la Tour. With the ships and 500 men Richelieu had sent him, Charnisay led the assault. La Tour proved too strong, and to starve La Tour into capitulation was begun a close siege by sea and land. A long-expected ship, with provisions, merchandise, and gunpowder for Fort la Tour, was sighted off the coast, and De la Tour and his wife managed in an open boat to gain the decks.

They sailed for Boston, where, although they dared not give him direct assistance, the Puritan elders of that new town had no objection to striking a bargain, and at a good price permitted their visitor to hire four stout ships and seventy men. Sailing back with this force, De la Tour was able to make his enemy flee before him. The siege of his own fort being raised, he followed the foiled Charnisay to Port Royal, captured a shipload of rich furs, and would have taken Charnisay himself and his settlement, had it not been that the scruples of his Boston allies led to the making of a false peace. There could be no real peace between De la Tour and Charnisay. After many adventures Marie De la Tour was left in charge of their fort. Charnisay, constantly on the watch, fell upon her, but her defence was so vigorous that but for the action of a traitor he would never have taken it and her. He placed a common halter round this brave woman’s neck and forced her to witness the cold-blooded murder of her garrison. She pined away and died three weeks later at Port Royal. Her husband became for years a wanderer on the face of the earth, until he learnt of the drowning of Charnisay, when he returned and married the widow of his life-long foe. This is only half the drama: but the rest can be read in the history books.

Recently the good folk of Annapolis were very busy over preparations for the celebration of the bi-centenary of the Church of England in Canada. A shoal of bishops was imminent—amongst them the distinguished prelate who signs himself “Arthur F. Londin.” One prospective hostess desired my opinion on the propriety of ensconcing three bishops in one room—so full to overflowing would the old town be, and so limited the accommodation. Here was a problem in episcopal—nay, in doctrinal accommodation, not without bearing upon High, Low, and Broad bishops and their respective powers of bodily as well as spiritual adjustment, a problem I could only hint at and evade.

All this Anglican jubilation was to signalise the fact that a couple of centuries ago, with the English conquest, came the chaplain of the garrison to minister to the English newcomers. Here the worthy cleric, a certain Rev. John Harrison, of whom little is known, set up his altar and celebrated Holy Communion in English for the first time in the Province and in all the land destined later to become the Canadian Dominion. Not that these are the first anniversary fêtes the town has witnessed. In 1905 Annapolis Royal recalled its tercentenary, when a monument to De Monts was erected on a commanding site within the grounds of the dismantled fortress. Few vestiges now remain of the old masonry, but the site is in charge of Government, and is maintained in excellent condition as a public park.

Digby has grown into a flourishing summer resort from a fishing town which was famed far and near as the home of the “Digby chicken,” an article almost as famous as Yarmouth bloater or Bombay duck. Some seventy years ago Haliburton wrote in words often quoted:

“Digby is a charming little town. It is the Brighton of Nova Scotia, the resort of the valetudinarians of New Brunswick, who take refuge here from the unrelenting fogs, hopeless sterility, and calcareous waters of St. John. About as pretty a place this for business, said the Clockmaker, as I know of in this country. Digby is the only safe harbour from Blowmidown to Briar Island. Then there is that everlasting long river runnin away up from the wharfes here almost across to Minas Basin, bordered with dikes and interval, and backed up by good upland. A nice, dry, pleasant place for a town, with good water, good air, and the best herrin fishery in America, but it wants one thing to make it go ahead.” “And, pray, what is that?” said I, “for it appears to me to have every natural advantage that can be desired.” “It wants to be made a free port,” said he. “They ought to send a delegate to England about it; but the fact is they don’t understand diplomacy here nor the English either. They haven’t got no talents that way.”

Steamers now run between Boston and Digby, as well as between Digby and St. John.

Off The Pier At Digby.

Low Tide at Yarmouth.

A favourite rendezvous for tourists is the mountain, from which a good view of Annapolis Basin, extending away up to Annapolis Royal, and taking in Bear and Goat Islands and the Granville shore, is to be enjoyed. There are many interesting drives hereabouts, one passing a camp of Micmac Indians, who turn an honest penny by fashioning fancy baskets for the tourists and posing for amateur photographers.

The Shore Road winds for a couple of miles along the edge of the Basin and the base of Ben Lomond towards Digby Strait, otherwise known as “The Gut” or “The Gap,” the great natural wonder of the vicinity. It is a break in the North Mountain range less than a mile in width, and through it the tides of Fundy and the Annapolis Basin rush with irresistible force.

“The Gut” is the dominating feature of Digby scenery, and very popular with visitors. On the other and western side of the town is Digby Neck, a length strip of land which forms the seaward barrier of St. Mary’s Bay.

Bear River is the scene of an annual cherry carnival. It may be reached by sail-boat or steamer, the route lying part of the way across Annapolis Basin. The village lies four miles up the winding stream from the station, and is an important lumber centre, but chiefly famous for its cherries. This luscious fruit grows here in rich profusion, and long ago suggested the great summer event in Bear River, the annual cherry carnival, which is held in July. On carnival day hundreds of tourists and natives visit the pretty town to feast on the cherries and to witness a procession and aquatic sports.

The small but enterprising town of Weymouth boasts some shipyards and shipping. With its high river banks, its attractive residences, and its surrounding forests, Weymouth is a pretty place and popular with American tourists.

Sissibo Falls, some distance up the river, is one of the scenic features of the locality.

People who have read Longfellow’s “Evangeline” often ask what became of the Acadians—did they virtually disappear after the expulsion? Those of sympathetic temperament as well as the historical student would doubtless be glad to know if it is really the case that—

“Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile

Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.”

The Home of “Evangeline.”

At Evangeline’s Well.

To such, therefore, I am glad to state that scattered through the Maritime Provinces, Magdalen Islands, Gaspe, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Newfoundland, are close upon 150,000 descendants of the expelled Acadians. By far the most interesting Acadian settlement is that of Clare, in the extreme south-west of Nova Scotia. Here in a single continuous village, twelve miles long, dwells a primitive people, some 10,000 all told; wholly out of touch of the railway, and only to be seen on foot or by motor. Many travellers pass on the borders of this district without suspecting its existence, only marvelling perhaps why the railway line from Digby to Yarmouth describes such a curve inland at this part. The reason is this: When the railway was built the French priest in spiritual charge of the Clare Acadians took alarm for his flock, and by supplications and threats managed to get the line diverted, so as to cut off his parish between the railway and the sea. All the traveller sees, therefore, from the car windows is a stretch of untilled land and a succession of tree stumps. Were he to descend and push on a few miles he would come to the best road in the Province, hundreds of neat dwellings at Meteghan, Salmon River, and Church Point, and a cheerful, contented, ignorant people, living now as they have lived for a century and a half on the south shore of St. Mary’s Bay. Here,

“In the fisherman’s cot the wheel and the loom are still busy,

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,

And by the fire repeat Evangeline’s story.”

This latter is no poetical fiction. The story of the expulsion is really fresh in the hearts of all these peasants. The Roman Catholic establishment is very strong hereabouts, one of the largest churches in the Province being here; and they can also boast of a college and convent which, I believe, as is the case with other Roman Catholic institutions in the Province, is in receipt of funds from France.

Here once dwelt a priest whose deeds and whose example still live amongst the French Acadians of Clare. I talked with a man who well remembered the worthy Curé of Montaignan.

“Born and educated in France,” wrote Captain Moorsom, “M. Segoigne emigrated from that country when revolutionary suspicion threatened the lives of all whose virtues were inimical to the views of the ruling democrats, and for the last thirty years has devoted his attention exclusively to the welfare of these children of Acadia. Buried in this retreat from all the thoughts and habits of the polished world, he yet retains the urbanity of the old French school; or rather, I apprehend, possesses that natural excellence of disposition which gives to urbanity its intrinsic value. He is at once the priest, the lawyer, and the judge of his people; he has seen most of them rise up to manhood around him, or accompany his own decline in the vale of years; the unvarying steadiness of his conduct has gained equally their affection and respect; to him, therefore, it is that they apply in their mutual difficulties, from him they look for judgment to decide their little matters of dispute.”

In French-speaking Canada one frequently comes across the priest in this dignified, affectionate, paternal character. Denied real fatherhood he consecrates his life to his spiritual children; and the virtues of such men constitute the real strength of the Roman Catholic church in Canada, amongst a simple folk to whose minds, absorbed in labour and home life, doctrine and dialectics are as the scattering of chaff on the sands of the sea.

CHAPTER VIII

YARMOUTH AND SHIPBUILDING

An odour of sanctity, permeating current speech and manners, is characteristic of New Scotland. But religion is less narrow, less austere, than in New England. One familiar expression of the religious spirit is the grace before meat. Of these anteprandial orisons the privileged traveller, curious in such matters, might collect some interesting examples in the course of his travels through the Province, ranging from a long discourse, which threatened to be interminable, which I heard at Yarmouth, to a brief, almost ejaculatory, “Thank God!” from the lips of an old naval officer at Sydney. Of the devoutness of the people there can be no question. Upwards of eighty years ago a Scotsman, author of Letters from Nova Scotia, asked a well-informed native: “Which do you think the most numerous denomination of Christians in Nova Scotia?” “Oh,” was the reply, “the Presbyterians, then the Roman Catholics, then the Baptists, then the Methodists, then the Episcopalians.”

“Is the Baptist a numerous sect?”

“Yes, it is the most prosperous of all denominations. A few years ago the Baptists were a small and comparatively uninfluential body of men. Their teachers were ignorant of all knowledge except what their Bibles afforded, and their hearers were the poorest of our peasantry. But by recent events they have received a most important accession, not only of numbers, but also of wealth, talent, and education; and I will stake my sagacity upon the prophecy that, in a few years, the Baptist Church will be predominant in Nova Scotia. The Church of England may be established nominally, but the Baptist one will be predominant.”

That was in 1828. Let us see what has happened. According to the last census, as many as 1355 churches were found to be in this one Province, the proportions being as follow:—351 belonging to the Baptists, 270 to the Presbyterians, 254 to the Methodists, 198 to the Anglicans, and 156 to the Roman Catholics. The total seating capacity of these 1355 churches was 409,738, the Presbyterians heading the list with 100,337, the Baptists coming next with 91,290, then the Methodists with 71,731, the Roman Catholics with 70,974, and the Anglicans last with 47,426. The Congregationalists had only 16 churches, with a seating capacity of 4470. Among the various churches were 1005 Sunday Schools, with 66,680 scholars and 7750 teachers. In a general classification the people divided themselves as follows:—129,578 Roman Catholics, 106,381 Presbyterians, 83,233 Baptists, 66,107 Anglicans, 57,490 Methodists, 6572 Lutherans, 2938 Congregationalists, 1494 Adventists, 1412 Disciples, and 437 Jews, with several smaller groups of other denominations, leaving only 543 persons who did not return themselves as belonging to some religion.

So that with regard to the prophecy, although the Baptists have got more chapels, the Presbyterians can boast more devotees (a visit to the churches will confirm this), and, on the whole, the situation is little changed, save that the Roman Catholics have vastly increased, and now nominally may claim precedence over any other sect. While the Scots are mainly Presbyterians, there is a large number of Highland Roman Catholics, many in Cape Breton, many in Antigonish County. At Antigonish there is not only a Catholic University, but a Catholic newspaper, very well conducted. The denominational spirit is represented in the higher education, King’s College, Windsor, being Anglican; Acadia University, Wolfeville, a Baptist foundation; St. Francis Xavier University at Antigonish I have just mentioned; and the Presbyterians regard Dalhousie as their College, although it is undenominational. Indeed no denominational test is required of students at any save the Roman Catholic establishment. The Methodists resort to Mount Allison, just across the Provincial frontier.

Pulpit oratory is not, I fear, cultivated as an art in Nova Scotia. It is mostly, as one would expect it to be, of a hortatory character. I have even heard it alleged that the Nova Scotian parsons are a practical, canny class, rather than ripe in culture and sound in scholarship.

It is when we come to speak of education that we see the superiority of the system to that which has long prevailed in England, and which prevails in other countries. There is practically no illiterate element in the community. While it is unnecessary to say that some have received less education than others, one may look long before finding a man or woman unable to read and write. There is a great difference between the English and Nova Scotian systems—in Nova Scotia there is far more attention paid to the problem of education, and a greater ambition on the part of all classes to get beyond the elementary stage.

There are 2516 elementary schools in the Province, attended by 100,000 children under the charge of 2664 teachers (which gives an average of one teacher to the great majority of the schools), Education is free, both in the elementary schools, which are maintained by Government grants and very low local rates, and in the numerous high schools. A Provincial Normal School also offers free instruction for the training of teachers; and it may be said that, despite the fact that the Province offers many lucrative careers for a brainy young man, which makes it somewhat difficult to retain the highest talent for this profession, the standard of teaching in Nova Scotian schools is not inferior to the average on the North American continent. In fact, it is probably higher.

In various parts of the Province the old system of a group of isolated one-teacher schools is being gradually done away with, and “consolidated” schools are springing up. These, each having several teachers, are looked upon as an effective means of improving the education in county districts. Of these there are at present twenty-three. I have already described the Technical College lately established in the capital; while hand-work and household science are thoroughly taught the boys and girls at various centres.

Perhaps already the reader will have gathered that this peninsula and island on the other side of the Atlantic has everything, though but in embryo, of that which makes life pleasant, useful, and prosperous, save Art. History shows few communities of half a million people with fewer artistic perceptions than New Scotland, and I know of no Nova Scotia poet, Nova Scotia painter, Nova Scotia novelist, or Nova Scotia architect of international repute. To some of us—to a few of us—these are the things—these books, these pictures, these buildings, which make even little nations glorious; and of which they are prouder and the world more grateful than for the products of the field, the forge, the factory, and the counting-house.

But in this respect New Scotland resembles Old Scotland, whose slow advance and scanty achievements in art were once the wonder of Europe; and even in New England it took nearly two centuries of civilisation to throw off the Puritan yoke and allow the imagination to dwell in and the hand to create beauty.

Perhaps we who dwell in London, or Paris, or Rome, or even New York, are apt to exaggerate the value of these things. For here we see that a people may be generous, industrious, and contented without picture-galleries, without, indeed, ever having seen a first-rate picture, a first-rate building.

At Yarmouth, more than the wharves, more than the clipped hedges, than the fishermen, the electric street tramway, and the manifold evidence of prosperity, was I interested in two fragments of stone, comparable in their way to other celebrated archæological fragments in Europe and Asia which tell, and alone survive to tell, of long-past ages and vanished peoples. These are Runic stones of Yarmouth, lately reposing in private grounds, but now gathered into the safer and more accessible quarters of the Yarmouth Public Library. About the end of the eighteenth century a doctor named Fletcher discovered on the shore of the Bay of Fundy, opposite the town, a rock weighing about four hundred pounds, bearing an inscription which, when deciphered by a capable antiquarian, was found to read, “Harkussen men varu”—i.e., “Harku’s son addressed the men.”

In the expedition of Tharfinn Karlsefne in 1007, the name of Harku occurs in the list of those who accompanied him. In a note on the published saga we read that on this voyage “they came to a place where a firth penetrated far into the country; off the mouth of it was an island, past which there ran strong currents, which was also the case farther up the firth.”

Why such a memento should be left on this Norse visit to Markland cannot of course be explained, except to observe that memorials were often made or erected in localities where events had occurred, and in this instance the chieftain’s address may have here contained some notable pronouncement, or even commemorated the landing at that spot.

The second Runic stone was found so recently as 1897, lying face downwards, half buried in the mud on the west side of Yarmouth harbour, one mile from where the former stone had been found. It is very similar in size and shape to the Fletcher stone. Its face is as fair and as smooth as if dressed by a lapidary, and the inscription is in the same characters. Of course these two stones have excited great interest among scholars and antiquarians, and attempts have been made to dispute their Scandinavian origin, and to ascribe them to Red Indians, Semites, and even to the Japanese.

For example, one theorist, Dr. Campbell, who would have rejoiced in assisting the Pickwickians in elucidating the celebrated Stumps inscription, unhesitatingly finds the inscription to be Japanese. He says that in old Japanese this reads,
wahi deka Kuturade bushi goku.

Peacefully has gone out Kuturade, warrior eminent, or in other words: “Kuturadem, the eminent warrior, has died in peace.”

It may very naturally be asked how it is known that such is the reading, and how a Japanese inscription should be found in Nova Scotia? His answer to the first question is that “the identical writing in question has been found in Siberia, Mongolia, and Japan.... As for the appearance of old Japanese in America, I have known repeatedly that the Choctaw, the Cree or Maskoki, the Ksaw, and all their related tongues, are simply Japanese dialects.”

Kuturade was apparently an Iroquois, whose modern name would be Katorati, The Hunter.... And there is reason for thinking that this memorial might belong to the early historical period of French colonisation (early seventeenth century). We cannot tell when our Indians lost their ancient art of writing, which the Crees at least seem to have retained in the middle of the last century.

One reflects now upon the injustice, even the inhumanity, of the British Columbians in seeking to exclude the Japanese from their old home!

But there seems, apart from prejudice and the fantastic ingenuity of minds prepared to doubt anything from the spherical shape of the earth to the utility of the bi-cameral system in the British Constitution, no reason to doubt that these stones are really tangible evidence of the pre-Columbian discovery of Nova Scotia. Humboldt agreed with Carl Rafu in believing that in the year 1001 A.D. the Icelanders touched upon the North American coast, and that for nearly two centuries subsequently numerous visits were made by them and the Norwegians.

“Bjorn Heinolsen, an Icelander, was the first discoverer. Steering for Greenland he was driven to the south by tempestuous and unfavourable winds, and saw different parts of America, without, however, touching at any of them. Attracted by the report of this voyage, Leif, son of Eric, the discoverer of Greenland, fitted out a vessel to pursue the same adventure. He passed the coast visited by Bjorn, and steered south-west till he reached a strait between a large island and the mainland. Finding the country fertile and pleasant, he passed the winter near this place, and gave it the name of Vinland, from the wild vine growing there in great abundance.” According to Rafu, “Bjorn first saw land in the island of Nantucket, one degree south of Boston, then in Nova Scotia, then in Newfoundland.”

Accurate information respecting the former intercourse of the Northmen with the continent of North America reaches only as far as the middle of the fourteenth century. In the year 1349 a ship was sent from Greenland to Markland (Nova Scotia) to collect timber. Upon their return from Markland the ship was overtaken by storms and compelled to land at Straumfjord, in the west of Iceland. This is the last account of the Northmen in the New World preserved to us in the ancient Scandinavian writings.

Says Rafu: “The principal sources of information are the historical narratives of Eric the Red, Thorfinn Karlsefne, and Snorre Thorbrandson, probably written in Greenland itself as early as the twelfth century, partly by descendants of the settlers born in Vinland.” One account in particular seems to point very strongly to a visit to this part of Nova Scotia, and is as follows:

“Thorfinn Karlsefne, in 1007, in one ship, and Birone Grimolfsen in another ship, left Greenland for Vinland (Massachusetts). They had a hundred and sixty men, and took all kinds of live stock, intending to establish a colony. They sailed southerly and found Helluland (Newfoundland), where there were many foxes. They again sailed southerly and found Markland (Nova Scotia), overgrown with wood. They continued south-westerly a long time, having the land to starboard, passing long beaches, and deserts and sands, and came to a land indented with inlets. They landed and explored the country, finding grapes and some ears of wheat, which grew wild. They continued their course until they came to a place where a frith penetrated far into the country. Off the mouth of it was an island, past which there ran strong currents, which was also the case further up the frith, &c.”

The long beaches and deserts of sand referred to above, seemingly refer to those stretching along the coast line from Hawk Point, Cape Island, in a north-easterly direction, one of which makes a fine race-course, at least six miles long.

In the distance, across Barrington Passage, may be seen stretches of sandy hills not less than 40 feet high. These are visible at a great distance from seaward. The reference, “they came to a place,” with the other geographical details, made a strong case for Yarmouth as the landing place of old Thorfinn.

It would be surprising if in a country with such a line of sea-coast as Nova Scotia, with adjacent forests of every kind of hard and soft woods, and with a population largely depending upon fishing, shipbuilding should not early have been begun.

At Yarmouth, about 1761, with the building of a small schooner, christened the James, of about 25 tons burden, the industry had its birth. From the time of the launching of this modest craft until that of the County of Yarmouth, a full rigged ship of 2154 tons, in 1886, there is seen a steady development of the shipbuilding industry, in which the south-western portion of the Province bore the leading part.

In 1765 there were said to be in Queen’s County alone seventeen sail of fishing schooners, all of native construction. Other portions of the southern coast were not far behind. Trade with the West Indies soon became important, and before the close of the eighteenth century larger schooners and brigantines were built, running to upwards of one hundred tons.

Somewhat later the export of timber from the various ports along the Northumberland Strait induced shipbuilding on a very much larger scale. Soon after the Highlanders came to Pictou they turned their attention to the exports of timber in home-built vessels, and many of these of considerable burden were built.[11]

[11] For this information I am indebted, inter alia, to an admirable little paper by Mr. R. M. M’Gregor, M.P.P.

This time not merely Yarmouth, and Shelburne, and Liverpool, and Pictou, but all New Scotland, owned an important fleet of sailing ships, but still small in number compared with the veritable navy they were to own and be enriched by within a few years.

The forty years, from 1840 to 1880, saw the palmiest days of this great industry. One still hears tales of the mighty Captain George M’Kenzie of New Glasgow, to whom more than to any one man Nova Scotia owed the great impetus that was given during this period to shipbuilding. Along the ports of the Northumberland Strait, at least, this worthy mariner and builder, full of energy and genius, did more than any one else to improve the character of the ships built. He twice represented the County of Pictou in the Legislature, and, indeed, his shipbuilding ventures are referred to by his friend, Joseph Howe, in the latter’s famous speech on the “Unification of the Empire.”

In 1850 Captain M’Kenzie was presented with a service of plate by the merchants of Glasgow on the occasion of the arrival of one of his 1500 ton ships, the Hamilton Campbell Kidston, which was the largest vessel that up to that time had ascended the Clyde.

Along the Northumberland Strait, Pictou, New Glasgow, Tatamagouche, River John, and Merigomish, were all noted for their shipbuilding. The Crimean War gave a decided impetus to the industry, and about this time there were said to be in New Glasgow alone fourteen square-rigged vessels built in one year. The coal trade from Pictou to the United States was also a stimulus.

In the west, Yarmouth, Windsor, Hantsport, Maitland, Londonderry, and other Bay of Fundy ports were centres for shipbuilding. But, indeed, there were scarcely any harbours or rivers of note, both in the mainland and parts of the Island of Cape Breton, that did not play a greater or less part in this great industry.

A little over a quarter of a century ago there were registered in Nova Scotia 3025 vessels, with a tonnage of 558,911 tons, or about one and a quarter tons of shipping per capita of the population, a larger holding than any other country in the world, not even excepting those of Northern Europe.

The fleet of Yarmouth alone covered every ocean, and represented the largest tonnage per capita of any port in the world. You saw Yarmouth ships in Helsingfors and Monte Video.

The building and rigging of such a fleet of course gave lucrative employment to a vast army of men. Loggers, choppers, shipwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, caulkers, riggers, were employed full time at good wages. But freights fell lower and lower. Conditions changed in the carrying trade, and at Yarmouth I gathered that the prosperous days of wooden sailing vessels reached their zenith in 1879, when they had to give way to iron sailing ships, these again to be replaced by the tramp steamer which has invaded every sea, lake, and river formerly sailed by the white-winged fleet.

And so the immense fleet of Yarmouth vanished. Some of its owners were ruined, and others retired with a more than comfortable competence. A few capitalists foresaw the coming change—the incoming of steam—and established other marine industries.

Nova Scotia ceased not only to be a shipbuilding, but also to be a ship-owning and ship-operating country.

But in consequence of the recent revival of the lumber trade to America and to the Southern Continent, there has come the building of a large number of smaller vessels in the Bay of Fundy ports. Three-masted schooners, of some 300 and 400 tons, have been launched, while the demand for smaller vessels for the West India trade has never entirely ceased, and such are being launched every year from Shelburne and other ports of the southern shore. From the same portion of the Province, and in particular from the County of Lunenburg, where the fishing industry is pursued vigorously, fishing vessels are being constantly built.

In quality of construction, these Nova Scotia built boats have obtained an enviable reputation, and it would seem as if it would be many years before the wooden shipbuilding industry will be entirely lost to the Province. Something has indeed been done in the way of the construction of small steam boats, and nearly all the coastal steam packets are home-built.

Yet, when the big wooden ships vanished, Yarmouth captains, as factors in the world’s mercantile marine, remained. Their experience and reputation insured them employment elsewhere. After these vessels had become obsolete, and were forced from the trade, these tried fellows were eagerly sought for by English and Scotch shipping firms, as skilled mariners and of unquestionable integrity. To-day many important ships in America and Britain are commanded by Nova Scotians, and Yarmuthians in particular.

Wooden shipbuilding on a grand scale being a thing of the past, if the sea-loving New Scotlanders are to become again a race of shipbuilders and sailors, it must be in steel bottoms. Already a beginning has been made in a small way. Several small steel steamers have been built in the town of New Glasgow, and one has lately been launched at Yarmouth.

At the former place was launched last year the three-master steel schooner James William, of about 500 tons register. As a swift sailer, and more particularly as a good carrier, this vessel has more than exceeded the expectations of her builders. The beginning so auspiciously made is full of promise for the future, and it may well be said that within the next few years Nova Scotia may come back to her own, and once more take her place under newer conditions as a great shipbuilding country.

Many of the Yarmouth fishermen repair to Gloucester in the spring, and go to the Banks in vessels from that port. These do well as a rule, and in November troop home to enjoy the fruits of their labours. There are no Bank fishermen out of Yarmouth ports nowadays, and those who do not go out of Gloucester remain at home and conduct fishing operations “off shore.” Very often fish are scarce when bait is plentiful, and vice versa, and oftentimes during the early fall the weather is so rough that operations are perforce suspended for days at a time.

Of late, however, I was informed, large schools of herrings have struck in along the shores, and big catches have been made, so big in fact that at some points schooner loads have been shipped to the American market.

The Argylls strongly suggest the scenery of the Scottish Highlands, and must have done so to the Western Highlanders who first settled the place. It is the centre of a fine fishing and hunting country. There is a remarkably curious natural phenomena at the “Narrows”; for six hours the waters rush madly up stream, and for the next six tumble as rapidly down again. The island-studded waters provide fine duck shooting, and Lobster Bay is a famous spot for these crustaceans.

As for Pubnico, it claims to be the very oldest French Acadian settlement, being planted by D’Entremont in 1650, and is still peopled by that race. The harbour is a beautiful sheet of land-locked water, where exceptionally safe bathing and boating may be had. Many little old-fashioned villages are close at hand, and are an object lesson in early French habits and customs.

Barrington was described to me as a “homey” little place, where visitors have delightfully jolly candy-pulls, clambakes, and lobster-roasts nightly around roaring bonfires on the beach.

I had long wanted to see Cape Sable Island. I was told that it had enjoyed an unwonted prosperity during the last few years. The island is seven miles long and from two to three miles across, with a steam ferry plying to Barrington Passage. It is famous for its splendid beaches, Hawk and Stoney Island, and all sorts of shore and sea birds are found here in abundance, and furnish good sport.

The first settlement appears to have been made about 1786 by Michael Swim, who had previously migrated from New York to Shelburne. Being a man of some education, he was long known as the Clerk of the Island, and hence, according to one tradition, the name Clark’s Harbour.

It is well worth while leaving the railway at Barrington and traverse nine miles towards the coast to see the relics of Fort St. Louis, now called Port La Tour. Here was the scene of one of the most romantic episodes in the history of Acadia. In 1627 the gallant young Charles de la Tour was entrenched here. Hearing of the English plan to drive the French from Acadia, and strong in his alliance with the Micmacs, he wrote Louis XIII. asking to be appointed commandant of all the coasts of Acadia. His father, Claude de la Tour, it will be remembered, bore the letter, and on the way back was captured by Sir David Kirke, and taken to England.[12] Here he renounced his loyalty to the French king, married an English lady, was made a baronet of Nova Scotia, and received a large grant in Acadia for himself and his son. Sir Claude then sailed with his wife and an escort of two warships to where his son Charles was holding the last fort in Acadia.

[12] See ante, p. 19.

Meanwhile the youthful French hero, lord of Acadia under Poutrincourt’s charter, knew nothing of his good fortune or of these paternal proceedings. When Sir Claude reached his destination here at Fort St. Louis, he demanded an interview with his son, who was astonished to find his father in command of an English ship and wearing the dress of an English admiral. Sir Claude related the flattering reception he had met with in London, and the honours that had been heaped upon him.

Instead of showing joy, Charles was thunderstruck. He replied haughtily that “if those who sent you on this errand think me capable of betraying my country, even at the solicitation of a parent, they have greatly mistaken me. I am not disposed to purchase the honours now offered me by committing a crime. I do not undervalue the proffer of the King of England; but the Prince in whose service I am is quite able to reward me; and whether he does so or not, the inward consciousness of my fidelity to him will be in itself a recompense to me. The King of France has confided the defence of this place to me. I shall maintain it, if attacked, till my latest breath.”

In these circumstances Sir Claude thought to bring the ungrateful youth to reason by force. Thrice he landed his soldiers and sailors and tried to storm Fort St. Louis, but in vain. His men were repulsed, and soon became disgusted with the whole enterprise.

Eventually they all repaired to Port Royal and took up settlement with the other Scotch colonists there. It might be supposed that in this extremity the young English girl to whom Sir Claude had promised power and luxury on his Nova Scotian estates would now desire to return to England; but she refused.

“I have shared your prosperity, Sir Claude,” she said, “I will now share your evil fortunes.” And evil they proved.

For in 1632, after the shameful treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, by which Canada and Nova Scotia were ceded back to France by King Charles I., Sir Claude, “between the devil and the deep sea,” was fain at last to throw himself on the mercy of his son, who established the couple and their suite in comfort, some distance from the fort, and there he remained for some time, until King Charles found employment for him elsewhere in British Dominions.

I have related elsewhere something of the drama of the young La Tours, of the heroism of the wife when besieged by the villain Charnisay, of her death, of the long exile of her husband, and his marriage with the widow of his enemy.

Upon such a spot one could hardly look unmoved; but explore as one might, all trace of the La Tours seems to have vanished from off the earth, save that on the page of history and their names on the map.

In the old days the Acadians were settled in considerable numbers about Barrington. At the time of their expulsion, a flourishing settlement, with stone church and grist mill, was utterly destroyed, the cattle burnt, and the inhabitants deported to Boston and Halifax. Some few returned afterwards to Cape Sable and received grants in Pubnico, where they contributed to the present thrifty settlement.

In 1761-63, some eighty families from Nantucket and Cape Cod settled in Barrington, but about half of them, disappointed in their hope of making this a whaling station, soon returned; and in 1767 the township of Barrington, including Cape Sable Island, was granted to a body of one hundred and two New Englanders.

Barrington is a quiet and picturesque little town, to which a goodly number of summer visitors resort. It is easy of access, being on the railway, and a point of call for the smaller steamers from Yarmouth and Clark’s Harbour. I am not sure whether it is not worth mentioning, but Barrington is one of the few small towns in New Scotland whose streets are lighted by oil lamps set upon old-fashioned lamp-posts. The posts were brought from Boston many years ago.

Between Barrington and Shelburne, scattered for some twenty-seven miles inland, lie what are called the Clyde settlements. The river Clyde is a really beautiful stream, and rich in salmon and trout. The railway station is at Port Clyde, near its mouth, and Clyde River settlement is two and a half miles further up. Goose Lake, Goose Creek, and Bower’s Lake are favourite haunts of trout fishers.

Seventeen miles further up the river is Middle Clyde, and Upper Clyde still another ten—both pretty villages, within easy reach of lake and river fishing. This is a good moose ground, partridge and rabbits are plentiful, and the skilled hunter may add to his bag a brace of wild cat or an occasional bear.

CHAPTER IX

SHELBURNE AND THE LOYALISTS

There are, apart from the capital, five famous historical shrines in New Scotland—Annapolis Royal, Louisbourg, Grand Pré, Fort Lawrence, and Shelburne. How many English readers know anything of Shelburne? How many have ever so much as heard the name? And yet, once, a century and a quarter ago, the uprising of this town, in a single night as it were, the sufferings of the 12,000 American Loyalist refugees who had landed there to found it, evoked a widespread interest. The tale of the Loyalists of Shelburne rang through the hall at Westminster, and in the Colonial Assemblies. It was told in the closet of the King, and was set forth in the newspapers; and what a story it was! English history scarce can show its parallel. It is the tale of the exiled Huguenots, but the impelling motive was not loyalty to a form of faith, but to an earthly sovereign and a flag. How much fanaticism, how much bigotry, is interwoven with religious sacrifice! We may respect, but we cannot love the cold and narrow minds who, whether called Protestant, or Catholic, or Puritan, fled from their country because of the doctrine they disliked or an article they distrusted, who were ready to put seas of salt water between them and a rubric, or to risk seas of human blood to escape the sight of a chasuble or the necessity for a genuflexion.

But personal loyalty one understands—the love for one’s flag and one’s own people strikes a responsive chord in warm bosoms. The Puritans, I fear, who founded New England, were but indifferent patriots. The cry of “St. George and Merry England!” would amongst them have proved a feeble tocsin.

The Loyalists were, as I have said, the best class in America, comprising the most notable judges, the most eminent lawyers, most cultured clergy, most distinguished physicians, most educated and refined of the people north and south. Long before the war broke out, the Boston mobs had persecuted them for their political professions. Any official or merchant sympathising with the British Army or British Government of the day was a target for their insolence. They set Governor Hutchinson’s mansion in flames; sheriffs and judges were mobbed, feeble old men were driven into the woods, and innocent women insulted. With the progress of the war, the violence of the revolutionists increased in intensity. Thousands sought safety with the King’s troops; many others armed themselves and fought valiantly for the King and the British connection. To be suspected of being a Loyalist was to have one’s estate confiscated, and even to be punished with death.

But what the Loyalists suffered during the war, when the issue of the contest was doubtful, was nothing to what they had to endure after 1783.

The British Empire had been badly served by the officers England had sent out to America. If Wolfe had lived to direct her armies, the end might have been different; but mismanagement reigned, and such Generals as Gage, Burgoyne, and Cornwallis, planned feebly and fought half-heartedly. If there was any doubt as to the result, that doubt was speedily set at rest when England’s hereditary enemy, France, espoused the cause of the American insurgents. French money, ships, and men poured into America. The Americans fought with French muskets, they were clad in French clothing, and they were paid with gold which the impoverished people of France could ill spare. Great is the debt America owes to the French King and statesmen of that time.[13]

[13] The Romance of Canada, by Beckles Willson, 1907.

With the conclusion of the war, the men who had stood staunch and faithful to the United Empire were destined to undergo a further ordeal. As “traitors” they were pursued through the streets; their families were driven into the woods; they were shot down remorselessly. Rows of them were hung up like felons. At the battle of King’s Mountain, in North Carolina, ten of the prisoners, men of character and influence, were hanged in cold blood. There were many instances of ferocious executions upon prisoners.

Under the Treaty of 1783 they had been abandoned by the Mother Country to the tender mercies of the American conquerors.

“When I consider the case of the Loyalists,” said Wilberforce in Parliament, “I confess I there feel myself conquered; I there see my country humiliated; I there see her at the feet of America!” “A peace founded on the sacrifice of these unhappy subjects,” declared another, “must be accursed in the sight of God and man.”[14]

[14] “I trust you will agree with me that a due and generous attention ought to be shown to those who have relinquished their property or their possessions from motives of loyalty to me, or attachment to the Mother Country.”—King’s Speech, 1783.

Nova Scotia proper, during the war, had not been molested, and to it the Loyalists now turned in large numbers as a refuge under the flag. Acadia was to be the Canaan of the Loyalists.

Somewhere—for most of them knew it but vaguely—in that northern land, in the virgin forests of pine, and maple, and hemlock, in the solitudes of seashore, lake, and river, which no man of English blood had yet seen, was the refuge the Loyalists sought.

In November 1783, New York was evacuated by the King’s troops under Sir Guy Carlton. He carried with him all the stores belonging to the Crown, all baggage and artillery, and he was accompanied by 40,000 men, women, and children. New York was the stronghold of the Loyalists; Pennsylvania had been equally divided between Loyalists and Revolutionists; there were more Loyalists in Virginia than adherents of Congress; and Georgia had at least three Loyalists for every rebel. Thousands had perished; thousands had sought refuge in England; thousands had recanted. Fifty thousand now set out with their wives and children and such belongings as were left to them to traverse the hundreds of miles which lay between them and their new homesteads in Canada. These United Empire Loyalists were the fathers of English Canada.

There are few tales which history has to tell so stirring and so noble as the exodus of the Loyalists. Most of them had been brought up in comfort and even luxury; their women were tenderly nurtured and unaccustomed to hardship. But one spirit animated them all; one hope fired all their bosoms; one faith drove them out of the American Republic into the wilderness.

The exiles were divided into two main streams, one moving eastward to Nova Scotia and the country where, a century and a half before, Poutrincourt and La Tour had fought and flourished. The other moved westward to the region north of Lake Ontario. Those who followed the eastern course landed at the mouth of the St. John River, New Brunswick, on the 18th May 1783, a day still celebrated in the city of St. John’s. They took up settlements in the meadows of the Bay of Fundy, and at Port Rasoir in Nova Scotia. There, like the city in the Arabian tale, there sprang up, as if by magic, the town of Shelburne, with 12,000 inhabitants, where yesterday had been but solitude.

“No one will know because none has told all that these brave pioneers underwent for their devotion and fidelity. You will see to-day on the outskirts of the older settlements little mounds, moss-covered tombstones which record the last resting places of the forefathers of the hamlet. They do not tell you of the brave hearts laid low by hunger and exposure, of the girlish forms wasted away, of the babes and little children who perished for want of proper food and raiment. They have nothing to tell of the courageous high-minded mothers, wives, and daughters, who bore themselves as bravely as men, complaining never, toiling with the men in the fields, banishing all regrets for the life they might have led had they sacrificed their loyalty.... No great monument is raised to their memory; none is needed; it is enshrined for ever in the hearts of every Canadian and of every one who admires fidelity to principle, devotion, and self-sacrifice.”[15]

[15] Romance of Canada, p. 260.

In the spring of 1783 a fleet of eighteen large ships and several small vessels, convoyed by two warships, brought 471 Loyalist families from New York to a fine harbour called Port Roseway (Rasoir), where the redoubtable Colonel M’Nutt had a few years before intended to build the city of New Jerusalem. There, too,

The breaking wave dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast;

but the shiploads of Americans, whose cause of King and United Empire had been lost, hoped they were destined to a propitious spot where they could begin their fortunes anew. When these Loyalists, who called themselves “True Blues,” landed, what a picture was then presented!

“As soon as we had set up a kind of tent we knelt down, my wife and I and our two boys, and kissed the dear ground and thanked God that the flag of England floated there, and resolved that we would work with the rest to become again happy and prosperous.”

And the spirit which animated the bosom of worthy Jonathan Beecher and his flock dwelt with nearly all of those five thousand foregathered on the sloping shore of this beautiful harbour. Lanterns and torches flamed that night; laughter and tears intermingled. Hundreds of forms moved about restlessly. There was singing of hymns, trolling of glees, and toasting of His Majesty and Governor Parr. Trunks, and packing-cases, and valises were opened. A table was brought from the ship, and round it sat a number of ladies in silk dresses and powdered hair. A few desired a dance as an outlet for their tumultuous thoughts; and so there in the moonlight the young, the hopeful, the light-hearted, that all their recent sufferings could not wholly dismay, danced a quadrille—danced it out of sheer high spirits, and only separated at dawn.

And the woods behind a group of swarthy Micmacs and their squaws came to overpeer and wonder at the spectacle—thinking a host of mad folk had been blown across the Big Drink. Mad indeed they were—mad for joy—mad in their hopes and schemes—mad in their utter improvidence.

Other immigrants followed, and within a short time 16,000 inhabitants were here. A fort was built, troops were stationed, and warships continually paraded the harbour; and much work was done, particularly wharf and road building. In 1788 the exports comprised 13,151 quintals dry cod, 4193 casks of pickled fish, 61 casks of smoked salmon, 149 barrels fish oil, and 14,793 gallons sperm oil, During the year Prince William Henry (afterwards William IV.) visited the town, a ball being given in his honour. Yet even then Shelburne was existing on an artificial basis. For the first three years 9000 of the “True Blues” (or Blue Noses) drew rations from the British Government, and demoralisation set in. Then came a great storm in 1798 which wiped out wharves and shipping; other calamities followed, and by 1818 the population had dwindled to 300 souls.

The old Governor’s House, Shelburne.

As I walked through the ghost of that old Shelburne, all the scenes and events of the next few weeks, months and years, as I had once read of them in Colonial records and in old journals and letters, came back to me, and I could in my mind’s eye reconstruct it all. This wide street, overgrown now with grass, running up from the harbour, was King Street; this other was Queen Street; this other Princes Street. For months carpenters and masons were busy hewing timber, hammering and hoisting, digging and mortaring. Rows after rows of houses appeared, and in a short time Shelburne, but yesterday a wilderness, presented all the appearance of a flourishing town. Some of the houses are still standing. There is the Governor’s house, a stately edifice enough, of that old Colonial pattern that the modern builder seems to have lost the recipe for making. It stands not far from the water’s edge, and is reached by a flight of steep steps. Its face is half hid by Virginia creeper. An old, old man came to the door and bade me enter. His name is Frith, and he is a carpenter by trade. He has long lived in the old house, and his father could remember the landing of the Loyalists. The house is panelled throughout, and there are fine and spacious fireplaces and chimney-pieces. Here was the social centre of Shelburne in its prime.

The fine dwellings dropped to pieces, or were burnt, cattle and sheep might graze in the streets, the fort was dismantled. A few clung, however, to Shelburne, and their descendants are to-day witnessing the revival of the town’s fortunes.

Lockeport is charmingly situated on an island, connected with the mainland at its nearest point by a substantial iron bridge. To the left of the island the bay runs inland for several miles; to the right a low shielding promontory juts out to sea. The harbour is safe and free from squalls, affording splendid opportunities for yachting. The bathing beach, a glistening crescent of hard, white sand, extends for a mile or more. It is the general playground and fashionable promenade of the town.

Good salmon and trout streams are easily accessible. The Jordan River, back on the road to Shelburne, is especially famous for hard fighting salmon and gamy trout. Feathered game are in abundance. The extensive moose country of the Sable River district is within easy reach, and moose are plentiful enough for those who know the way of the woods. For black duck and wild geese the vicinities of Port Jolie, Port L’Herbert, and Jones Harbour enjoy great local repute.

The district about Lockeport was for a long time known as Ragged Islands. Just a century and a half ago Dr. Jonathan Locke, of Chilmark, Mass., and Josiah Churchill came here, selecting with great discrimination the spot best situated with regard to the fishing grounds.

Throughout the war of the Revolution the settlers of Lockeport, unlike their neighbours at Liverpool, seem to have kept out of active hostilities, though their sympathies were strongly American. Their feelings were very much hurt, therefore, when in 1779 some American privateers came ashore and looted their houses, and an indignant protest, signed by Jonathan Locke and several others, is still to be found in the archives of Massachusetts. After reciting how the scoundrels took from one house “nineteen quintals of codfish, four barrels of salt, three salmon nets, some cheese, and a great many other things,” this memorial continues:

“These things are very surprising that we in this harbour have done so much for America, that we have helped three or four hundred prisoners up along to America, and given part of our living to them, and have concealed privateers and prizes too from the British cruisers in this harbour. All this done for America, and if this be the way we are to be paid, I desire to see no more of you without you come in another manner.”

During the war of 1812 some excitement was caused by the approach of a hostile vessel, at a time when most of the men were away. The women and children were promptly lined up on the bluff, with red coats and broomsticks to lend a martial appearance, while some of the women marched up and down with a drum, and shots were fired with the available muskets and fowling pieces. The enemy made good their escape.

On a burning July day I stood on the seashore and looked out on Port Mouton (pronounced Ma-toon), and in my mind’s eye saw two ghosts. One was of the immortal sheep which fell over the taffrail of De Monts’s ship three centuries ago; the other was the ghost of the town of Guysborough. Do not be misled, dear reader; there is still a Guysborough in New Scotland; but it is another place, hundreds of miles away, which has clothed itself, so to speak, with the name of its deceased predecessor as with a garment. That Guysborough is at Chedabucto Bay, and flourishes; this Guysborough was at Port Mouton, and is dead more than a century and a quarter.

Settled by pioneers of Massachusetts stock was Liverpool. I was told that there are even more descendants of the original Pilgrim Fathers in this little New Liverpool on the southern shore of New Scotland, in proportion to the population, than in Massachusetts itself. A warrant to survey a township was granted in 1759 by the Governor of Nova Scotia to a committee representing some one hundred and forty-two proprietors, all of New England, and many of them direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims.

But a century and a half before this, in 1604, Sieur de Monts had entered the harbour and named it Port Rossignol, after a certain captain whom he found unwittingly poaching on his preserves, and whose vessel he confiscated. This was on the famous voyage that led to the selection of Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) as the best site for a settlement.

Later Port Rossignol formed part of La Tour’s La Héve, under the protection of the fort there; and, though the fisheries were considered of some importance, the settlements were small and by no means permanent.

At the period when the hardy ancestors of the present inhabitants of Liverpool fixed on this as a site for settlement, the peninsula was almost a solitude. There were a few unfortunate Acadians who had made their homes with the Indians, and the Annapolis valley was from end to end a scene of desolation, extending for many miles to the eastward and westward. There were two small military posts, one at Annapolis and a second at Windsor. Halifax had only been founded about ten years. At Lunenburg some unfortunate Germans had been making a desperate struggle for about six years.[16]

[16] D. R. Jack, Acadiensis.

Hither came in 1760 a number of New England families attracted by the well-sheltered haven, the fine river, the salmon fishing, and also, I think, already conscious of the spirit of insubordination and unrest in the older colonies they quitted. Those early immigrants endured during the first few seasons severe privations, one winter subsisting almost wholly upon wild rabbits. But others came to join them, until, in a couple of years, they numbered eighty families. They continued to thrive; the settlement was formed into a township of 100,000 acres, and divided amongst them into 200 shares. A century ago the population was close upon 1000 souls.

During the American Revolution the American privateers proved a constant source of annoyance and actual damage, and there is ample proof that the Liverpudlians were at least justified in retaliating in kind. In 1779 several of them obtained Letters of Marque from the British Government, with assistance for arming vessels, and a grant for a block-house and barracks.

Smuggling, too, was a popular pursuit; one citizen in 1782 is recorded as having turned informer, and shortly afterwards the Government offered a reward of £20 for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons who had cut off the said citizen’s ears.

Throughout the Revolutionary War, the subsequent strife between England, and France, and Spain, and the later war with America, Liverpool privateers are frequently heard of. Many a prize was brought in triumph into Liverpool Harbour, and the little town emerged richer and more prosperous than before. I have read somewhere that the great fortune of the Hon. Enos Collins, long reputed the richest man in the province, and himself Liverpool born, though trading from Halifax, was founded on the winnings of his privateer captains.[17]

[17] “Those were busy times in the town,” writes Mr. Charles Warman, of Liverpool. “Sailors and ship’s carpenters abounded. Nightly they would meet in some public-house, and many tales of interesting adventures were told, while often shipmates who had been separated for years, and had been to all parts of the globe, would come together and be joyful.

“Then vessels often went below the bar to complete loading—a thing practically unknown to-day, owing to the deepening of the channel—when the lumber would be rafted to them. If an easterly gale came upon them they had to hoist anchor and put back to the wharves. Occasionally from the storm there was the loss of ship and crew. As an instance, the barques Wave and Kate Campbell, that had lain below for some days completing cargoes, were caught and piled up, one near Sandy Cove, the other upon the Fort—both total wrecks, neither having ever been to sea. At that time a schooner from Newfoundland, bound west, had sought shelter here, and she also went ashore. Every one of its sailors was flung lifeless upon the beach. The loss of any craft to-day in the harbour is a rare occurrence.”

Haliburton, in 1829, wrote: “Liverpool is the best built town in Nova Scotia. The houses are substantially good and well painted, and there is an air of regularity and neatness in the place which distinguishes it from every other town in this province.”

Unhappily, lack of railway communication kept the town back, but within the past few years Liverpool is with great strides overtaking competitors. There are now a fine water and electric light service, first-class hotels, electric marine slip and shipyards, a foundry, machine-shop, and corn-mill.

The river Mersey is a rapid stream with numerous falls for nineteen and one-half miles from “Indian Garden” to Liverpool. A lake system of fifty square miles supplies the river, and when properly developed will make Milton and Liverpool cheap and popular manufacturing centres.

The canoe trip through the lakes and rivers hereabouts is well worth taking. The grounds of the old fort are now a public park. But the old block-house has vanished here as it has from Annapolis, and some forty cannon of early George III. type are used for street corner posts.

With its lighthouse and cannon, turf, seats, and shade, and magnificent outlook over the harbour, Liverpool Fort is a most agreeable lounging place, and a romantic terminus to Liverpool’s street of bright shops, public buildings, and neat residences. The Fort was actually captured in 1780 by an unexpected night attack led by a Yankee named Benjamin Cole. “The townsmen,” one reads, “were inclined to think resistance useless, but Colonel Simeon Perkins (the ‘man of the time’ in Liverpool) arranged for the capture of Cole on his way through the town, and with him safely in hand was enabled to dictate to the enemy most favourable terms of redress, capitulation, and retreat. So ended the Siege of Liverpool.”

Close to the Fort is a picturesque little cove, where shipbuilding is still carried on, and where a group of old houses still remain, including the Customs House.

To-day, besides the fishery, the great resource of the town is the sawing and export of timber, surrounded as it is by almost inexhaustible forests. Large quantities of wood-pulp are also produced here. Altogether Liverpool to-day is a busy, pleasant little town, whose prosperity and whose prospects have been vastly increased by the advent of the Halifax and South-Western Railway a few years ago.

Connected with the lumber industry, the prominence now attained by pulp-wood and wood-pulp deserves a word. Owing to the increased demand made by the paper mills of America for raw materials, and the decreasing supply of home-grown wood, for the year ending 30th June 1910, the States imported from Canada 897,226 cords of pulp-wood, valued at $5,660,542.00, and of mechanical, chemical, bleached, and unbleached wood-pulp to the value of $4,224,500.00, an importation from Canada of pulp-wood and wood-pulp of $9,885,042.00, as against a total importation of $5000 in 1880.

The total quantity of pulp-wood consumed by the 253 paper mills of the States during 1910 was 4,002,000 cords, valued at $34,478,000.00, of which, according to the figures given above, Canada furnished more than one-fifth in quantity and one-sixth in value.

Nova Scotia, as well as New Brunswick, possesses large pulp-wood areas and excellent water-power; would it not seem that an attractive field was open either to Nova Scotian or British capitalists?

The wise policy of the Government in withdrawing from sale the remaining Crown Lands of the Province, estimated at about one and one half millions of acres, should, under proper regulations, give the country a valuable reserve.[18]

In addition to these shipments, which were composed largely of deal, there were exports of laths, shingles, piling, and some square timber hardwood, together with the quantity used locally, which of course largely augmented the value of the total export.

Spruce is the staple lumber tree of Nova Scotia. Prices for this wood have not declined or indeed fluctuated during the last two years as much as some other native woods, notably hemlock and pine.

[18] The following table shows the exports of lumber from the ports of Nova Scotia in 1911:—

| | Feet
Halifax. | | 43,000,000
Lunenburg. | | 48,269,113
Bear River. | | 3,500,000
Pugwash. | | 19,204,020
Liverpool. | | 5,954,000
Maitland. | | 5,147,744
Pictou. | | 12,227,164
Sherbrooke. | | 4,500,000
Weymouth. | | 12,000,000
Ingram Docks. | | 13,597,452
Yarmouth. | | 9,000,000
Colchester. | | 70,000,000
Windsor. | | 12,000,000
Hantsport. | | 4,500,000
Walton. | | 1,200,000
Cheverie. | | 200,000
Parrsboro. | | 32,000,000
| | ————
Total | | 214,368,493

An addition to the output of spruce, hemlock, and pine, which figures so largely as the product of the portable and stationary mills for export, consists in the cutting of “ton-timber”—hardwoods for English and South American markets, of which about 12,000 tons are taken out of Colchester woods. This variety is cut and hewed square with axes, and is brought to the shipping points when sledging is good.

Very little hardwood finds its way to the saw-mills for export as deals or planks. Then there is the cutting of poplar for the manufacture of excelsior; of birch and ash, and beech and elm, for the manufacture of chairs and furniture; of yellow birch for the manufacture of spring-bed frames and peg wood; and of white birch for the making of spool wood, the latter being produced mostly in the Stewiackes. Finally, there is a cut of juniper and hackmatack, and other woods of no mean proportions used for railway ties and pit props.

CHAPTER X

BRIDGEWATER AND LUNENBURG

Yet the Blue-nose is first and foremost a fisherman.

When all is said of Nova Scotia’s varied resources of farm and factory, and mine and forest, there is still to be told the tale garnished with adventure of the great and abiding interest of the peninsula and the island—the Nova Scotian fisheries. Of a total population of half a million souls in this province, over 40,000 men are engaged in the fisheries. This will seem a stupendous and utterly unreasonable proportion until I explain that the occupations of fisherman and farmer, fisherman and forester, even fisherman and miner, overlap in many districts, giving rise to a curious combination of characteristics in the same individual, which I had previously noticed amongst the fishermen-miners-farmers of Newfoundland.

The sea-coast of the Maritime Provinces from the Bay of Fundy to the strait of Belle Isle measures some 5600 miles, or about double that of the United Kingdom. In this magnificent fishing field the Nova Scotian is lord paramount, although others have at various times sought to share them with him.

The total fisheries of Canada, the largest in the world, are valued to-day at $25,500,000, of which Nova Scotia’s share is $7,632,330, or nearly one-third of the whole. All along this extensive sea-coast, in the bays, and harbours, and inlets from Cape North to Cape Sable, for generations boats have been putting out, manned by hardy stalwart men who go to brave the perils of the deep, and there are many perils in these latitudes, besides much cold and privation, in order to reap a harvest of cod, lobster, mackerel, haddock, and herring.[19]

Besides manning their own craft, the Nova Scotians, like the Newfoundlander, mans the vessels of other countries, especially American and British. The bulk of the product goes to America, although for nearly a century an important market has been found in the West Indies and South America, while the trade with Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Portugal is increasing annually.

[19] The following table shows the number of men reported as employed in the fisheries of Nova Scotia, and the value of boats and fishing material for the year 1910-11:—

| Number. | Value.
Vessels (tons, 19,657) | 630 | $891,710
Boats (gasolene) | 1,466] |
Boats(sail) | 12,655} | =781,724
Tugs and smacks | 164 | 193,730
Gill nets | (1,682,522 fathoms) | 555,374
Seines | (170,809 fathoms) | 170,375
Trap and smelt nets | 1,186 | 119,276
Weirs | 144 | 25,145
Trawls | 13,763 | 133,848
Hand lines | 43,900 | 32,936
Lobster canneries | 214 | 226,780
Lobster traps | 720,577 | 606,851
Freezer and ice houses | 345 | 321,040
Smoke and fish houses | 5,705 | 488,203
Piers and wharves | 2,326 | 787,100
| ———— | ————
Total | | $5,334,083

Under the proposed Reciprocity Agreement with the United States the fishing industry of the Province would have been vitally affected, to Nova Scotia’s advantage.

“I’m off to the Bank fishery
From my farm at Port Matoon,
Where my little lass awaits me,
And I can’t get back too soon.”

Schooners of about 100 tons burden carry off the men to the Bank fishery. When they reach the Banks—those great marine plateaux frequented by inexhaustible shoals of cod, the fishermen separate into dories, six to ten of which accompany each schooner. From each dory, which is about 15 feet long, two men, six trawls of say, 4000 hooks, making a total of about 40,000 hooks to a vessel. Far smaller crafts are in use, however, for the inshore fishery. One can see these boats, of from 20 to 60 feet over all, and manned by from two to ten men, at any port, using the dory and trawl, or the hand-line. But the familiar British otter trawl is not seen here at all, and trawls of any description are illegal in Canadian territorial waters.

Mackerel and herring are captured in nets moored near the shore. One sees little of drift-net fishing, although it is occasionally practised.

In the opinion of fishing experts the herring hereabouts are not only more abundant, but are a larger and better fish than those off the British coasts. Then there is the inland fishery, which yields chiefly smelts, salmon, trout, and eels, large quantities of which are sent in cold storage to all parts of Canada and America, a trade which offers great possibilities of expansion. This remark is true of the whole fishery—both in the actual catch and in the distribution. Improved methods are wanted, which means that more technical knowledge and more capital are wanted. A more progressive system is already here and there in operation. The employment of gasolene motor boats for inshore fishing makes the fishermen more independent of the weather, and hundreds of their boats may now be seen off the south-west shore.

Enormous numbers of lobsters are caught and canned, and exported by two hundred and twenty canning factories scattered up and down the coast. Their sale to the packers means the distribution of a great deal of cash among the fishermen of Western Nova Scotia, frequently running into hundreds of thousands of dollars. But in spite of all that is done, I find a general feeling that much more could be done in the way of catching and curing according to those scientific principles which prevail in Norway and Denmark, and also in the shipments of living lobsters to the States.

Few are aware that only in these Maritime Provinces of Canada and Newfoundland are lobsters procurable in sufficient quantities to make canning profitable. The catches of Norway, Scotland, Ireland, and America are not sufficient to supply the demands of the consumers for lobsters in the shell. Unhappily it cannot be said that the lobster industry as regards hatching, conservation, and canning is placed here on a very sound footing. In fact, unless a new style is adopted the lobster will be a diminishing crustacean.

A year or two ago at Ottawa, a Fishery Committee of the House of Commons was formed, and fishermen and packers from various sections of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island were summoned to Ottawa to give evidence, but little practical resulted.

While the catch of lobsters in the United States is not more than ten per cent. of the total catch of the world (Canada enjoys a catch fully eight times as great), the Fisheries Department of the States of Maine and Massachusetts have spent a very considerable sum in an effort to restore and restock their depleted waters with lobsters. The Dominion Marine and Fisheries Department, which is responsible for the care of the lobster fishery, have not expended nearly as much as they have in these two American States.

This condition ought to be changed if the permanence of a most productive branch of the fisheries of Eastern Canada is to be guaranteed.

Happily, the lobster catch last year was very successful to the fishermen and packers alike, and by the present regulations, whereby during a long close season the fishing is absolutely prohibited, the lobsters are protected and given a reasonable opportunity of natural propagation.

The oyster is little cultivated, and yet it is claimed for Nova Scotia that she has a larger cultivable area for oyster beds than many districts where it is a source of great profit, as for instance, Maryland, where as much as ten million bushels of bivalves have been extracted. Here a few thousand bushels are all that is forthcoming.

The truth is, the fisheries of Nova Scotia are only partially occupied, and are an inviting field for the investment of capital in enterprising hands. With its unexcelled position, with a population of as hardy and courageous men as are to be found anywhere, there is no reason why Nova Scotia in its fisheries should not rank even higher in point of production than it does now.

Speaking of oysters suggests pearls, and I was not surprised to hear that in the scallop oysters on these shores are found pearls of a fair quality. Numbers of the scallops may be found in Chester Basin, Lunenberg country, which, if collected in the right season, might be valuable and give employment to many in collecting and working. Several samples of pearl I saw seemed to me to compare favourably with those imported from abroad, and no doubt the scallop contains many valuable gems. Who knows, therefore, but that the pearl fishery may yet be carried on here in Nova Scotia as profitably as it is elsewhere?

A New Scotland Idyll—in the Annapolis Valley.

Bridgewater is one of the most perfect towns in New Scotland, beautifully situated on a river bluff, picturesquely environed, well built, with an enterprising corporate spirit, and inhabited by a cheerful, unpretending people. It is within easy reach of both sea and forest, and it is the headquarters of both the railway and of a large timber-carrying fleet, which visits many of the distant ports of the world. I shall not easily forget the view that burst upon me as I set foot upon the first span of the bridge that crosses the La Hêve River coming from the railway station, the tree-clad banks to right and left, with the verdure fading into the grey purple of the distant clouds, the white sails of the ships shot with sunlight, the broad, clear, swift-flowing stream; and, facing me, the colour and brightness of the town itself, three or four streets running parallel to the river, the first containing all the shops, each street rising high above the other, and the last on the sky-line. There was movement, but no hurry. Pretty girls, carrying school-books, moved along, dissolved in rippling laughter. Teams drawn by great red oxen coursed leisurely to and fro, directed by cheerful teamsters. And above all the intensely yellow sunlight poured down, making rich heaps of shadow; and the air, redolent of the pine groves, pressed southward in warm and scented volumes, seeking the sea. It was good.

My luggage went on by omnibus, and I made way to Clark’s Hotel on foot. Here is an inn after my heart—after the heart of any traveller. Perched high on the Street of the Third Parallel, it was once a commodious private dwelling, with steep steps and the usual verandah in front. A hedge of English hawthorn encircles it, and high planes and maples cast their shade about lawn and verandah. Within, an air of cosiness pervades; all is spotlessly clean, and trim and active maid-servants cheerfully attend to the traveller’s needs. The food is good of its kind and tastefully prepared, and it needs but a little to make this inn perfect, and that little will never be supplied until the travellers themselves learn how to behave themselves—to learn, for instance, that in order to smoke it is not necessary to excrete saliva, and that one of the uses of a hotel is not that of a lounging-place for local idlers. These latter are the pests of hotels throughout the Continent, making an inn occasionally insufferable for the real sojourner.

Bridgewater has a population of over 3000, and is steadily increasing in size and importance. It is the centre of trade for a fertile farming county, and has considerable manufacturing and commercial interests; well-built public buildings, particularly its brown stone Post Office and Customs House, and several golf, tennis, and yachting clubs. But Bridgewater will always be memorable to me because of what was the most interesting incident of my travels through Nova Scotia. It was here I met the members of the Royal Commission appointed at Ottawa to inquire into Technical Education. I should like particularly to direct the attention of the British reader to this fact—a Royal Commission appointed by His Majesty’s Government, not at London, but—at Ottawa. How this British Empire of ours has marched! Would not Haliburton and Howe have pinched themselves to make sure they were awake upon hearing His Majesty’s Commission (duly drawn up by His Majesty’s Canadian Ministers) read, beginning “George the Fifth, by the Grace of God,” &c. It only needed “King of Canada, Newfoundland, and the West Indies” more clearly to adumbrate the idea. Here was King George III.’s great-grandson pronouncing his Sovereign will and pleasure upon the advice of His Majesty’s constitutional advisers, not Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Lloyd George, but the members of the Cabinet at Ottawa. A group of gentlemen constituting this Royal Commission sat upon the platform. One hailed from Manitoba, two from Ontario, one from Quebec, one from Nova Scotia. Before them witnesses resident in the district were duly sworn, that they would tender the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God; and forthwith proceeded to give evidence as to the industrial conditions of Bridgewater.

Towards the close of the proceedings something dramatic happened. A little, old, white-haired, rosy-cheeked man arose and declared modestly that his name was John Macoun, the official botanist of the Dominion of Canada. And people stood and craned their necks, and asked what was it he said, and how it was they had never known this Professor Macoun was in Bridgewater before, and why was it the Mayor and the rest hadn’t met him at the railway station with the others and driven him round the town.

“Where do you reside at present, Professor Macoun?”

“At Bridgewater,” said the old, rosy-cheeked gentleman. “I have been for some months conducting an investigation into the flora of the district, with a view to ascertaining its botanical possibilities, the arable nature of the soil, and its adaptability to other vegetable production.”

Then, in truth, the folk of Bridgewater stared this time at one another. Here was this man, filling a very important position indeed in an agricultural country like Canada, dwelling quietly in the midst of their small town, not alone, but with his wife and assistants, pursuing his work, gathering his collections of flora, compiling in a specially-rented building his extensive hortus siccus, and not a soul of them the wiser.

“I believe in technical education, because it means thoroughness, and thoroughness means that a man knows his work. I am the man who forty years ago told the Canadian Government that wheat would grow in the North West. Every one was against me. I was threatened and reviled, and held up to ridicule. All the forces of prejudice and tradition were brought to bear upon my official report. I was told I was mad. But I held in this right hand earth whose constituent particles I recognised. I had studied them grain by grain, and I knew if they would produce wheat in Ontario, they would yield wheat in the Red River country; and I said that that country, where not a single bushel of wheat was grown, would produce fifty million bushels a year. Last year it produced a hundred millions, and I thank God I have lived to see it. And if you Nova Scotians would only listen and have equal faith in your own country, it could be made ten times richer and more fruitful than it is to-day.”

That is all. The Professor sat down. Anything that happened after that it would be bathos to describe.

Lunenburg, on the south shore, was settled in 1751 by Hanoverian immigrants, and still largely retains its German character. The settlement was under the protection of King George II., who was also ruler of Hanover. The old German speech has not yet died out amongst them, although I heard one inhabitant deploring that the last fount of German type had been melted down, and for some years no German periodical had been printed. Famous fishermen are the Lunenburg folk; there is much lumbering, and some farming. One notices a reminder of old Germany in the ox-teams, curiously yoked together by the horns.

Mahone was once a popular rendezvous for pirates. Their long crouching crafts were so often harboured there that the early French settlers dubbed the bay “Mahonne,” an old French term for a low-lying boat. Later the name was anglicised, and extended to the town which snuggles at the head of the bay, half-hidden by encircling hills. From the tops of the hills the old-time beacons blazed a message of distress or a flash of warning to the neighbouring settlements when the Indians trod the war trail.

Now the beacon sites are vantage points for viewing the glorious stretch of island-studded bay below. Shaggy, uncombed pines surmount the hillsides, and charge the air with revivifying odour.

Chester is a popular summer resort for Haligonians, whose charmingly wooded hills, now so redolent of peace, were once the rendezvous of pirates; notably, so tradition says, of that estimable scoundrel, Captain Kyd. The Oak Island Money Pit, within easy sighting distance of the Hackmatack Inn porch, is a tantalising memorial of piracy on the Spanish Main. A million dollars have been spent by joint stock companies trying to dam out the Atlantic and pump the Pit dry; but the treasure is still uncovered, and doubtless will always be hidden—a source of mystery and romance to many visitors. The bay, flanked by long, sprawling hills, and protected at its mouth by a barrier of rocky islands, is a beautiful stretch of water, twenty miles long and twelve miles wide. Both bay and shoreline are littered with points of interest. The names alone are a delight—Oak Island, Murderer’s Point, Heckman’s Island, Hobson’s Nose, The Ovens, Mount Aspogotan, Ironbound Island, and The Tancooks. How R. L. Stevenson would have revelled in them!

CHAPTER XI

ON THE GOVERNMENT’S FARM

To me Truro had a twofold interest. The first was that it was the chief scene of the propaganda of that extraordinary Irishman, Colonel M’Nutt, who figures so largely in that Romance of Emigration which some day I am going to write; and it is the theatre of that admirable new institution, new, so far as New Scotland is concerned, the Agricultural College and Government Experimental Farm.

After spending some days on this farm, I make bold to say that, in the hands of the zealous and energetic Professor Cumming, it is the best thing I saw in New Scotland, and, considering everything, one of the most perfect institutions of its kind on earth.

Main Hall—Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

What a great advantage it is to come late! You benefit by the mistakes and the achievements of your forerunners. That is why, to take an instance at random, Budapest in the domain of hospital and urban sanitation is so superior to London. The Hungarians were thousands of miles behind the times a decade or two ago; when they decided to go ahead they were untrammelled by customs, habits, systems, and expensive old plants. From having nothing at all they acquired the best, the latest appliances of science. For generations Nova Scotia has been tinkering at agriculture. The soil of the province is so varied that the early pioneers did not know what to make of it. What would suit one part was hopeless in another. Instead of settling down, farmers migrated from one district, from one country to another. Some who sold their farms profited, others, who for want of application and also for want of knowledge, fared worse, until it was difficult for a stranger to ascertain with any sort of precision just what were the agricultural possibilities of the Province. Ninety years ago an enthusiastic agriculturist, John Young, published a remarkable series of letters under the nom de plume of “Agricola,” in which he gathered together all the current English ideas on the subject of scientific farming, and earnestly urged their adoption by his fellow-countrymen. These letters of Agricola in book form attracted wide attention. Young did more: he set about the forming and consolidation of agricultural societies throughout Nova Scotia, at which prizes were offered for stock cereals and vegetables, and for a time agriculture undoubtedly benefited. But many causes, external and internal, conspired to render farming in Nova Scotia a far less prosperous undertaking than it deserved to be. The constant exodus of the young men from the farms was a serious handicap; so was the exclusion of produce from the American markets, the remoteness of some possible markets, and the scantiness of others nearer home. But still the great obstacle to success was want of knowledge and want of method.

Some twenty-one years ago there was organised in the Province of Nova Scotia an Agricultural School, which achieved some excellent work, but which, owing to the lack of equipment, did not make the impression which might have been made had the institution been dealt with in a more generous manner. There was also carried on from the year 1896 a School of Horticulture at Wolfeville, which, like its sister institution in Truro, was carried on a rather too modest scale. However, after studying the institution at Guelph, and consulting with the professors at that institution, and with Dr. James Robertson, then Dominion Commissioner for Agriculture, the Government of Nova Scotia decided to incorporate these two institutions into one Agricultural College. This institution was formally opened in February 1905, under the principalship of Mr. Melville Cumming, a native of Nova Scotia, and a graduate of Dalhousie University, Halifax, and of the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. The faculty was composed of the Principal of the old School of Agriculture, the Principal of the School of Horticulture, the Superintendent of the Provincial Government Farm, together with lecturers from the Provincial Normal School, with which institution the College is affiliated. In addition, the service of some of the leading men at Guelph and Ottawa have, from time to time, been secured, especially to assist in the short courses. Beginning with an enrolment in the regular course of fifteen students, and in the short courses of sixty-eight, the College has in these years advanced to an enrolment of seventy-seven in the full course, and three hundred and forty-two students in the short course, and this, it must be remembered, in a constituency scarcely one-tenth larger than that from which the Ontario Agricultural College draws its pupils. While the College is primarily a Nova Scotian institution, yet its doors are thrown open to students from all the Maritime Provinces, the opportunity being taken advantage of by the young farmers of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick to the extent of sixteen and twenty-one students respectively. It is, moreover, the hope of those who are most interested in the institution that it shall become, in name as well as in fact, the Maritime College of Agriculture.

The College was purposely located in the same town, Truro, as the Provincial Normal School, in order that the teaching staff at the latter institution might come in contact with the technical teaching of agriculture, and that, in turn, the agricultural students might profit from the literary and scientific teaching of the members of the Normal School faculty. As a further effort at affiliation of the forces of these institutions, for the purpose of improving conditions in the rural schools, there is held each summer during the school vacation a School of Science, classes of which are held at the Agricultural College building, the instructors being composed of men from the faculties of these institutions, assisted by some of the leading men engaged in scientific teaching in Canada. The importance of this affiliation can scarcely be overestimated, for, unless the College is in close touch with the rural schools, and unless the scholars at these schools are directed towards the College, neither can prove as effective in bettering rural conditions as it is desirable for them to be.

The equipment of the College is much the same, although not as extensive, as is to be seen at Guelph and other centres of agricultural education. However, under the conditions described above, it is only natural that the outstanding feature of the institution should be its live stock equipment. In the stables on the College Farm, and, in some cases, in stables in other parts of the Province, but owned by the College, are to be found one of the finest collections of live stock which has been gathered together in any part of the Dominion, There are herds of Holsteins, Ayrshires, Jerseys, Shorthorns, and Herefords, composed of outstanding individuals, and headed by some of the best sires to be found in Canada. The Holstein herd of cows averaged last year 13,500 pounds of milk.

In the horse stables are to be found animals of famous lineage and splendid specimens of their breed. There are seven pure bred Clydesdale mares, three having been extensive prize-winners in Scotland. The College at present owns three Clydesdale stallions.

Equal attention has been paid to the selection of swine and poultry, so that, taken altogether, the live stock equipment at the College is such as to afford splendid ideas for the students in attendance, and also to effect improvement in the general character of the stock of the Province.

At Kingsport.

“Calling” a Moose.

“Each Province in Canada,” observed Professor Cumming to me, “has its own peculiar agricultural conditions and problems, and before one can pronounce judgment upon the degree of progress which each has made, he must understand the special conditions under which the people have been working.” Nova Scotia, as has been said, is a province of varied resources, in the forests, the seas, and the mines. While these various natural resources have added largely to the wealth of the Province, yet their presence cannot be termed an unmitigated blessing. There is a tendency for the people to direct their energies in too many avenues of employment, and a corresponding lack of continuity, especially in methods of agriculture. There are exceptions, for example in the fruit-growing counties and in local areas in various parts, where the people have adhered strictly to agriculture. But there are thousands enrolled in the census as farmers who have little more right to be included in that class than has the porter in an office to be called a lawyer or a doctor. As, however, the forests are increasing, and the pursuit of the sea and mines are becoming more specialised, those who are living on the lands are taking a greater interest in the subject of agriculture, and are seeking such information which will help them to improve their conditions.

One great enemy of agriculture in New Scotland is the natural tendency of the farmer’s sons to migrate to the south or the west. The proximity and easy accessibility of Boston and other large American cities was long irresistible, just as London and England allured the youth of Old Scotland. But the trend of western immigration must sometime cease, and life in American cities is proving less lucrative than of yore, the result being a marked tendency on the part of the young men of the Province to devote themselves to farming.

The type of farming long favoured in Nova Scotia was that which minimised the amount of labour required, except at those seasons of the year when seeds must be sown and harvests reaped. As a consequence, one saw herds of live stock, too small in numbers, often of inferior quality, and still more indifferently kept. The selling of hay and oats, and roots of all kinds, was found an easier solution of the difficulties of farming than raising live stock, and the selling of butter, and cream, and milk, beef, eggs, and other animal products. Many an impoverished field and many a run-out farm still greets the traveller, robbed of its virgin wealth of humus, and of the elements of plant food. The cure for this is live stock and live stock alone, and this is the gospel which Professor Cumming is preaching.

Of course, in the fruit areas of Hants, King’s, and Annapolis counties, this want is not so keenly felt. Green crops, like clover, peas, and vetches, are grown and ploughed under to supply humus with which to improve the physical condition, and nitrogen with which to increase the plant food of the soil, on which the apples, and plums, and other fruits are grown. But even here more live stock is a necessity.

For the development of a high type of agriculture Nova Scotia offers most favourable conditions. About the only drawback, as compared with the inland parts of Canada, is a somewhat protracted spring, a drawback which frequent showers of rain and moist conditions natural to any maritime province, largely mitigate. Live stock, when properly cared for, flourishes to an unusual degree, and the markets for all kinds of agriculture produce are not only unusually good but easily accessible—so easy of access, in fact, as to have oft-times prevented successful co-operation, especially in butter and cheese making. For when a farmer can find within a few miles of his door a population of miners who will buy his products and pay him cash on delivery, he is often discouraged if he has to wait for a little longer to receive his returns from a creamery. The result of this has been to promote private dairying and private marketing of all sorts of produce at the expense of the more desirable, and, in the end, more profitable system of co-operative manufacture and marketing.

Dairying might well prosper here. Pastures, when properly cared for, are good and well watered, cows do well under the moist, humid conditions which prevail, and should the local market for dairy products ever become over-supplied, no province has easier access to the markets of the outside world. Beef cattle, too, have their place, especially in proximity to the large tracts of inexhaustibly fertile dike marsh lands, lining the headwaters of the Bay of Fundy and its river tributaries. There are also isolated river valleys where cheap pastures afford the means of raising beef at a minimum cost. Sheep find the land most congenial, and when well bred and cared for, the sheep of Nova Scotia will rival those of any other part of Canada. But for more than one reason sheep-raising has not been sufficiently exploited, although according to the census of 1907 it has made more progress during the past half decade than the forty years previously.

Horses, and swine, and poultry, as might also be expected, have their place in Nova Scotian agriculture, and, under efficient treatment, will give as good an account of themselves as in Ontario or any of the older provinces of Canada.

In the matter of crops New Scotland is peculiarly adapted to the production of hay and roots. The large marsh and interval areas produce heavy crops of hay, and nowhere in America can one see finer fields of turnips than on some of these maritime farms. In a recent bulletin issued by the Department of Agriculture on “Root-Growing in Nova Scotia,” there are recorded replies from twenty-five representative farmers living in various parts of the Province, from whose records it appears that the minimum yield of roots per acre for the last year was 600 bushels, with a maximum of 1200 bushels, and an average of 864 bushels. Despite, however, the splendid facilities for growing roots, many farmers, because of the reasons already hinted at, devote little or none of their acreage to this most profitable crop. Although there are exceptions, yet, for the most part, the cereal crops do not flourish to quite the same degree as further inland, and corn, whether grown for ears or ensilage, is generally an uncertain crop. The Federal Department has already in operation an extensive experimental farm, operated for the benefit of the Maritime Provinces, at Nappan, N.S. Truro, labouring under the disadvantage of being outside of the so-called fruit-growing areas, will have its work well supplemented by the establishment of this station.

In addition to that which is carried on within the College ground, a strong effort is being made to promote College extension work. Recently one hundred of the leading farmers of the Province, together with representative men from the adjoining Provinces, co-operated with the College authorities in testing varieties of grain, grown singly and in mixture, and also in testing nitro-bacteria for various leguminous crops. This latter line of investigation has already been carried on for three years, and has been productive of some striking results.

An extensive series of institute meetings, addressed by members of the College staff, successful farmers in Nova Scotia, and some of the Ontario men, are regularly carried on. There is a Farmers’ Association, which holds a three-days’ annual meeting in different parts of the Province, and a Fruit-Growers’ Association, which holds regular meetings in the fruit sections of the Province. In addition, each county, with a few exceptions, has a regularly organised County Farmers’ Association, whose object it is to promote the educational campaign, and to deliberate upon matters of common interests.

But perhaps the most aggressive and successful body of organised farmers is constituted in the agricultural societies, of which there are 200, situated all over the Province. Under the auspices of the various agricultural societies and associations of the Province, the various members of the Agricultural College staff lecture and give demonstrations on improved agriculture. Co-operative experiments in crops, methods of cultivation, fertilisation, and soil inoculation are being directed from the College. A series of model orchards, thirty-five in number, have been established in the various counties of the Province, from Cape Breton in the east to Yarmouth in the west, and are under the direct supervision of the horticulturist at the College. Insect and fungus pests, such as the brown-tailed moth, are being studied and kept in control through the efforts of the biologist and other members of the College faculty. The principal object for which these agricultural societies exist is the improvement of live stock. Each society keeps from one to sometimes six or more pure-bred bulls. These societies are bonused by the Government to the extent, during the present year, of 76 cents for each dollar subscribed by the members of these societies. Now new lines of work are opening up, of which perhaps the most interesting is the campaign which is being organised to encourage the more extensive draining of farm lands.

Authorities who have studied the matter carefully are convinced that money judiciously invested in the under-drainage of farm lands will return from 15 to 50 per cent. or more per annum on the investment. Many of our own best farmers already know this from experience; but there are a great many farms in the Province of Nova Scotia sadly in need of drainage, which are to-day yielding unprofitable crops because they have not been drained. With a view to encouraging the under-drainage of these lands, the College, I was told, are about to supply at a nominal cost men who will survey and take levels of fields which it is purposed to drain, and give advice in regard to the most efficient means of doing this. To further facilitate the matter, the College has bought, at the cost of several thousand dollars, the most improved drainage machine that is to-day on the market. The College authorities are constantly on the alert to push forward progressive measures of all kinds.

Truro—the “Joe Howe Falls.”

During the visit a year or so since of Earl Grey to the Agricultural College, the Hon. Sydney Fisher, then Dominion Minister of Agriculture, said that the exhibition of live stock which he saw there was the best he had ever seen at any of the public institutions in the whole Dominion. Mr. Fisher being himself a farmer, and owning one of the best live stock farms in the Province of Quebec, no one in Canada is more competent to pronounce judgment upon such matters. Mr. Fisher further added, “You have taken me entirely by surprise, for although Minister of Agriculture for Canada, and more or less in touch with its agricultural institutions, yet I had not realised that you of the East have been advancing as rapidly as I now observe.”

I find I have said nothing of the flourishing town of Truro itself—of its shaded streets and pleasant people. After all, the Government Farm and Agricultural College is its chief title to distinction.

A few miles from Truro, and at the eastern end of the Cobequid Mountains, are the chief iron deposits of this port of New Scotland. Londonderry reminds us once more of the native town of that ubiquitous pioneer, Colonel M’Nutt, and from this place a branch railway runs to the Acadia mines and iron works. Stages also run to this busy industrial centre and to great village Economy and Five Islands. The Londonderry iron has been pronounced to be almost equal to the Swedish for steel manufacture; the mines yield both limonite and spathic ores.

CHAPTER XII

PICTOU AND NEW GLASGOW

Old Scotland has no advantage over New Scotland in the matter of coal. My first introduction to Nova Scotia’s coal was made at Stellarton, in what are called the Pictou coal-fields. Coal has been mined hereabouts for upwards of a century, and one of the very earliest railways on the Continent was that built from the Albion mine to Pictou Landing, six miles away. That was in 1836-39. The promoters of this miniature line of rail showed considerable prescience in building it of a width then considered unusual, but which has since come to be the “standard gauge.” Stephenson’s rival, Hackworth, built the first engine used thereupon for over forty years, and now considered a great curiosity. It was shown at the World’s Fair, Chicago, and later at St. Louis.

About 1825 an English company received, under certain terms from the Crown, the right of working mines and minerals in Nova Scotia, and this company shortly thereafter commenced spirited operations both at Pictou and at Sydney in Cape Breton, restricting themselves to coal-mines and iron works from imported material. Previously coal came chiefly from surface pits, and was of inferior quality. “The principal shaft,” we read in the original prospectus of the company, “has been sunk to the depth of two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and steam power has been applied for the usual purposes of draining and of raising minerals. The veins of coal laid open by this procedure are of a quality much superior to those formerly discovered. The coal is overlaid by a decayed blackish shale; it is of jet-black colour, and contains a large proportion of bitumen. Excellent coke is made from it, and for the furnace it is highly esteemed. The Cape Breton coal is preferred for household use on account of its producing less of the white or brown ashes than that of Pictou.”

The lease was granted to the company for sixty years to work all minerals belonging to the Crown, save in such tracks as had already been reserved to others. One of these was then worked by the Annapolis Iron Company, which was in fact the only competitor of the General Mining Association. It was then, eighty years ago, observed that the mining industry was proving of greater apparent benefit to the valley of the East River than upon Pictou Town. “Good roads, increase of settlement, numerous waggons and horses where none were previously kept, and a market well supplied where none formerly existed, are outward and visible signs indicative of the neighbourhood of two hundred well-paid beef-eating and porter-drinking operatives.”

The result being then foreshadowed, New Glasgow and Stellarton sprang into being formidable rivals to Pictou, which, from its marine situation, has been almost side-tracked by the railway. Other mines flourish in these parts, such as the Drummond and Acadia Collieries in Westville, and the Vale Colliery at Thorburn. But the character of the mines is the same here on this side of the Atlantic as that which depressed the soul of John Ruskin and gladdened the heart of Samuel Smiles.

Stay! I think this statement required some qualification. It would be manifestly unfair not to take notice of the system here inaugurated by which so many of the miners—nearly all the married ones—own their own homes. And there is even an effort, and by the miners themselves, that these homes shall be tasteful within and without, and that each shall have his garden. Nothing has ever struck me so forcibly when perambulating the mining districts of the Black Country of Wales as the indifference with which men, immured for at least a third of their lives in the darksome bowels of the earth, regard the amenities of the home and its surroundings of lawn and flower and vine. More passionately because of their long deprivation would one expect them to cling to the superterrene light and colour of life, and the res pulchra domi. Far otherwise is it, and all the more refreshing to see here a brawny Cornishman hurrying from the pit, and after washing the grime from his face and hands, employ the remaining hour of daylight in rolling his bit of turf and hoeing his patch of flower garden. Will a time come, we wonder, when no human occupation shall be too strenuous, too sordid, for a man to spend his leisured hours in decency and calm. No vain visions have I of pitmen and navvies reading Tennyson in velvet smoking jackets and slippers, or pit foremen in dress clothes sipping port wine; but I do look forward confidently to the time, in England, when a man may, without remark, boast the domestic virtues and enjoy the higher domestic comfort, even though he engage in an occupation in which for so many hours a day the wearing of a white shirt, or of any shirt at all, is totally dispensed with. Some steps towards the realisation of this I witnessed with my own eyes at New Glasgow, where a man who had been broiling half-naked before a fiery furnace all day, was at twilight seated in cool, clean raiment, in his own little parlour (very tastefully furnished, too), playing one of Sousa’s marches on a pianola!

The End of Bruin.

A thriving town is New Glasgow, and very beautiful when viewed from the other side of the East River. Here are coal-mines, iron and steel works, shipbuilding yards, glassworks, and other industries. Here, two miles from the heart of the town, is the headquarters of the Nova Scotia Steel and Iron Company, the pioneer steelworks in Canada, with open-hearth converters, the latest equipped rolling mills, steel hammers, &c., altogether employing 800 men. On the way thither I passed a cemetery filled with the tombs of the early settlers, nearly all Highland names, many hailing from Old Glasgow, who would probably be very much astonished and highly gratified to-day at the prosperity and size of the town they founded.

Mr. Cantley, the able manager, told me something about the operation of the works for three months of the year. Increases had been made in practically every line of work in connection with the company, referring by this to the coal mined, the coal shipped, and outputs in the mills and forges. The increase in the output of ingots from 17,508 tons for the first quarter of the previous year, to 20,372 tons for the corresponding period of the year following, or an increase of practically 19 per cent.; an increase in the amount of coal mined of 8 per cent., and of coal shipped 20 per cent. Increases were also recorded in the forge department, steel department, and in fact in practically every department; in addition to that, the most important feature was that the average nett prices now obtained from steel sales showed an increase of 2.01 dollars per ton.

As to the steel tonnage now on the books of the company, it amounted to about 15,000 tons, which was all he cared to see on the order sheets of the company for the present until prices had improved.

The population of New Glasgow is about 6400 souls, and an electric tramway connects the town with Stellarton and Westville. The islands around the town are particularly fine. From Fraser’s Mountain, an eminence 350 feet high, one may form an excellent idea of the lie of the country round about Pictou and Pictou Islands, the Strait of Canso as far as Cape St. George, the far distant hills of Inverness, even the extremity of Prince Edward Island. To the southward the eye meets the fertile land dotted with churches and settlements, stretching thirty miles away to the mountains of Antigonish. In the foreground courses tortuously the glistening East River on its way to Pictou and Northumberland Strait.

Pictou—Norway House. (The property of Lord Strathcona.)

The town of Pictou is situate upon the north side of a capacious harbour, into which three rivers empty, the harbour’s mouth being three miles from the town. It is certainly very much in its disfavour that in winter the basin is closed by ice and is therefore inaccessible between December and April. Pictou was once the second town in the Province, to-day it has been left far behind; yet it enjoys a peculiar old-world character of its own, and is the most Scottish town in all New Scotland. In this district the French had made certain settlements before the Peace of 1763. On the conquest of New France these were deserted, and their farms were again overgrown with forest. In 1765 one Doctor Weatherspoon became the leading spirit of the Philadelphia Company, and, obtaining an extensive grant in the Pictou district, sent hither a number of Maryland families. By way of bounty each of these received a farm-lot, and a supply of provisions.

Following these came thirty families from the Scottish Highlands, who were landed here in the good ship Hector, late in 1773, without sufficient food to carry them through the winter, with the natural result that they nearly starved, many making their way across the forest primeval to the Basin of Minas for assistance. But the settlement struggled on; it was later joined by further families from Dumfries, and gained a great addition to its numbers in 1784, after the American Revolution, by the immigration of many disbanded troopers, who, however, being rather wild and dissolute, greatly shocked the simple-minded, God-fearing pioneers. Not until 1786 did the first pastor, Dr. M’Gregor, arrive to administer to the flock and to preach the Gospel in Gaelic. In the decade following several other ministers arrived at Pictou and the district put forth a great store of grain and godliness. More shiploads of Highlanders landed in Pictou Harbour, and an Academy was founded, which flourishes to this day. But the corner-stone of the first house in Pictou town was not laid until 1789. Once started the growth to a village and then to a town was rapid. It became the resort of coasting vessels from all parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the quantity of oil and fish brought thither annually being large, the exports to the West Indies increased proportionately. More than a century ago at least 100 ships left Pictou loaded with timber for Great Britain, worth, together with other exports, £100,000. Houses of well-to-do merchants went up—houses of stone—which are as staunch to-day as the day they were built. “The air of the place,” wrote a traveller nearly ninety years ago, “strikes a stranger’s eye as peculiarly Scotch. Keen-looking fellows in bob-tailed coats, à la Joseph, of many colours, stand in knots about the streets discussing in broad Scotch or pure Gaelic the passing topics of the day; while in the distance, a long scarlet robe floating gaudily in the wind, as if in mockery of the sedate air of the student who bears it, carries us back to the classic precincts of Aberdeen or Glasgow. The Academy, to which these students to the number of about fifteen belong, is an ordinary wooden building neatly painted outside, but not yet finished within, and contains nothing remarkable if we except the learned professor and his little museum consisting (chiefly) of native animals.”

At the northern and eastern parts of the town are suburban residences with spacious grounds enclosed with hedges of English hawthorn, from whence a commanding view can be had of the Straits of Northumberland and the blue waves of the great St. Lawrence Gulf.

On clear days the shores of Prince Edward’s Island are distinctly visible; and out beyond the harbour light, Cape St. George and the distant outline of Cape Breton’s rocky coast can be seen jutting out into the wide Atlantic.

Many years ago a dreadful catastrophe happened to a small mail steamer, the Fairy Queen, plying between Pictou and Prince Edward Island. Through the captain’s carelessness she sprang a leak and went to the bottom. The captain and the crew succeeded in escaping to Pictou in the boats, which were spacious enough to have held all on board. On landing they related a tale of the disaster, believing that no human voice would ever reveal the true story of their cowardice and cruelty. It chanced, however, that although many perished, including a promising British officer and five young ladies, one of whom was bound for England to be married, a few passengers floated off on the upper deck and ultimately, after many hardships, reached land in safety. Along the coast they struggled to Pictou, there to raise a voice from the dead to strike terror and remorse into the hearts of the cowardly captain and crew. The captain was arrested for manslaughter, but, although the popular wrath was great, managed to escape the punishment he merited.

As time wore on in Pictou the Highland bonnet, slouching like a night-cap on the heads of the first generation of settlers, disappeared, to give place to native straw in summer and fur in winter. But the kilts, banned in the old land, sprang up at clan gatherings, and the bagpipes and the Highland ballads and Highland spirit are in vogue to this day.

The morning was warm and balmy as I strode along the harbour front, past the cottages and villas of wood and stone, to a point of land called the Battery at Pictou. Several mounted cannon were pointing seaward, and a weather-beaten man, with his back towards me, shaded his eyes as he gazed intently in the same direction. When he became aware of my presence, he turned and bade me good morning. “Waiting for my molasses ship from Jamaica,” he said, jerking his thumb outward. “I thought I saw her in the offing, but I guess I was mistaken.”

We fell to talking about fish, and molasses, and mining. He had been interested in a mine in Newfoundland, and knew something of the ways of Yankee company promoters. He had speculated in many things, but found West Indian produce safest.

“Do you see that building across there—with the tall chimney and the wharves in front of it, and the rails running down to the wharves?”

I said I did.

“Would it surprise you if you found that chimney built of rubble, with no outlet top or bottom?”

I said it would surprise me very much indeed.

“I suppose it would astonish you also to know that only one ship had ever been at that wharf, and no engine or truck on that railway, and no men ever at work in that swelter?”

When I had duly satisfied my companion that these things stood in need of some explanation, he volunteered one.

“That yonder’s the relics of the Pictou Copper and General Mining Company, Limited—capital, Lord knows how many thousands of pounds! When I was in England they told me that for these cinematograph exhibitions they get up sample fires, imitation explosions, intentional railway collisions, and collapse old buildings merely on purpose to photograph ’em. Well, that there’s a dummy copper-mine, got up on purpose to photograph, and I’m bound to say the photograph looked darn well in the prospectus. There it all was, and nobody who saw it could get away from it—engine puffing away on the rails, hired for a day from the Inter-Colonial Railway; smoke pouring out of the chimney—they had lit a bushel of brown paper on top; schooner at the wharf, also hired for the occasion—and dang me, sir, there never was a more realistic thing! The capital was raised in no time. People here in Pictou, who weren’t in the secret, expected all manner of things. Then the Boston promoters lit out for home, and they ain’t been seen or heard of since. There’s their dummy establishment—I guess you could buy it for a hundred pounds—and there are a lot of people somewhere, in some corner of the earth, who, when they hear the very name Pictou, turn pale and grind their teeth.”

I could not refrain from inquiring whether this was an incident of frequent occurrence.

“I know where it’s happened before and since. Lord bless you, these here Maritime Provinces, including Gaspé, are a perfect hunting-ground for that sort of thing. Now, down at Chignecto....”

But it is needless to retail all the ensuing conversation, or the instances with which my friend on the Battery at Pictou illustrated it. It suffices to say that every wild-cat scheme engineered by astute and unprincipled financiers from across the border, damages to the extent of its operation, multiplied by ten, the good name and the prospects of New Scotland. All should be alert to inquire into the bona fides of all schemes ostensibly directed to the exploiting of their locality, because the failure of such is certain to redound to that locality’s, nay, the whole Province’s, disadvantage.

The best house in Pictou—perhaps the best-built private one in New Scotland—is Norway House, which, together with 200 acres of farm land adjoining, is the property of Lord Strathcona. Seventy or eighty years ago it was built of stone brought from Scotland, and, as I mention elsewhere, is an excellent specimen of the kind of house that is popular with Canadian insurance companies. I only wish that Lord Strathcona could be induced to work this farm, instead of allowing it to lie fallow, if only because it would in active able hands be an effective advertisement for the agricultural possibilities of this part of New Scotland.

The town is the seat of Pictou Academy, which deserves a passing mention. The academy was established for the purpose of affording to the children of Dissenters, excluded from the honours of King’s College (Windsor), those literary and scientific requirements which might qualify them for the learned professions. The corporation consists of twelve trustees, the choice for whom, in virtue of an annual Government grant, has to be ratified by the governor. They are required to be Presbyterians or members of the Anglican body. As, however, no religious tests are required of the students, the academy is attended by youths of all denominations. The curriculum is a sound one, and from the first Pictou began to send forth what the Province sadly needed, a race of qualified schoolmasters. Some very eminent Canadian scholars have been educated at Pictou, including Professor Dawson and Principal Grant.

Forty-three miles by railway from Stellarton is Antigonish (accent, please, on the last syllable). A century ago Antigonish was called Dorchester, in honour of Sir Guy Carleton, first Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada. But the district round about had the Indian name long before that. The first white inhabitants were a few Acadian families at Pomquet, Tracadie, and Au Bouché, whose descendants are still to be found at St. George’s Bay. Just after the American Revolution a number of officers and men of the Nova Scotia Regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Hierlihy and Major Monk, got grants of land here, and immured themselves for several winters without roads of communication to any other part of the Province. After a dozen seasons or so they were joined by Scottish immigrants from the Isles and the Highlands. They found the agricultural country far superior to any they had ever known, and indeed one of the best in New Scotland. Upon the rearing and export of horses, horned cattle and sheep, grain, butter, and pork, they quickly prospered; and the production of shingles and stones, when the large timber was exhausted, was carried on upon a large scale. The shire town of Dorchester or Antigonish was described nearly a century ago as “one of the prettiest villages in the eastern section of Nova Scotia, and the neatness and simplicity of its appearance amply compensates for the absence of bolder scenery.” Judging from that description, I do not think Antigonish has greatly changed. My train brought me there about midnight, and a buggy driven by the landlord himself brought me along a wide street, lined with majestic elms, through whose dark foliage the moon sent spangled rays of light, to a quaint little inn. It is true the quaintness of the inn, architecturally speaking, hardly corresponded with its name: the Queen Hotel (how they love these high-sounding titles! I have a recollection of a certain Chateau Frontenac at Rimouski, P.Q., where they gave me a single sheet to my bed), and the quaintness was in directions rather disconcerting. For instance, when morning came, I was suddenly aroused by the apparition of an uncouth figure in my room. He was in the act of closing a closet door, from which he had apparently just emerged. I sprang up. “What do you want?” I demanded.

“Nothing,” returned the intruder calmly.

“But what are you doing in my room? I locked the door last night.”

“What am I doing in your room? How else do you think I am going to get out of mine?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the closet in an aggrieved manner, as if I had meanly suggested his climbing out of the window in order to pursue his daily avocations. All the same, I do not think highly of these peculiar inn-keeping arrangements; nor do I hold that the employment of the title of Majesty on a long sign-board can altogether atone for their primitive simplicity.

Before I leave the inn at Antigonish I am tempted to recall another trifling association. A traveller, commercial or otherwise, will have noticed throughout Nova Scotia, as in the American States, that all maid-servants perform their functions, with rare exceptions, in a singular spirit of protest, as if they were really not enjoying themselves in the most becoming and most appropriate of all feminine rôles, to wit, the handmaiden of man. It is really most provoking of the dear creatures! More especially is this uncomfortable spirit manifested towards strangers. My belief is that a too profuse native chivalry is at the bottom of it. You have noticed the scorn and independent air of the British barmaid? her affability and condescension when addressed by her familiars under the names of “Flossie,” “Beryl,” or “Sadie?” Well, then, you have put your finger on that which vexes the traveller’s soul here. Yet I am bound to say that there were several inns in the Province where I was waited upon with a celerity and good humour which went far to atone for inevitable gastronomic shortcomings.

She was rather a comely wench, was the handmaiden at Antigonish, but sadly spoilt, and a shrewish wrinkle marred her brow. She showed her sense of my coming down late to breakfast by conducting me to a seat where a great draught blew.

“Ye’ll sit there,” she said.

“Oh no, thank you. I will sit here,” I rejoined pleasantly, taking a seat by the wall. She paused in angry astonishment. A smile curled her lip. “Oho,” she seemed to say to herself, “I’ll teach you, my fine gentleman.” I ordered fish. “There’s no fish.” “Very well. I’ll have eggs, boiled in the shell three and a-half minutes, dry toast and coffee.” With a toss of her head the damsel slowly disappeared. In something under twenty minutes she re-entered, bringing a tray upon which reposed a large cup of weak tea, a plate of fried eggs, and some very bilious-looking buttered toast. These having been noisily and carelessly deposited before me, I turned over a fresh page of my newspaper and observed nonchalantly, “Please remove all this stuff, will you, and bring me what I ordered—boiled eggs, boiled for three and a-half minutes in the shell, coffee, and some dry toast. Look sharp, please.” She did look sharp—sharp and shrewish, yet with a something almost of consternation withal. I met her glance with a smile. For ten seconds we confronted one another—a ludicrous situation. Then, gathering the breakfast back again upon the tray, the poor girl departed. When she reappeared she was quite cheerful—the novelty of the experience had, it seemed, taken her fancy. She waited upon me with alacrity. So far from diminishing I multiplied my wants, preferring them with punctilious courtesy. We parted friends, and at luncheon she greeted me with smiles. It is a great pity that the tendency to spoil and pamper girls in menial situations, especially when they are pretty, is not confined to Nova Scotia. It does not make them any the happier, but is, on the contrary, productive of a good deal of unhappiness and discontent. A little less familiarity on the part of those served and a little more attention to business on the part of those serving would be far better. Less than a century ago one could chuck the inn chambermaid under the chin and call her “my dear” without loss of dignity, eliciting only a prim and grateful curtesy. It is different now.

View on the outskirts of Antigonish.

An attractive little town is Antigonish. The houses, built on low ground, are shaded by trees, while the hills rise on all hands. Here is the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Antigonish, St. Ninian’s Cathedral, and St. Francis Xavier College. Chiefly of Highland extraction is the community—the names of the chief clans so abound that in the case of the Macdonalds and Frasers it is usual to mention the Christian names or initials to indicate certain leading individuals. One hears of “E. M.,” and “J. S.,” and “D. C.” in common conversation. Gaelic here is still spoken, especially amongst the older folk, and for the benefit of these latter sermons are occasionally preached in the cathedral; which building is of stone and capable of seating 1200 persons. As I recall the taming of the shrewish maidservant at Antigonish I must not omit mention of my encounter with one whom I was informed was the Episcopal body-servant and factotum. A more astonishingly grotesque individual I have never set eyes upon in my life. Somewhat portly, you only saw fragments of his puffy, white face, owing to a thick growth of beard, which left a space of about two inches between it and a pair of bushy eyebrows. Beard and eyebrows had been red, but were now dyed a startling blue-black, which looked purple in the sunlight. His aspect was truly farouche.

“Is his lordship at home?”

“Ah!”

“Will you take him my card?”

“Eh?”

The factotum was engaged in climbing into a buggy. He stared for a second at the proffered card, crossed himself, gathered up his reins, said “Gaw!” to his steed and drove away, leaving me standing there. I watched him until he had turned the corner, thinking what a weird and beautiful pirate this beady-eyed purple-whiskered joker would have made—what a loss to the comic opera stage!

“Eh, ye’ll no see his reverence the day,” murmured an old woman in my ear; and so I came away.

The College of Saint Francis Xavier is an educational institution, of which not only Antigonish, but also the whole eastern section of Nova Scotia is greatly proud. Students come hither from nearly all parts of Canada and America. The number in attendance is increasing from year to year, and the accommodation is becoming taxed to such an extent that a further addition to the present commodious building has been found necessary. The number of students at present is over one hundred and fifty. Besides the College, and to some extent affiliated with it, is Mount St. Bernard’s Seminary, attended by about seventy young ladies from many of the counties in the Province, and from beyond it. Although both are Roman Catholic, I found that students of all denominations are welcomed, and no better illustration of the broad-mindedness that prevails is the fact that at least two of the Professors at the College are Protestants. Besides these two institutions of higher education, Antigonish boasts two well equipped “separate schools” of three departments, each conducted by competent and experienced teachers.

It was prize-giving day amongst the young lady pupils at the seminary, and I had an opportunity of seeing “sweet girl graduates” from all parts of Nova Scotia, and also from the other provinces. I cannot say that they were all very beautiful or very graceful, but oh—I am sure that they were very, very good! And amongst themselves they were very merry, and spoke of their failures in this or that “exam” with resignation. Many of these girls, I was told, were destined to be teachers.

A Catholic newspaper is published at Antigonish called The Casket. I enjoyed a chat with the editor, a quiet, enlightened man, who aims at “restraint and accuracy,” a journalistic motto which one wishes were only more prevalent. The Casket is an excellent little paper, and a relief from the journalistic horrors elsewhere.

Eight miles from Antigonish is the mouth of the harbour, with a wide sandy beach, much used for bathing, and a number of Antigonians have summer cottages there. But the gem of the district is Lochaber Lake, on the road to Sherbrooke, distant some dozen miles. The lake is five miles in length, very narrow, and a pretty road runs along the shore the whole distance. On the whole the roads are capital hereabouts, and the landscape scenery well worth seeing.

The banks on either side of this lake rise from it abruptly to a considerable height, but without rocky precipices. The water is as clear as a spring, and very deep. It is the last body of water in the district to freeze, and even in January frequently shows a ripple over miles of its limpid surface. How often has the Highland emigrant, home-sick for the heather, sat by its banks and dreamt of the old land and the old faces, ere he or she set out for the new land to see “Lochaber no more”!

Which reminds me that while at Pictou I was taken to see the shanty of an old Highland woman, once well known to travellers by coach, Nancy Stuart of the Mountain. Many stories are still told of Nancy, her sons and her dogs—as well as the “Oiche Whaith Chuibh. Brannachd luibh” with which she parted from any who had ever been in the Highlands.

The views throughout the whole of this part of the peninsula are superb. Standing on the top of Sugar-Loaf Mountain, which is close to Antigonish, one obtains a spectacle that is well worth climbing to gain. Gaspereau Lake, also close at hand, is situate 500 feet above sea-level, and is a great resort for wild geese and ducks. Here is a famous centre for partridge shooting. These birds, nobody’s preserves, are often seen in dense coveys close to the railway.

If we follow the line of this lake—the St. Mary’s road, we cut right across the eastern end of the peninsula, and come to Sherbrooke, a few miles from the Atlantic, at the mouth of the St. Mary’s River. Sherbrooke is the headquarters of a busy fishing community, and there is some gold mining carried on hereabouts.

Journeying eastward twenty miles by rail from Antigonish we reach Tracadie, close to a good harbour, opening into St. George’s Bay. There is an Indian reserve in the neighbourhood, but the place is famous for its monastery of Our Lady of Petit Clarivaux, which was founded in 1820. The members of the community are Cistercian Monks, commonly called Trappists, from their obedience to the rule of La Trappe, the founder of the order. The life of a Trappist is consecrated to prayer, manual labour, and silence. The ordinary hour of rising is two o’clock in the morning, except on Sundays and feast days, when the hour is half-past one. The remainder of the morning, or rather the night, is spent in chanting the offices of the church, in meditation, and other religious duties. The fast is broken by a light meal at 7.30 in the summer, and 11.30 in the winter, the latter season being kept as a Lent. The Monks never eat meat, fish, or eggs, and it is only of recent years that butter has been allowed in the preparation of the vegetable food. The discipline is strict in all other respects, for the Trappist life is the most rigorous of all the monastic orders. Conversation, when necessary, is carried on by signs, except in addressing the abbot.

Besides their own manual labour, the monks furnish considerable employment to others who assist them in their work, and they are excellent farmers. In their religious duties they seek to make reparation for the sins of the outside world. Despite what seems a severe life they enjoy excellent health, and as a rule live to a great age. All their life, however, is a preparation for death. The burial place is close to the monastery, where it is continually in sight. When a monk dies, he is buried in his habit, uncoffined; and when the grave is filled in another grave is opened to remind the survivors that one of them must be its tenant in his appointed time.

There is also a convent of Sisters of Charity at Tracadie.

CHAPTER XIII

CAPE BRETON

There are few pseudo-historical anecdotes which stand out more vividly in the pages of history than that which Smollett tells of the eccentric Duke of Newcastle crying out to a courtier, “Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! Shew it me on the map. So it is! Sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island!”

An island indeed is Cape Breton, and such an island—a mingling of hill, and dale, and lake, mountain, moor, and tarn—rock, and crag, and fell—once called L’Isle Royale, and under the flag of the lilies—now the most eastern and most northern division of Nova Scotia, and the most Scottish portion of New Scotland. This island is equal to about one-fifth part of the whole Province.

Sailing out into the unknown territories of a world which if as old as the old was new to them, the early adventurers sought to make their surroundings congenial by a nominal association with the countries, provinces, towns, and villages they had quitted, perhaps for ever. This, the despair of the geographer, is the very poetry of geography. It began with Columbus—nay, it began with Leif with his Markland and Vinland, and it continues down to the days of Peary, and Shackleton, and Scott. Is there not something pathetic in the fact of a great bleak headland, locked in an eternal Arctic frost, being named after some fair Devon hamlet or Essex village, where the daring sailor first saw the light or loved a lass? The Arctic and Antarctic seas are full of such names.

Strait of Canso, Port Mulgrave.

On the south-west coast of France, near Bayonne, is a Cape Breton, from whence hailed the sixteenth century sailor who first descried the headland here to which he gave that name, probably the oldest in North American geography. When the name of this cape became extended to the whole island is unknown, and as may be guessed from the Duke of Newcastle’s remark, many were ignorant of its wider application even in the eighteenth century.

“The English ministry,” wrote Haliburton, “in the time of Mr. Pitt was said to have considered the island worse than useless, and would have rejoiced that Cape Breton had sunk to the depths of the ocean, being continually apprehensive that other Powers might obtain possession and thus establish a post of annoyance, which motive caused the destruction of the fortifications.” Utterly neglected, therefore, for a long period after it had passed into our possession, it remained a useless appanage to Nova Scotia until a separate government was established at Sydney, and by the enterprise of Lieutenant-Governor Des Barres, Cape Breton began to increase and multiply, and only received a temporary set-back when it was re-annexed to Nova Scotia in 1820. That event, of course, lost the island the coal-mining and excise revenues, and its fees on Crown lands, as well as the salaries of officials spent on the island; and it naturally took some considerable time to recover from these effects, especially as for thirty years the income had been outlaid upon much needed roads and bridges.

Cape Breton was long considered strategically the key to Canada. Now, however, that ships of large burden can and do pass by preference through the Straits of Belle Isle, it can no longer be said to command even the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The island is separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso. At Port Mulgrave a beautiful marine view opened up before me, as the Intercolonial railway train began to transfer its whole huge bulk on board the waiting ferry boat. The distant cliffs and fishing hamlets were bathed in sunlight, the blue waters were alive with multi-coloured anemones; sails of smacks and schooners darted hither and thither along the surface; there was a hurrying to and fro of tourists and fishermen on the green-clad shores; the whole scene was one of picturesque animation. One noted on the mainland the lofty Cape Porcupine, from whose summit, before submarine cables were sunk, the telegraph wires were crossed high in mid-air over the Strait to Plaister Cove. This stretch of wire was then part of the link connecting Europe and North America, and when it broke, as, of course, it frequently did, communication was suspended between the Old World and the New. I am told that a pleasing juvenile pastime of the fishermen’s children in former times was aiming stones at the wire, probably occasioning from time to time a rude interruption of the speech between two hemispheres.

A Splendid Moose near Lake Rossignol.

Mulgrave has a population of about 1500 souls, and is a centre for bathing and fishing, but its chief institution is, of course, the ferry. I have never seen such a perfectly equipped or managed piece of ponderous mechanism.

The train is divided into two parts and shunted on to the gigantic and specially designed steamer Scotia, which bears the burden without a whimper. Across the Strait we steam, the passengers either descending and walking about the deck, standing clustered on the car platforms, or craning their necks out of the windows in order not to miss the succession of views. In a quarter of an hour or so we are safely landed; the metal rails on shore join up to the metal rails of the Scotia as true as steel itself, and staring about us we are confronted by Point Tupper. From here a railway runs to Inverness, a district which no visitor to Cape Breton should miss, and which I will advert to later.

Meanwhile, let us note that for the first thirty miles or so there is nothing in the scenery, and certainly nothing in the very few specimens of the population that meet his eye to attract the traveller’s attention. Then come glimpses of interest at Seal and Orange Cove, Mackinnon’s Harbour, and certain inlets of the Denys River. Near M’Donald’s Gulch, which is crossed by a steel trestle 90 feet high and 940 feet long, an occasional birch lodge of the dwindling Micmacs met my eye.

And Denys River! How that brings back historical memories of the early French adventurer, the right worthy old Nicholas Denys, Sieur de Fronsac, victim of Charnisay!

We open and shut our eyes—we are on the verge of dozing, when in a flash the lake of the Golden Arm is upon us. There is no inland sea in the world quite like the famous Bras d’Or, that unique salt flood imprisoned in the land, 50 miles long, and taking all shapes—bays, inlets, and havens, studded with islands, half-broken by peninsulars never the same, always disclosing fresh beauties and picturesque variations.[20]

[20] The name Bras d’Or is doubtless of Spanish origin, as are many other names in this part of the world. There is Mont Real or Montreal, Anticuesta or Anticosti; Puerto Nueva; Placentia, Basin of Minas, and several Spanish rivers, and probably Le Bras d’Or and Labrador (labourer) have a similar origin.

One is bound to observe that, as regards the Bras d’Or scenery, the body of waters is so vast, and conveys so much the illusion of the ocean itself, that to produce a proportionate effect the surrounding land ought to be on a similar scale of grandeur. The alternate low hills and flat shore consequently rob the lake at large of its due effectiveness, although in the vicinity of the arms and inlets, and towards the northward at St. Anne’s, there is some compensation in a bolder and more rugged order of scenery. Viewed from the heights of the shore, however, this criticism does not apply, and the tourist’s eye is rewarded by scenes which for sheer beauty it would be hard to match throughout the length and breadth of the Continent.

On one hand are daintily wooded islets, on another a long lagoon, cut off from the lake in rushes. Enclosing it all are the mountains decked in the primeval wood, sloping gradually from the marge or rising sheer and naked until their summit springs into verdure.

This first portion is the Great Bras d’Or Lake; later on, at Grand Narrows, it becomes still further enclosed, and is called the Little Bras d’Or. Altogether these waters have an area of 450 square miles. Its extremest width is less than 20 miles, but owing to its eccentric contour there are places where it is only a mile across. The depth also greatly varies, in the same ratio as the hills—here as much as 700 feet, there 50 or 60 feet.

The Bras d’Or waters have a surface area of 450 square miles, and while the width from shore to shore is as much as eighteen miles in one place, there are times when less than a mile separates shore from shore. So, too, the depth varies in somewhat the same ratio as rise the surrounding hills. In one part of Little Bras d’Or there is a depth of nearly 700 feet, the depression equalling the height of the surrounding land. Every variety of landscape meets the eye of the delighted stranger, and it is because of this variety that the eye never wearies and the senses are never palled.

In following the railway the tourist will occasionally see what looks like a shallow pond, a hundred feet or so in diameter. It may surprise him to learn that the bottom is sixty or a hundred feet from the surface. This is a country of heights and depths. At times the train runs through long cuttings where the white plaster rock appears marvellously like snowdrifts on each side, to travel for hundreds of yards on high embankments in which the excavated material has been made to bridge a valley.

After all, the inland sea is but a part of the Atlantic, and an outside sea may sweep its waters into fury. I was told that to cross the Bras d’Or in a gale is not an enviable experience. The direction of the wind makes all the difference.

Whycocomagh is reached by a drive of seven miles from Orangedale (a name singularly infelicitous), where teams are in waiting on the arrival of express trains. Orangedale is at the head of one of the numerous little arms of the Bras d’Or which are found in this part of the journey, and near at hand are Denys River Basin, and Great and Little Malagawaatchkt (pronounced “Malagawatch”). The latter are two inlets of the great lake at the head of West Bay, on the northern shore.

Whycocomagh is situated on the basin forming the termination of St. Patrick’s Channel, which has its mouth more than twenty miles to the eastward, beyond Baddeck.

I do not know a more refreshing place for a summer sojourn than Baddeck. This village, long since popular with Americans, and lately of considerable celebrity as an experimental ground for flying machines, occupies the site of an old Indian encampment named Ebedek, called by the French Bedeque. To reach it one leaves the train at Iona, and takes the small steamer which connects with the through expresses from Sydney or Halifax, and steams a dozen miles upon the waters of the Bras d’Or. Once out of the Narrows, one emerges into a vast and gleaming expanse of water, dotted with sails, which seem almost shocking in their whiteness, so intense is the sunlight. The place-names hereabout are ultra-Micmac, and as difficult to pronounce at sight as any in Swift. Yonder is Moolasaalahkt Harbour.

“What does that mean?” I heard a Yankee ask an Indian.

“Oh, that means Big Harbour,” answered the Indian with a grin.

King Street, Shelburne (the town of the Loyalists).

“Big Harbour? Then why don’t ye say Big Harbour and have done with it?” was the indignant surrejoinder; which seems reasonable. Then three miles later we came to an upstanding and outstanding headland.

“What’s that?” we asked.

“That?” said the captain glibly, “Oh, that’s Watchabuketckt.”

“I don’t believe it!” retorted the Yankee.

Some visitors entertain the firm opinion that the late Mr. Dudley Warner, an American humorist, who used to stay in this locality, invented a good deal of the nomenclature. But it is not so; it is all in Haliburton.

Apropos of inventors, there is a spacious, well-built mansion on our right, which was long ago built by, and is still the residence of, that Scottish-Canadian genius to whom the world is indebted for that perennially-amazing instrument the telephone. Strange how many thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people in London, who daily see the emblem of a bell on the telephone call-offices connect that emblem with Alexander Graham Bell, the white-haired old gentleman who combines work and play at his summer home here at Ben Bhreagh. Glimpses of outbuildings can be had as the steamer moves along—laboratory and workshops; and on the lake in front of Ben Bhreagh rose the first working aeroplane in Canada, in which Dr. Bell has taken a keen interest. It must have been from some aerial craft that the name of Spectacle Island was given to the insula minor which flanks the harbour of Baddeck. Myself, gazing at it from terra firma or the deck of a small steamer, should never have detected any resemblance to a pair of spectacles.

But here we are at Baddeck, a village of 1500 souls, built on land sloping upwards from the land-locked harbour. There is here yet no large summer caravanserai—such as I had expected to find—adorned with spacious verandas, pretty girls, and a Blue Caledonian orchestra; but there is plenty of accommodation in smaller hotels and boarding houses, and I am bound to say one meets some very nice people in Baddeck. Amongst them was a Harvard professor and his two daughters, and a Brooklyn yachtsman with his two yachts, and it would be hard to say which was the fairer, yacht or damsel; although as regards the young lady who discussed with me Dr. Wallis Budge’s quartos on The Gods of Egypt, none might allege that she was in any sense fast.

O young lady by the shores of Baddeck, take thy Budge with thee into the wilderness and hook the romping trout, or paddle the gay canoes with Budge under thy shapely arm and the gods of Egypt in thy brain, for in such wise only may any fair Bostonian unbend and frolic with Chloe while offering at the shrine of Minerva! If it is true that I chaffed thee, why

“... Nunc ego mitibus
Multare quaero tristia, dum mihi
Fias recantatis amica
Opprobriis, animumque reddas.”

From Baddeck many in the season set out for the salmon pools of the Margary River, thirty miles distant, over a good road, and to numerous trout lakes much nearer at hand. Sea trout fishing, of course, may be had at Baddeck. All this is Victoria County, a great slab of territory which runs straight northward to Cape North and St. Lawrence Bay.

One returns to Iona and Grand Narrows, and entrains for Sydney and the east. I shall not quickly forget the railway station at Grand Narrows on account of a curious custom which prevails at this place. The refreshment room is managed by a gentleman with a large family. All trains stop here twenty minutes for dinner and supper. A sonorous bell is rung. The doors are opened, and a flock of hungry travellers troop in at fifty cents a head to discover, not without chagrin, the restaurateur’s family at dinner occupying the best places and already hard at work.

“It gives ’em an unfair start,” complained a commercial traveller to me as he filled his pipe. “By the time I’d located the dining-room, although I sprinted down the platform as hard as I could go, I was sixty seconds too late, and—there was only dough-nuts left!”

Which reminds one of the swift gastronomic feats which greeted the eyes of Chuzzlewit on his arrival in New York seventy years ago.

I must not forget to mention that there is held here annually under the broad and open sky, Nature’s own great cathedral, a famous Gaelic Communion service.

Amongst this Gaelic population are counted many bards, inspired men who compose epic ballads as they did centuries ago and do still in the land of Ossian. And the songs of the Highlands, the “Fhir a Ohata,” the “Tamhuil mòr, mac sheann Tamhuil,” still float out upon the air; while the traditions of old Highland feuds or the Jacobite risings of ‘15 or ‘45 still linger, eked out by such visible memorials as one may see, beside the rude chimneypiece—an ancient dirk or a rusty claymore that some long-vanished ancestor had flourished at Culloden or Falkirk.

But few of the aboriginal red men, the Micmacs, crossed my path in Cape Breton, and those that did were very much civilised. One stalwart specimen who travelled with me to Mira River wore a starched high collar, and was ready to discuss such questions as Home Rule for Ireland with me. To find the Micmacs in any number one must seek out their settlements, chiefly about the Bras d’Or, or attend one of their annual reunions. Years ago the Micmacs professed subjection to the Mohawks, and used to send a deputation in a canoe up the St. Lawrence to pay homage to the chiefs of that tribe in Canada. A century or two ago they were savage warriors in the pay of the French, and gave the English a great deal of trouble in the eastern and south-eastern parts of Cape Breton, and were especially active in scalping any survivors of wrecked vessels which came their way. Nor did they go unrewarded by titles and dignities. There is still, I believe, in existence a parchment commission, signed by Louis XV., conferring on a certain savage the kingship of the tribe, which is preserved by his collateral descendants; and there is more than one medal of honour yet worn emanating from the same exalted source. To-day, however, the Cape Breton Micmacs are no longer distinguished for ferocity; such pleasing mementoes as English scalps have been solemnly burned before the camp-fire; they have proved amenable to religion, they have taken kindly to farming on reserved lands, and the few hundreds who survive seem on the whole very honest, sober, and good-natured.

It happened at Christmas Island station. There was an island opposite, long and low, with firs at either end, and there were newly-made green-clad furrows upon it. Between it and the mainland was a lagoon formed by a low reef, upon which a number of thrifty cattle grazed peacefully. In the water adjoining was the skeleton of a vessel—perhaps some ship which had been driven ashore in a winter storm. In the distance the clouds hung so low as to shut out the base of a range of dark green hills.

“Why is it called Christmas Island?” I enquired of the girl, who seemed about eighteen, with a comely face and a profusion of dark chestnut hair. She was dressed in some light muslin or poplin stuff, and upon her feet she wore a pair of something which puzzled me at first, until I recognised in them the saffron-coloured football boots of Northampton. They were several sizes too large for her; and I have no doubt the damsel marvelled much at their shape and colour, but was reconciled by the thought that they were the latest fashion in the Old World “across yonder.”

To my question she replied:

“Oh, I think it’s because they discovered it on Christmas Day. The Indians go there to hold their feast every year.”

We strolled together to a small cottage marked “Post Office.”

“I am waiting for the mail to be sorted,” volunteered my companion.

“You expect a letter?” I asked.

She blushed and nodded.

“Is he far away?”

She answered: “Mother and me are always ‘expecting letters.’ You see, I have two brothers in the steel works at Sydney, another out in Manitoba, and father’s mostly away fishing.”

“And he?” I persisted.

“Oh, he?” She laughed. “Well, I don’t get any letters from him. He’s a brakeman on the Intercolonial, and I can see him every day if I like. I’ve written a piece for a prize poetry competition in a Boston paper, and I’m wonderin’ if I’ll get my five dollars or if it’s only a snide.”

One other scene of a different kind I should like to give, because it will always live in my memory. It was of an aged, yet stalwart Highlander, who in early youth had migrated to the new Inverness across the ocean. I watched him as he sat by the roadside with his little granddaughter on his knee; and she told me afterwards he was singing to her (as he often did) a little Gaelic song he had sung sixty odd years ago over the grave of his mother and his first sweetheart, which he had dug with his own hands. It was a year of famine in Cape Breton, but he had not lost courage. At first he had hardly missed the heather, “but now grandfather’s hopin’ to see the heather again—across yonder.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE SYDNEYS

“I suppose you know the Sydneys?” was one of the questions addressed to me by a charming lady during my sojourn in Halifax.

“No,” I replied, as visions of various individuals from Sir Algernon Sidney to Mr. Albert Sidney floated in my mind, only to be rejected as inappropriate. “I can’t say that I do. Who are they?”

“Oh, I don’t mean people, but the towns—the places. Sydney, North Sydney, East Sydney, Sydney Harbour, and Sydney Mines.”

“Oh, those!” I rejoined; “Oh, yes. I know those almost as well as I know the Croydons, and the Bromleys, and the Hampsteads.”

And, in truth, why “the Sydneys”? Is geographical nomenclature in New Scotland so poverty-stricken that places separated by five miles of water, and seventeen miles of rail, of different origins, different periods, and different interests, should all be called Sydney? I will not say altogether different interests, because the Sydneys are all joined together literally and figuratively by coal.

It is the old Spanish bay of the sixteenth century British navigators. That great Canadian, Le Moyne d’Iberville, the founder of Louisiana, set sail from here in 1692, on one of his famous expeditions. Hither Admiral Hovenden Walker took refuge after his withdrawal from Quebec in 1711, asserting Queen Anne’s sovereignty over Cape Breton by erecting a wooden cross, duly inscribed, on the shore. In the war of the American Revolution a naval battle was fought here. Three years later, in 1784, Governor Des Barres founded the town of Sydney.

The harbour of Sydney, which used to be called on the old maps Spanish River, has an entrance two miles wide, four miles above which it forms into two branches called the North-west arm and the South-west arm, both being protected from the sea by a low bar. It is on the east side of the last named that the town of Sydney was built a century and a quarter ago by disbanded soldiers, American Loyalists, together with some Irish and Scotch, the chief magnet even then being the mines; although the magnificent harbour and contiguity to the Mother Country no doubt influenced the pioneers.

And what a harbour is this of Sydney? Of great depth, and so sheltered as to protect it from the force of the ocean, none could be more secure. It is an ideal place for yachting and boating of every description—and every craft from a man-o’-war to a birch-bark canoe may be seen skimming over its surface. There is a prosperous yacht club, and on a summer afternoon one may see here a lively regatta in progress, and the whole harbour alive with boats. The motor-boat and the steam-launch are also popular here.

Sydney, which was a long time in fulfilling any of the predictions current three-quarters of a century ago, now has a population of 15,000. But when Haliburton wrote it had less than 500 souls. “The tide of fortune,” he observes, “has not yet set towards Sydney, and it appears, together with Louisbourg, to be neglected for places that cannot vie with it in natural capabilities.”

The country round about is well worthy of agricultural development; the advantages for a fishing population are marked, and the harbour opens up fine commercial possibilities. But not until steel came to Sydney did it really begin to flourish. In those distant days when Cape Breton was a separate province, independent of Nova Scotia, the Lieutenant-Governor and the other officials made this their capital, and spending their incomes here, that money, and the comparatively little derived from coal-mining, seems to have been the chief resource of the place, and the trading community was content. Within a square at the north end of the town I saw the remains of the barracks and commandant’s house. A court-house was also here, and a well-built Anglican Church of stone. The houses boasted well-cultivated gardens, in which there were many fruit trees, and the settlement on the whole bore a considerable, and, on the whole, not surprising resemblance to Pictou on the mainland.

Soon after the foundation of Sydney bituminous coal began to be mined regularly. As early as 1735 a cargo had been shipped to Martinique, but not until a century later did the General Mining Association begin operations on the north side of Sydney Harbour.

Gradually the enormous extent of the coal-fields became revealed. The North Sydney Colliery extended a considerable distance under the sea, vessels in the harbour passing over them. This gave rise to numerous witticisms amongst the miners, formerly fishermen, whose mates were trawling aloft. The pit came to yield 180,000 tons annually.

In 1892 the total yield of the district was a million tons, nearly four thousand men being employed in the mines. Operations from their beginning at what is now called Sydney Mines had spread across the harbour, between Sydney and Grace Bay. A syndicate of Canadian and American capitalists some years ago acquired or held options over all the working mines in the district.

On the south side of the harbour are the Victoria Mines, and the others worked by the Dominion Coal Company in the district between Sydney and Cow Bay, twenty-two miles distant, are the Gardner, the Old Bridgeport, the International, and eight or nine others, which names, I was sorry to observe, have been superseded by mere numbers. But of this hereafter.

It was in 1892 that Mr. Whitney, of Boston, first became interested in Nova Scotian coal properties. Under his energetic management the slow and cautious methods which had marked the output of coal since 1880 gave place at once to development on a gigantic scale. Instead of a long winter of idleness the men were employed continuously, and there was a great increase in the number of hands employed, and a general advance in wages.

In five years the wage bill was $400,000 higher than at any time when the old companies were operating the mines.

Nor was it on coal alone that the Whitney syndicate concentrated their attention. The Dominion Iron and Steel Company sprang into being, and forthwith another great industry was added to Canada.

Coal, however, was all very well; the difficulty was to find an immediate market for it. When at length it was realised that as much iron ore as was wanted could be had from adjacent parts, and when the Dominion Government offered a bounty on Canadian steel, steel works became inevitable. The capital came in the first instance chiefly from America, and one day Sydney awoke to find itself the chosen locality for the operations of the Dominion Steel Company. Other industries quickly followed in their wake, and Sydney was in the grip of a “boom.” Thousands began flocking into the little town—mechanics, artisans, labourers of all kinds; owners of real estates found their properties enhanced beyond their wildest dreams, and the building speculator began his operations. People rubbed their eyes when they heard all this, for “booms” were associated with the West, not with the extreme East.

By this time the Dominion Coal Company had built a line of railway from Sydney to Louisburg, traversing its coal territory. The potential supply of coal has been estimated at a thousand million tons, not including the innumerable seams less than four feet thick, nor the vast submarine bed of coal between Cape Breton and Newfoundland, one area of which contains at least three thousand acres. Of course the coal trade alone means a large shipping business for Sydney and the neighbourhood, and besides the regular colliers, many steamers call here regularly for coaling. A coaling station of the French navy is situated here, and frequent are the visits of French cruisers.

As has been said, Sydney is most favourably situated for the production and shipment of iron and steel. Although there are iron areas contiguous, yet the Dominion Iron and Steel Company in starting business on a large scale, decided to avail itself of the almost inexhaustible supply at Bell Island, Newfoundland, where its property is believed to be capable of yielding twenty-nine million tons of ore, besides submarine deposits. Then, again, the limestone and dolomite employed in the manufacture of steel is near at hand. Four large blast-furnaces have been erected at Sydney along the harbour front, eighty-five feet high and eighteen feet maximum diameter. Each of these furnaces will yield about three hundred tons of pig-iron daily. There are five great blowing-engines, of two thousand five hundred horse-power each, and each engine will supply fifty thousand cubic feet of air per minute. The boilers consist of sixteen batteries of two boilers, each of sixteen thousand horse-power, and capable of pumping six million gallons of water per day of twenty-four hours. The area of ground covered by the works of the company is four hundred and eighty acres, and is one of the busiest spots on the continent.

The works are most advantageously situated in every respect, being close by the waterside, connected with the Intercolonial Railway, and with an abundant supply of water for manufacturing purposes. The latter is procured from the Sydney River, where a dam has been constructed which is capable of supplying three million gallons of fresh water daily. The length of the water main is eight miles. The grounds and works are lighted by electricity, and in all the operations machinery of the most modern description has been employed. The limits to which the works may be extended cannot be defined, but the possibilities are, as the reader may judge for himself, very great.

The whole works form virtually a town within themselves, and, with the blast-furnaces, the stock-yard, offices, open-hearth ovens, blooming-mill, rail-mill, plate-mill, machine-shop, foundry, shacks, hospitals, store-rooms, &c., a complete system of a busy city is found. The machine-shop and foundry of themselves cover more than 60,000 square feet of ground. The company has a capital of over $20,000,000.

The wonderful advantages of Sydney for producing iron and steel at the lowest prices can best be shown by a comparison of it with Pittsburg. At Sydney the coal is close at hand, and the coke ovens save all the volatile constituents of the coal. At Pittsburg the coal is brought from a distance of about eighty miles by rail, and the limestone, which at Sydney is on the spot, has to be brought a distance of one hundred and thirty miles to Pittsburg.

Only last year were these coal and steel companies amalgamated, and thereby much rivalry and conflict of interests terminated in a happy marriage. At first the two companies were known as the “Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation,” the name being afterwards changed to “Dominion Steel Corporation,” which offered one share of its stock for one of the common stock of the Coal and Steel Companies. This offer was duly accepted, and in a few months only a fraction over one per cent. of the 350,000 shares involved were outstanding.

The board of directors of the Corporation was formed of the members of the Boards of the component companies, Mr. J. H. Plummer being chosen president. The principal executive officers exercise jurisdiction in both the Steel and Coal Companies.

Now that such economic and administrative initial difficulties have been overcome, the strength of Sydney’s position is manifest to all. For here all the materials can be assembled at lower cost than anywhere else on the continent, and the finished product can be shipped from the mills to any of the world’s ports at less cost than from any other point, for by water, as I heard it phrased sententiously, “Sydney is nearer everywhere than anywhere else.”

Sydney rails within the past twelvemonth have been sent to India, Australia, and England. The Grand Trunk Pacific is using them largely in construction, being shipped by rail to the extreme sections of the line. They are despatched by water to Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior, and well into the interior of Canada, to build the central portions of the road; they have been shipped around Cape Horn to British Columbia to lay the extreme western sections from Prince Rupert east; Europe, South Africa, the West Indies, Mexico, are among the other countries to which Sydney exports, although the bulk of her products are consumed in the rapidly extending home markets. Apart from this, Sydney is one of the most convenient seaports on the Atlantic coast, whereas the nearest seaport to Pittsburg is over 350 miles by rail, and that seaport, Philadelphia, 878 miles further from Europe than Sydney is. It will thus be seen what enormous advantages lie within the iron gateway of the great Dominion![21]

And Sydney harbour at night. The waters very still and glittering, and the light of Cassiopeia and the Pleiades all but drowned in a great luminous effusion like a Milky Way, and the whole northern horizon lurid with flames and patches of red glow. Then lights—lights—dozens, scores, hundreds of lights—like those on a seaside esplanade or pier. Behind those distant lights—in the midst of those lights, grimy men, stripped to the waist, are toiling—are fulfilling the curse of Cain, or, as some think, the blessing—earning their bread by the sweat of their brow. Ah, God, and they do sweat! The very flesh on their bones seems to melt, and the marrow to ooze from their joints, and their eyes to sear, and their hair to singe. Ah, say what you like, it is devil’s work to look at; but it is to do, and those fellows do it manfully. It is not for them to pick and choose their calling—no loafers or shirkers are they—they have enlisted with Pluto and Vulcan—they are at grips with fire and molten steel, and the night-shift wrestles with both grimly.

[21] The principal items of production of the steel works for the year 1910 are as follows:—

| | Tons
Coke | | 410,000
Pig-iron | | 255,000
Steel ingots | | 304,000
Steel blooms | | 268,000
Steel billets | | 88,000
Steel rails | | 140,000
Steel wire rods | | 79,000
Sulphate of ammonia | | 3,100
Tar | | 3,900,000 gallons.

All the coke made is used in the works for smelting purposes. Only a small proportion of the production of pig is sold as such, the greater part being made into steel ingots which are all rolled into blooms. A considerable tonnage is marketed in this form, but about eighty-five per cent. is advanced a further stage, and is sold in the form of rails and wire rods.]

And who are these men who sweat their bodies to running oil in mighty furnaces in the night, on the shore where of late was the primeval wilderness? Whence comes this hardy race? Would you believe it if I said they were fishermen—pliers of nets who have been coursing, and their fathers before, the briny deep? These fellows have shipped their rudder and beached their craft, and the salt foam splashes their manly bosoms no more.

The chief and practically only industry of Sydney Mines is the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company. The town depends entirely on this corporation, which was founded through the operations of the company’s predecessors, the General Mining Association, and its recent growth and expansion has been due to the “Scotia” Corporation (as it is colloquially called) in acquiring that property and greatly extending the field of its operations.

The collieries and the iron and steel furnaces here furnish employment to nearly four thousand men, and the company’s Sydney Mines wage-bill is nearly two millions of dollars annually. Five collieries, a blast-furnace, four open-hearth furnaces, 150 coke ovens, coal-washing plant, machine-shops, and thirteen miles of railway make up the plant here. At North Sydney, a few miles away, are the coal-shipping and iron-ore discharging piers.

Glace Bay is the centre of the Dominion Company’s operations, the general offices being here, and the largest and most productive of the shafts not far distant. One is helped to realise the gigantic scale of the company’s operations by the official statement that in 1911 they produced 3,892,958 tons. There are 5530 men on the pay-roll, nearly all of whom command high wages and live accordingly. Glace Bay, a desert a few years ago, has now a population of 16,562, and is the third town in the whole Province.

New Scotland has not been free from labour troubles. During 1909 the coal-mining districts were the theatre of great and prolonged strikes. There was a famous strike at Lingan in 1882, but since then none until 1909. Cape Breton was free from disturbances of this kind, and as for Pictou County, with the exception of a few days lost at a couple of the collieries, there has been no strike in twenty-three years. I do not suppose any coal-mining district on the continent can show a similar period of freedom from industrial strife.

But not many months ago the long peace was broken when an alien society, with its intolerable methods, appeared on the scene. These foreign unionists alleged they had come to help the Nova Scotia miners, who were weak and helpless, and at the mercy of the bloated capitalists. As a matter of fact, the Cape Breton miners are freer, in the best sense of the word, than their brethren over the border. Certainly they had never hitherto been under the heel of the labour “delegate.”

“Our miners,” I was told, “labour under far more favourable conditions than the miners across the border. Their comfort and safety while in the mine is better cared for; they are better housed; and although Nature has ordained that coal-mining in Nova Scotia must be attended with difficulties unknown in many districts of the United States, fatal accidents are 50 per cent. fewer here than there, due to our more advanced legislation, to a better enforcement of the mining laws, and to the greater energy, skill, and intelligence of the officials of our mines.”

There are many persons who advocate Government operation of the coal-mines. In mining legislation Nova Scotia enjoys the proud distinction of having, during the last thirty years, led the world, but this is like similar proposals for State-operated railways in Britain. There is one scheme which the Province Government might adopt, and that is a Government training mine as part of the education of the people, whether that education be common, industrial, or technical. The Government might operate a mine not for profit, but for practical purposes and the solution of the problems frequently occurring in the operation of coal-mines. A training mine might be a fitting appendage to the Nova Scotia Technical College.

For a serious problem is that of the underground unskilled labour, or loader question. Another is the “boy” question.

Many humanitarians are looking forward to a boyless colliery, when it will be unprofitable for mine-owners to employ boys in the mine. Not so long ago boys of five or six were employed; the age limit was extended to ten, then to twelve, and on to fourteen, and the cry now is that the limit should be extended to sixteen.

The solution of the whole difficulty is the elimination of both the boy and the horse, and the substitution of mechanical haulage, and this, in spite of hindrances to the general application of such a system and lack of capital, will probably some day be brought about.

I have mentioned the technical education of the miner, of which Mr. Drummond is an advocate. Novices would pass through a Government training mine, where all underground men would be miners, timbermen, and roadsmen in turns, and from which a novitiate, after a given period, say nine months, would be given his discharge papers and a necessary third-class certificate as miner. In the mine the novices would be under instructions from an experienced working miner. On the whole there is very much to be said in favour of the scheme, and Nova Scotia, which is a pioneer in mining legislation, might lead the way.

The northern shore of the Great Bras d’Or entrance, opposite Newfoundland, exhibits a precipitous range of gypsum crags and pits, concealed by forest growth, and forming a barrier between the Strait and St. Anne harbour. The southern shore is really the long narrow Boularderie Island, settled by Highlanders, and comparatively low-lying, after which comes the entrance to Little Bras d’Or. The transit by sea between the two channels is often dangerous owing to the formidable out-jutting point of Aconi, about which many tales are told. There is a sunken bar at the entrance of the Little Bras d’Or, which prevents the entrance of any but the smallest vessels. There is a road leading southward from hence to North Sydney, and there is another road crossing Boularderie Island to the Bras d’Or. In this district both farming and fishing are carried on, but the mines and steel works draw away most of the menfolk.

Off the coast south of Mira Bay lies the triangular island of Scutari, projecting two of its points to the ocean and a third towards the village of Mainadieu. This island, five miles long, is the extreme easterly point of the Dominion of Canada. The soil is poor, but it offers a convenient station for fishermen, and there is a lighthouse, to warn incoming vessels of the vicinity of Coromandière rocks. South of Scutari Island is Cape Breton, better known to the coast mariners as Port Novy Land, from the little islet of Puerto Nueva. It is from this low rocky point, beaten by the Atlantic surge for centuries, yet standing firm and compact, that the whole island of Cape Breton takes its name, another illustration of the little tail wagging the big dog.

Speaking of names, down the coast I looked with keen curiosity for L’Orembeck, so often mentioned by Wolfe in his letters during the siege of Louisburg in 1758, and where he planted a battery. I was struck by the frequency with which the name “Lorraine” occurred on the coast between Port Novy and the Louisburg harbour lighthouse. Little Lorraine, Big Lorraine, Lorraine Head, and Lorraine River; but no L’Orembeck was in evidence until I met with an old French fisherman, who pointed to Lorraine Head, and said, “La voilà—Lorraine Bec,” and the mystery was instantly solved.[22] There is a landing cove here, and a mile inland is the terminus of the Sydney and Louisburg Railway.

[22] Bec was often applied to bold, jutting headlands. “Quel Bec!” cried the mariners when they saw Cape Diamond, and the exclamation gave a name to a city and province.

Eighteen years ago (1893) Louisburg could only be reached from Sydney by sea or by a truly infamous road, which had the effect of cutting it off from the itinerary of most tourists. Between Sydney and Lingan, which is the next harbour on the coast, a fertile and timbered country was settled by the Irish, who called their settlement Low Point, and the deep circular pond hard by Kilkenny Lake. Before the advent of the coal-mining population, Lingan used to be noted for the giant flocks of wild geese frequenting this region, to feed upon the seaweed and the vegetation of the harbour flats. So prevalent and exposed are the veins of coal hereabouts that the surface of the ground used to present a dead appearance in many places, from having been reduced to a cinder by a fire which once ranged and continued burning in the recesses of the cliff between Glace Bay and Port Morien for a period of several years. Between Cape Percy and Mira Bay a barren peninsula, five miles long and two wide, juts out, ending in Cape Morien. This peninsula is joined to the mainland by a low strip of sand, called False Bay Beach, which often used to deceive the mariner approaching from the sea by tempting him to essay a passage through to Port Morien. Inshore hereabouts was settled by American Loyalists, and their descendants are here to this day. Rounding the coast we find ourselves face to face with Mira Bay, a “crescent of fair sandy beach.” The Louisburg Railway has more or less followed the contour of the land, and its station of Mira is not far from the sea towards the centre of the bay, into which empties the beautiful Mira River. Here is the favourite summer resort of the holiday-making folk of the Sydneys and the mining district. The beach is a mile long, sloping gradually. Here one sees in large numbers the celebrated leaping tunny-fish, which afford sport both to spectators and fishermen. These fish, sometimes called horse-mackerel, grow in Atlantic waters to a monstrous size, frequently weighing 400 lbs., and even fish double that size are met with. They leap from the water like salmon, but have not yet been captured with rod, line, and hook, though one Sydney fisherman stuck to one monster for twelve hours before he was forced to “sever the connection.” The tunny season begins about the middle of July. Mira River is perhaps more of a character of a long narrow lake, prolonged by what is called Mira Gut, until it touches the sea. It is fed by the Salmon River, which rises some thirty miles from the coast, and the chain forms of river and lakes practically runs the whole length of this part of Cape Breton. For those who wish to take a pleasure cruise into the interior, a little steamer runs from Mira daily. After passing the Gut a gorgeous panorama of land and water meets the eye, as the steamer courses through a somewhat irregular waterway with numerous tree-clad islets. Navigation for steamers of small burden is practicable for twenty-five miles. About half-way up is Sangaree Island, which divides the river in two, and upon which some enterprising hotel-keeper has established “Kamp Kill Kare,” an orthography which should delight the heart of the late Mr. Josh Billings or of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. In the height of the summer the islets and the shores are filled with campers, for the salmon fishing is excellent.

CHAPTER XV

LOUISBOURG

I found it a far different thing arriving at Louisbourg by land from arriving by sea. In the latter case, one enjoys a rapid coup d’œil from the moment one turns Lighthouse Point, of the harbour, Goat Island, the new village of Louisburg, and the site and ruins of the old town on the left. The first impression is that of a rapid transition from a violent running sea into a spacious harbour strangely quiet, considering what seems to be the exposed state of the entrance. But this exposure is not real, because Louisburg Harbour is protected by a sunken bar, not uncovered even at low tide. After the rugged and precipitous rocks succeed a series of hillocks here and there covered with stunted firs, and the land for a mile inland is poor and barren. An air of desolation broods about the place, which is hardly lessened by the great and grimy scaffoldings which form the wharves of the coal company, or the groups of fishermen’s cottages close to the water’s edge, although the eye catches glimpses of two or three trim white painted churches scattered along the borders of the harbour.

But were the prospect greyer and more morose to the ignorant eye, nothing could destroy the light which the spectacle will ever lend to him who has read Louisbourg’s story, or restrain the thrill it imparts when seen for the first time.

To the visitor by road or rail the surroundings of the modern village of Louisburg are apt to disenchant. Not even the presence of the two French cannon at the railway station, updrawn a few years ago from the depths of the harbour, quite offset the mile long stroll upon a creaking plank side walk through a succession of hideous clap-boarded stores, the bank, the lawyer’s office, the post-office, and eating-house. The older dwellings of the village are already falling into decay, and one old woman, one of the M’Alpines, who had seen better days, complained that the walls of her house, her home for forty years, scarce now sufficed to keep out the weather; and she and her faithful companion trembled lest it should not endure as long as their few remaining years. For it was no longer theirs: it had somehow together with most of the others passed out of their hands into those of the coal company, which like most corporations knew no mercy towards poor tenants.

But there is a great ray of light in New Louisburg, and as for me I shall not easily forget the memory of one plucky English clergyman who, amidst poverty and squalor, and social and spiritual dreariness, for twenty-eight years has fought a cheery battle against these forces, and under conditions in many ways far harder than those which face a Houndsditch curate, has not trampled down his flag, or even allowed himself to be discouraged. His name is the Rev. Fraser Draper—(although I have called him, and I believe he calls himself an Englishman, there is a Scottish element in him), and his parish covers, I think, some forty square miles. To this he ministers either on a bicycle or afoot. Far less affluent is he than the Roman Catholic priest, who would seem to have so many votaries hereabouts, or even of the Presbyterian minister; yet this Anglican is the man for his work and his flock, and has strongly stirring within him that cheery manly something which is more the backbone and support of an Englishman’s religion than the Thirty-nine Articles, and shines more in a selfish world than all the candles on all the altars. My friend is a great authority on the history and topography of Louisbourg (mark the spelling—Louisburg is the modern town), and has himself quite a collection of objects of interest connected with both sieges. He told me of the visits to him of Lord and Lady Minto, Lord Dundonald and others, and of the pleasure it gave him to show them over the site of the famous town. From his parsonage in the very centre of the harbour’s crescent shore there arises, three miles away to the right, a small upstanding column on the horizon. This was my beacon as I set out for Old Louisbourg—the shaft erected by the men of Massachusetts fifteen years ago to commemorate William Pepperell and the first siege of Louisbourg in 1745.

A French officer reported that Louisbourg was so strong that it might be held against any assault by an army of women. Yet English prisoners who had dwelt in the fortress believed Louisbourg might be taken, and their hopes were eagerly seized upon and shared by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, a lawyer by profession, full of energy and enterprise, who now resolved upon the capture of Louisbourg. Unless the English had control of the whole coast from Cape Sable to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the safety, nay, the very existence of New England was in constant jeopardy. The discontent and bad discipline of the Louisbourg garrison, which consisted of 1300 men, was a promising factor. The ramparts were, moreover, said to be defective in more than one place, and, besides this, if the French ships which came over sea with provisions and reinforcements could be intercepted, Shirley felt there was no small chance of success. He wrote instantly to London asking the Government to help him with ships. Without waiting for a reply a little fleet was raised, and a land force of 4000 men, chiefly composed of artisans, farmers, fishermen, and labourers, commanded by a merchant named Pepperell, was mustered for the expedition. Although lacking military experience, Pepperell possessed courage and good judgment, and was anxious to distinguish himself. On the 24th March 1745 the ships left Boston, reaching Canso ten days later. Here they remained three weeks, waiting for the ice to melt in the bays and harbours. Here, too, they were joined by the English commodore, Warren, whom King George had sent to assist in the capture of Louisbourg.

The command of Louisbourg was in the hands of M. Duchambon. One night, just after a public ball, a captain, attired in his night-clothes, came rushing into the Governor’s chamber to report that a strange fleet had been sighted by the sentries entering Gabarus Bay, five miles distant. Soon the cannons were booming loudly from the walls, and a peal of bells rang through the town. Pepperell made a pretence of landing his troops at a certain point so as to deceive the French. A skirmish took place, in which the French were beaten back and some of them taken prisoners. Before nightfall 2000 of the New Englanders had planted foot on the shore, and the next day the siege of Louisbourg was begun. A hard and dangerous task was the landing of the artillery and stores, owing to the rolling surf. There being no wharf, the men had to wade through the sea to bring the guns, ammunition, and provisions on shore. This alone consumed an entire fortnight. Batteries were thrown up, in spite of sallies made from the town by French and Indians to prevent them. An outside battery was captured, mounted with twenty-eight heavy guns, which now belched forth shot and shell amongst the besieged. Warehouses and other places took fire, and great columns of smoke hid the fort from view for days at a time. The walls were at last seen to crumble, and when the guns of the Americans began to close up on the fortress, Duchambon summoned to surrender, replied that he would when forced to do so by the cannon of the foe. Upon the island battery being silenced, the English fleet entered the harbour and turned upon him its 500 guns. Duchambon’s supply of gunpowder being now exhausted, Louisbourg surrendered after a siege lasting forty-nine days.

The fall of Louisbourg, the key to French power in North America, seemed almost incredible to the French. It was resolved at Versailles that an expedition should be sent out to Cape Breton to recapture it at all hazards. One of the finest fleets that ever left the shores of France sailed from Rochelle the following year, commanded by the Duc d’Anville, consisting of thirty-nine ships of war, with orders to recapture Louisbourg and Cape Breton, and to ravage Boston and the New England coasts. But a fierce tempest dispersed the whole squadron. When, at Chebucto, D’Anville arrived with the remnants of his fleet, his mortification was so great as to induce an apoplectic stroke, from which he died, and on an island in what is to-day known as Halifax Harbour, his body was buried. On the afternoon of the very day on which the French commander died, his Vice-admiral, Destournelles, arrived with three more ships. More than 2000 men of the fleet were stricken with fever and perished. Destournelles, seeing no hope for success, proposed that the expedition should be abandoned and that the fleet should return to France, a proposal which most of his officers resisted. They desired to attack Annapolis, which was weak and had a small garrison. Once it was captured, Acadia was regained for France. Admiral Destournelles, thinking his action reflected on his character and honour, retired, and next morning they found him stabbed by his own hand through the breast.

Ere the French fleet could reach Annapolis, another great storm arose, scattering the ships, and after 2500 brave Frenchmen had been lost in this ill-fated expedition, the only course remaining was to return.

In 1748 was signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Louisbourg was handed back to France. Ten years later Pitt resolved upon its final destruction, and the story of the second siege is known to every schoolboy. In the interval between the two sieges the fortress had been considerably strengthened, and its new commandant, M. Drucour, was a man of great ability.

The road to Louisbourg.

Louisbourg—the last of the Dauphin Gate.

The summer sun battled with sea-fog upon the miles of brown moorland, scrubbed birch, and rocky beach as I set out for Old Louisbourg—the scant ruins of the French fortress—lying some three miles away on a low-lying spit of land, Point Rochefort, on the south-western side of the harbour. This present village—a collection of shops and miners’ and fishermen’s cottages, and the wharves and lofty ruins of the coal company—occupies the site of the old royal battery which Brigadier-General James Wolfe seized and turned on the enemy. A century and a half ago from this distance the eye could have discerned across the harbour the roofs, spires, and stately battlements of a busy town. Now one’s only beacon along the barren shore is that slender shaft the Americans have there erected to commemorate the first siege. I followed the winding, rock-strewn road to this once-famed spot, where stood the “Dunkirk of the North.” A moderate familiarity with the military maps of the period enables one to trace out the chief features of the neighbourhood. To-day it is all a desert. There is no place like it, save Carthage. I crossed the bridge over the land-locked inlet called the Barachois. On my left, before the mouth of the harbour, lay Goat Island, where the French had a strong battery. Immediately in front are the remains of Wolfe’s siege works, when the young warrior knew he had the town in his grasp; and here, a pistol-shot further on, stood the Dauphin’s Gate, where the same leader and his victorious soldiers, “swarthy with wind and sun, and begrimed with smoke and dust,” entered on the morning of the 27th of July 1758. Some ruins of the Dauphin’s Bastion still remain, and a little further on are the relics of the bomb-proof casemates of the King’s Bastion. I gained the summit of one of the green mounds which once were citadel, bastion, ramparts, and glacis. “Here,” I could say with Parkman, “stood Louisbourg; and not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the havoc of succeeding times, have availed to efface it. Men in hundreds toiled for months, toiled with lever, spade, and gunpowder, in the work of destruction, and for more than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its vast defences still tell their tale of human valour and human woe.” A cow, a few lean sheep, a little group of fishermen’s children, are all that infest the spot and unwittingly consort with the spirits of the past. Here, at a charge of ten millions sterling, the most celebrated contemporary military engineers of France had reared a fortress without parallel in the New World. Within its ramparts dwelt some 10,000 souls. On this barren, wind-swept point, nestled a busy town behind sheltering walls, crowned by a citadel and adorned by lofty buildings. Here numerous regiments in the white-coated uniform of France, naval officers, monks, missionaries, mingled with the fisherfolk and the New England traders. To-day all is silence and desolation.

Nearly seven miles in circumference is Louisbourg Harbour, whose mouth is so blocked with reefs and islands that the entrance is hardly above half a mile wide. This was commanded by Goat Island carrying an effective battery. For a distance of several miles westward the shores of the Bay of Gabarus offered a stern and precipitous natural barrier to the foe, broken here and there by entrenched caves or inlets. Breastworks formed of wooden stakes also help to prevent a landing. I strolled over the uneven turf with feelings of deep emotion. It is still easy to trace the lines of the fortifications, to mark the sites of the buildings, and the lines of the chief streets. In the Rue du Roy I picked up a fragment of a French ramrod; and a fisherman offered me a French wine-bottle of curious shape he had found in the cellar of the Governor’s house. Grape-shot and bullets still strew the site. But only too well did the victors do their work of demolition. For six months soldiers and sailors toiled at the task, and the remnants of two bastions, with bomb-proof casements, a heap of stones here, a pile of bricks there, are all that remain, On the site of the Intendant’s palatial dwelling is the wooden cottage of a fisherman.

In the teeth of a high wind I pushed along the shore west of the King’s Bastion. There I saw and felt the breastworks of spruce still protruding from the surf-swept beach. I saw where Lord Dundonald fell, and where his bones now lie, and gazed across to Coromandière Cove to the spot where Wolfe landed. The very rock that felt the impact of his boat’s prow is still reverently pointed out.

Should not all this theatre of stirring events be preserved as historic ground? Its former renown was universal; its present oblivion is a national reproach.

I was interested in ascertaining to whom the ground of Louisbourg now belongs. Some years ago a claimant appeared in the person of a Captain Kenelly, who, purchasing the land of certain squatters, proceeded to put his own peculiar ideas concerning the preservation of Louisbourg into execution. But it is to be feared that the worthy captain, besides having no very clear title, was altogether ill-advised in his proceedings. He even went the length of repointing the French masonry, skirting the site of the town with a barbed-wire fence, and exacting a fee for admission to tourists.

Few are the tourists who penetrate to this spot, and those that come hail chiefly from New England. Fifteen years ago, on the 150th anniversary of the first capture of Louisbourg by Sir William Pepperell, funds were raised in Boston for a monument to commemorate the event, and a band of pious pilgrims duly established a granite shaft on the site of the Dauphin’s Gate. And again, quite recently, a large party from Halifax, consisting of members of the Halifax Board of Trade (anglicè Chamber of Commerce) and their friends, arrived on a holiday excursion, bringing with them a brass band. On that deserted Atlantic shore, near the forgotten cemetery which holds the graves of thousands of French, English, and American dead, there floated out on the air the strains of “The Maple Leaf”—the first martial music to awaken echoes in this spot for a century and a half.

The seafaring Kenelly is dead, his schemes are in abeyance, and his title to the land is vigorously disputed. Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that the whole site of this fortress is Imperial property, and the sooner an arrangement is devised which will give Louisbourg into the charge of the Battlefields Commission or some body appointed to conserve it, the better. It would be an eternal reproach to the Dominion if it allows these sacred vestiges to be swept from the face of the earth, save for the memorial which the piety of Americans have placed on British ground in memory of the exploit of their forebears. Why should we British do less for our victory and our victors? And, may I add, for the valour of a defeated foe?

There is much agricultural land hereabouts, chiefly cultivated by Highland Scots. “Quaint, indeed, are the ways of many of them,” says one traveller, “amusing their maxims, and droll their wit.” Can it be that this writer forms his notion of Highland drollery from the exhibitions of Mr. Harry Lauder? The truth is being forced upon a reluctant and prejudiced world that the Scots and the Jews are the true humorists of the world, but I do not think that humour is typical of the Gaelic folk. Personally I have seen none of it in them either in Old World or New, and my experience of the “droll Highlanders” of Cape Breton is that their ideas of drollery are rather Lancastrian in their cold-bloodedness. Hospitable these folk are, doubtless, but only upon occasion and when the mood takes them. I have heard of a traveller, a mining engineer, whose buggy broke down, and who sought in vain for refreshment for miles in this part of Cape Breton. “Some bread.” “We’ve nae bread.” “Some cheese.” “We’ve nae cheese.” “Some water.” “The well’s dried up; try the store.” This was a colloquy which took place after a half-a-dozen attempts with folk who shook their heads and had “nae English.” At the store, as he enumerated each item of his wants, the storekeeper looked blank and replied, “We’ve nae call for it.”

“Have you no crackers?”

“We’ve nae call for them; there’s some ship’s biscuit and some molasses.”

Ship’s biscuit and molasses! Hurrah! God’s own country! Ship’s biscuit, unless very mouldy, are milk-white; molasses is, in respect of its saccharine quality, something like honey. So we have come to twenty square miles of tillable country not exactly flowing, but in one spot oozing, let us say, something resembling milk and honey. One wonders, casting an eye over the sun-kissed rolling earth, at the quivering pines, birch and beeches, why human beings should for so long be content with so small a measure of material prosperity as this.

“Them,” says a guide in my ear, “why, them fellows is rich. Ain’t they got stockingsful of guineas in their cellars? Don’t you waste any pity on them farmers. When they ain’t farming they’re fishing, and when they ain’t fishing they take a spell o’ mining. They cling to what they get, and, barring a little smuggled gin or rum, get their living cheap, I tell you.”

The country between Glace Bay and Louisbourg ought to be a famous grazing country, especially for sheep. The cattle I saw at Mira Bay looked fat and comely, and in the western parts of Cape Breton a great sheep-raising industry might well be established. When it is understood that the food demands of the mining and manufacturing population are already far greater than the Nova Scotian farmers can supply, it will be seen at once how great is the opportunity here to establish a paying market, especially for mutton, poultry, vegetables, and dairy products.

Louisbourg—the Obelisk commemorating the First Siege.

As for sport hereabouts, besides large and small game in season, the existence of so many small streams ensures an abundance—even a superabundance—of fish. I heard an angler on the Mira River who, two days before my arrival, had caught eighty trout in one day! They were, for the most part, useless to him, and he had to leave them behind. Such “sport” is bound to pall—one takes refuge in the reflection that it cannot last. Cape Breton, like Newfoundland, is being discovered by hunters of moose, snarers of trout and salmon, and seekers of wild-fowl and shore birds from afar, and trains and steamers are pouring their human freight into the solitudes of yesterday.

Than a “Sportsman’s Paradise” I know no phrase so absurdly abused; but if getting what he wants and all he wants in the way of fish and fowl and fauna generally constitutes a sportsman’s idea of happiness, I know of no place where he can be quite so happy.

CHAPTER XVI

A NEW INVERNESS

Skirting the south coast of Cape Breton one comes to one of the places where Cape Breton gains an additional island by the presence of a narrow water passage between two sections of land. In this instance it is the work of man and not of nature. As man found Cape Breton, the whole four hundred and fifty square miles of water of the great interior lake of Cape Breton was by the Little Bras d’Or on the north-east coast, so that the early settlers wishing to go from the Strait of Canso to Sydney, for example, had to go and sail around the Cape Breton coast. This was intolerable, considering that at St. Peter’s Bay, a neck of land, half a mile wide, alone prevented a south-west passage to and from the Bras d’Or, not only a saving of hundreds of miles, but an abolition of the risks, sometimes serious enough, of navigating the coast. A century ago the importance of the scheme to cut a canal across this narrow isthmus of St. Peter’s was realised, and in 1825 an engineer named Hall surveyed the isthmus and made an estimate for the cutting, which, I believe, was done for little more than £20,000. Up to that time there had been a portage here for very small craft. St. Peter’s was settled by the French even before Arichat, and came very near being settled as the site of the great French fortress which was destined for Cape Breton, and which was ultimately fixed at Louisbourg. At a spot in the locality called Briquerie Point the clay was dry for the brick used in building the town of Louisbourg, one of the very bricks of which lies before me on the table as I write.

The canal is about 2400 feet long, with a breadth of 55 feet, and a depth of 19 feet, debouching at its northern end into St. Peter’s inlet, which in turn flows into the widest part of the Bras d’Or. Through this canal the steamer from Mulgrave passes along the Strait of Canso, and through Lennox Passage to St. Peter’s.

The sites of both English and French forts are easily to be traced at the present time. The latter, indeed, is close to the canal, and the house of the lockmaster is upon it. The old earthworks are plainly to be seen, and occasional finds of bayonets and other evidences of warfare are made. A few years ago a hooped cannon was unearthed, undoubtedly belonging to a period long prior to the building of the “Port Toulouse” fort here in 1749. It had probably been the property of Denys de Fronsac, who had a settlement here as long ago as 1636. Fort Granville, used after the English occupation of Cape Breton, was on the hill to the east of the canal lock. In this locality is Jordan Chapel island, where the first chapel for the use of the Micmacs is said to have been erected by the French over two centuries ago. It is the scene of several interesting legends still related by the Indians.

There is good bathing at St. Peter’s, and as a matter of course there is every facility for boating, both in the bay and the inlet at the other end of the canal. Excellent trout-fishing may be had by going a short distance. Some of the best streams are river Tiere and its branches, two miles distant; Scott’s River, seven miles; Thom’s Brook, fifteen miles; and Grand River, a like distance. There are salmon in the last-named river.

A good deal has been said about the indifferent roads in Nova Scotia, but those about here are well made, and from the nature of the soil do not become muddy. Among attractive drives are those to river Bourgeois, five miles; and to Grand River along the shore through l’Ardoise. A favourite water excursion, on the Bras d’Or side, is to the quarries at Marble Mountain, a distance of fifteen miles. On the way thither is Point Michaux, or Cape Himlopen or Hinchinbroke. It has all three names, but is usually known by the first one. Here there is a beautiful driving beach, two miles long, and an eighth of a mile wide. It is very level, and of such hard, smooth sand that the hoofs of the horses make little more impression on it.

St. Peter’s Inlet is studded with islands clad in verdure, and there are times when the scene is unusually beautiful, even for a land of which beauty is everywhere. On a calm summer morning, for instance, the peaceful sea is a mirror which reflects in rare beauty the red, purple, and golden hues which the sunlight gives the hills. On the land the colours are strangely bright, while the waters soften and blend the whole into a picture which must ever linger in the memory.

La Bras D’Or Lake. (Cape Breton.)

St. Peter’s may also be reached from Point Tupper on the opposite side of the Strait of Canso, by taking the Cape Breton Railway, a journey of thirty-one miles. The tides run through the Strait of Canso at the rate of from four to six miles an hour, and they defy the tide-tables by rising superior to all rules by which men look for tides to be governed. Their course is determined to a large extent by the force and direction of the winds outside, and they may flow in one direction for days at a time. The tourist can tell whether the steamer is going with or against the tide by watching the spar buoys and noting the direction in which they point.

Arichat, situated on Isle Madame, with about seven hundred souls, was formerly the seat of the Bishop of Arichat, until the see was removed to Antigonish. It is built on high ground, and has a fine harbour. There is another good harbour at West Arichat. The situation of the island makes the climate delightfully cool in the warmest of weather. This place was one of the important stations of the Jersey fishing houses, and the Robins still have an establishment here. In the township are many Acadian French, some of the families having come here from Grand Pré at the time of the dispersion. Houses are easily procured at Arichat by those who wish to reside here during the summer, and several Americans have been regular visitors for years, making the village a centre from which to take various trips through the surrounding country.

So far I have spoken of the middle and the eastern Cape Breton. But there is, as the map will show you, another side, the western, where is situated the county of Inverness, whose coast-line stretches from St. George’s Bay northward to Cape Lawrence, All this region settled by Highlanders and French has been only recently opened up by the Inverness Railway, a line built to tap the great coal deposits in the vicinity of Port Hood, Mabou and Broad Cove. This line starts from the Intercolonial Railway at Point Tupper, and has opened up a fine piece of farming country, and provided a winter outlet for the large quantities of coal being produced at Port Hood and Inverness. The road follows the coast-line for the entire distance from Port Hastings to Inverness, and an exceedingly fine panorama of land and sea is disclosed to the view. A daily passenger service has been inaugurated, connection with the Intercolonial being made at Point Tupper.

A steamer runs from Mulgrave to Port Hood, a distance of twenty-six miles, on regular days of each week. Port Hood is near the entrance to the Bay, and from there the journey may be continued to Mabou, Inverness, Margaree Harbour, and Cheticamp. My solitary fellow passenger was a gentleman from Antigonish, whom I neither flatter nor depreciate when I say he was the most typical Highlander I have ever seen. Tall and spare, with florid skin and high cheek-bones, and hair and beard which a decade ago or so must have been violently red, the beard jutting out in true Highland aggressiveness, it was something of a surprise to me to find that he did not say “whateffer,” and an eternal disappointment that he spoke anything but Gaelic. But indeed he had the Highland brevity of speech, and glowered about him from under his bushy eyebrows much as such a man should properly glower when in kilts, and with a claymore in his hand.

“Who is that man?” I asked the conductor of the train.

“That—oh, that’s old MacTavish.”

“I knew it.”

“Then what did you ask for?”

“I mean, I knew he must be a MacTavish. I was afraid you would tell me he was a Mr. Tompkins of Boston. He seems preoccupied.”

“Occupied? Aye, he’s a busy man is Senator MacTavish.”

I could not restrain a start of surprise. In the old days, a couple of centuries ago, in the old and real Inverness country, this man would have been a chieftain of freebooters and cattle-lifters, and doubtless played his part as deftly, as daring, and as dourly as under the changed conditions of our modern civilisation he plays it now. Afterwards, I had some conversation with Mr. MacTavish, and not once I am glad to say did he abandon his character or fall away from the high opinion I had formed of him at sight. I only mention this trifling rencontre, because shortly after my return to England, I read a telegraphic despatch in the Times to the effect that “Senator X. Y. MacTavish has been appointed to”—well, to very high office.

The train has arrived at Port Hood, which is the county town of Inverness. There are not many of the amenities of life here, and one could not reasonably expect more, because the two thousand souls here are in the swirl and centre of the Port Hood coal boom. The property worked at present by the company is on the coast, sixteen square miles in extent, and there are two principal seams, some seven or eight feet thick, supposed to contain nearly 150,000,000 tons of coal, which are being mined at the rate of some 500 tons a day. Yet Port Hood is already looking up as a summer resort, and many denizens of towns and cities who wish to leave the beaten track have fixed upon this place and its picturesque environs as a capital centre for boating, fishing, and bathing.

Coal is the great factor of Cape Breton, and it would make a Londoner’s mouth water to see how cheap and accessible it is. There are places where, as has been said, a man can, without leaving his farm, go down to the seashore and dig his winter’s coal as easily as he digs his potatoes. Coal in abundance is frequently struck in digging for fence posts, and around Port Hood in Inverness county you are sure to strike it if your spade goes deep enough.

There are a couple of islands off Port Hood, one of which had a great interest for me. It is called Smith’s Island; that this is no arbitrary title will be gathered from the fact that of the fifteen families on Smith’s Island, thirteen are Smiths. But then, of course, Smith is almost as much Highland as MacGregor. These thirteen families of Smith have divided the 500 acres of the island into farms, producing four or five tons of hay to the acre, root crops, and maize. Each family goes in for sheep-rearing, and there are fifty or sixty cows besides. But this does not exhaust the resources of the Smiths; they are fishermen, and make use of the fish offal as manure, which practically accounts for the land’s fertility, and there is a flourishing business in lobster canning. The fish caught is not dried exclusively, as was formerly the case, but a proportion of it is shipped fresh in government bait freezers and refrigerator cars, a system which is happily coming into vogue throughout Maritime Canada. Now I feel sure that if a similar colony of Browns, Jones, and Robinsons would emigrate and settle on Outer or any of the other islands about the coast, a like prosperity awaits them.

From Port Hood the railway goes on northward to Mabou, and to still further coal-fields. Beautifully situated is Mabou on a stream a few miles from Mabou harbour, and there is an abundance of trout fishing hereabouts. Past Mabou the line skirts Lake Ainslee, the largest freshwater lake in Cape Breton.

Inverness, now the chief town of Western Cape Breton Island, is only about a decade old. In 1900 the population was less than 100. In 1911 it had nearly 3000 souls.

The locality was formerly known as “Broad Cove Mines,” or “Loch Leven,” and it was originally the “Shean.” “Shean” means, I was told, the “home of the fairies.” It nestles under the towering heights of lofty Cape Mabou, close to the waters of the gulf.

The inhabitants of Inverness are already infected with the spirit of enterprise, and have a gude conceit of themsel’. Take the following description by a local writer:—“Looking down upon this site, the town of Inverness, much like a picture on the bottom of a piece of eighteenth century crockery ware, you behold by night the electrically bejewelled homeplace of about 4000 souls; by day you note that the erstwhile fir-thatched roof of the home of the fairies is covered over with workshop and cottage, bank-head and power-house, halls, schools, and churches, the homeplace of the modern fairy and his co-workers in other avocations—the homeplace of the hard-working, thrifty, fearless and frugal coal-miner and his family.”

Is not that wonderful? And yet there are people—even Canadians—who say Nova Scotia is not going ahead fast enough!

From Cheticamp, where is an old establishment of the Jersey fishing firms, the coast becomes higher, barer, and more rugged, and more dangerous to mariners, until Cape Lawrence is reached. Of this coast it was said long ago: “The north-west storms of November and December hurry many a vessel on to this long straight lee-shore, where the wretched crews, even if they effect a landing, wander in ignorance of the course to be taken, until their limbs are frozen, and they are obliged to resign themselves to their fate. In some instances they have succeeded in reaching the settlements to the southward, though eventually with the loss of hands and feet. Often, however, the only record of their distress is the discovery of their bones, whitening on the shore.” I am glad to say these tragedies are very infrequent nowadays, owing to a greater knowledge of the coast and the interior, and also to the existence of settlements hereabouts. The northern extremity of the island is only eight miles wide, that being the distance between Cape St. Lawrence and Cape North, the intervening shore forming a crescent, the land southwards sloping down to the water, and sheltered by the two capes. It is said to be of good quality, and, indeed, agriculture and grazing are not neglected there.

Landscape near Stellarton.

Cape North has been called the Watch Tower of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but this was before the Straits of Belle Isle came to be so generally used. It is the northernmost bulwark of New Scotland, a promontory two miles wide, extending four miles into Cabot Strait.

Who, standing on the promontory of Cape North, can look unmoved on that terrible island of St. Paul, which looms up ten miles to the north-east? This barren, rocky isle shares with Cape Sable the infamy of having been the grave of thousands of brave men. St. Paul, since the erection of a suitable lighthouse, has been largely robbed of its terrors for the living, but nothing can blot out the memory of the past. I have now all but completed my itinerary of New Scotland. From one extremity of the peninsula to the other had I travelled and remarked the people and the prospect. There is still an important corner, where it joins the New Brunswick mainland, undescribed. Let us retrace our steps.

CHAPTER XVII

AMHERST

Once again we approach a district of memories—the seat of the long feud between French and English for the mastery of Acadia.

In the county of Cumberland, on the south-western side of the narrow isthmus severing the Bay of Fundy from Northumberland Straits, and on the edge of the Province, surrounded by marshes, is the small and flourishing town of Amherst. Flourishes indeed, blossoms all the year round with an unconquerable prosperity—-the very type of “hustling,” boosting, busy little town one sees in the West, resolved never to look backward, and Mark Tapley like, to be cheerful and smiling under any and all circumstances. Such is the little town on the little Amherst River, named after the victor of Montreal, to whom the French surrendered Canada. “Busy Amherst,” as it likes to proclaim itself, even on the sign at the railway station.

Amherst, I was told, “claimed a population of 8000.” The “claim” really turned out to be short of the truth, perhaps to the surprise of Moncton and Frederickton across the border. For after all, had it been an exaggeration, one sees it is only a cheerful symptom and aspiration of growth. Here you find growth must not be spiritual, or intellectual, or artistic, but material. For has not the great apostle of Imperialism in our time told Canada, “Get population and all these things will be added unto you.” Of what value are the doubters here? And with what perplexity would an Amherstian hearken to the plaint my ears have heard in many English towns and villages, “Alas, I fear the town is growing. It is no longer what it was.” The vain sighers after a London or a Bexborough, “small, white, and clean,” would meet with scant sympathy in Amherst. But Amherst is still only in the first stages of its journey, and it is still, with all its aspirations towards Pittsburg or Lowell, still a pleasant country town filled with a pleasant people intensely attached to Amherst. Even politics are not taken seriously, otherwise how account for that bewildering phenomenon which met my eyes on the second floor of a handsome building in the heart of the town. Can you conceive of Mr. Pott of the Eatanswill Gazette and the editor of the Independent of the same town, not merely dwelling in unity under the same roof, but holding forth in the same office, even going to the incredible extent of assisting one another in the stress of production! Yet this is the case of the editors of the Amherst News, a Liberal organ, and the Amherst Courier, a Conservative organ. What a lesson in professional amity! It is not as if party feeling did not run high in the press of Nova Scotia. Alas, it runs as high and as tempestuously as ever it did at Eatanswill, if one is to judge from the columns of the two rival Halifax papers. One can imagine the weary editor of the News saying one evening to the editor of the Courier, “My dear sir, would you mind finishing this editorial for me? I am sorry I must run away to keep an appointment. Just go on from this sentence:—‘Borden, the leader of a discredited, disheartened, and disorganised gang of Tory office-seekers, is endeavouring to fling his disgraceful wiles over the Western farmers, but....’” “I’ll do it with pleasure,” returns the editor of the Courier. “Leave it to me, I see the point,” and taking up a pen he continues tranquilly, “but as the News has long since pointed out in our merciless exposé of Tory methods and Tory prevarication, these tactics are only laughed at by the sturdy commonsense yeomen of Manitoba, Saskatchewan,” &c., &c. Or, if it is the other way about, the News man boldly (but merely professionally) declares in the columns of the Courier that “Laurier and his renegade troop may extract what satisfaction they like from the howls and cheers of their Yankee, Armenian, Hungarian, and Doukhobor supporters in the north-west who masquerade as loyal Britons and Free-traders, but who, as we have so often shown,” &c.

And upon reflection I am inclined to suspect that even at Halifax, in the very thick of the party heat and storm, the rival editors are not quite as truculent and vindictive as one might gather from their charges and imputations; although perhaps nothing short of necessity—such for example as a loaded pistol at his head—would induce the editor of the Chronicle to edit the Herald, or vice versa. But, you see, the Amherst editors are too busy booming their town to regard Dominion or Provincial politics as anything but an intellectual or social diversion. No one would credit the articles they write about Amherst—Amherst’s yesterday a good deal, Amherst’s to-day a great deal, Amherst’s to-morrow a very great deal, I assure you....

Among the chief establishments here are car works, engine and machine works, a large boot and shoe factory, woollen mills, a coffin factory (fancy anything so suggestive of mortality being associated with Amherst!), an iron foundry, planing-mills, and saw-mills. Amherst seems to have solved the problem of cheap power, being the first to prove the practicability of Edison’s notion of power supplied direct from the mine. An enterprising company here was the first on the Continent to fix a plant for the generation of electricity at the mouth of a coal-mine, for the purpose of distributing power to distant industries that require it, and it is to be hoped that Amherst will ultimately avail itself to the full of the advantages such enterprise offers. The great power plant is situated at the mouth of the Chignecto mines, about six miles from the town. Coal from the shovels of the miners is carried in cars to the surface and dumped into the screens, and the screenings, hitherto looked upon as almost waste, are carried in endless conveyors to immense bins, from whence they are fed through chutes to the furnaces. With fuel so close at hand, requiring no second handling, it is possible to generate power at a low cost and transmit it to a territory included in a radius of several square miles. The successful inauguration of this experiment elicited a prompt telegram of congratulation from the great Edison.

It is worthy of remark that there is no vertical shaft at Chignecto. The coal is hauled up a “slope,” in trucks containing 1500 lbs. each, by a cable. When the trucks reach the surface they continue the journey upon a similar slope in the open air (built like a toboggan slide), until they reach the top of the bank-head. Here an elaborate system of trucks and switches sends each truck exactly where it is wanted, and its contents are mechanically dumped into rockers and over screens, which accomplish marvels in the way of “natural selection” before the good coal reaches the railway cars below, waiting to receive it. The final process, however, is an expert system of hand-picking, by which slates and other impurities are removed without stopping the progress of the coal for an instant. The slack or culm is mechanically carried to holders in the boiler-room by endless conveyors, where it is conveyed by gravitation to mechanical stokers, thus obviating the necessity of the fuel being handled in any way by human labour.

More substantial new buildings, either of brick or freestone, are built every year in Amherst—the freestone here being much in demand for building in other and distant parts of Canada. I do not think the private residences exhibit a very high taste, but they compare favourably with those of other parts of the Province. Nova Scotia, as I have already more than hinted, is, with all its natural beauties, hardly an architectural paradise.

The country surrounding Amherst is flat and marshy, but interesting, both scenically and historically. A century and a half ago Amherst was the French Acadian settlement of Beaubassin, and who that has ever read Parkman’s narrative can forget Fort Lawrence and Beauséjour?

When Louisbourg and Cape Breton were restored to France by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the British Government sought to offset this blunder by the English settlement of Nova Scotia. A proclamation was issued offering all officers and private men retired from the army or navy, and to many others, a free passage to Nova Scotia, besides supporting them for a year after landing, and giving them arms, ammunition, and a grant of land to build a dwelling. Parliament having voted £40,000, in the summer of 1749 more than 2500 settlers, with their families, arrived at Chebucto, forthwith rechristened in honour of the Earl of Halifax.

The commander of the expedition and the chief of the new colony was Colonel Edward Cornwallis, a man both able and lovable. One of Cornwallis’s first cares was this very Acadian district of Beaubassin.

Some 13,000 Frenchmen were at this time settled in some ten villages in Acadia. To the northward the French had built a fort of five bastions, which they called Beauséjour, and another one much similar at Baie Verte. Their idea was to keep up communication with Louisbourg until they could strike a blow against the English and get back Acadia again into their own hands.

Soon after Cornwallis’s arrival he issued a proclamation in French and English to the French Acadians calling upon them to assist his new settlers. He did not fail to remind them that while they had so long enjoyed possession of their lands and the free exercise of their religion, they had been secretly aiding King George’s enemies. But this would be condoned if they would at once take the oath of allegiance as British subjects.

It was at Fort Beauséjour that the priestly fanatic Le Loutre laboured to create dissatisfaction and sow the seeds of revolt amongst the thrifty, ignorant Acadians, who otherwise would have been happy and contented. Their minds filled with Le Loutre’s threats and promises, they refused to take the oath of allegiance, and even to supply the English settlers with labour, timber, or provisions, though good prices for these were offered. Cornwallis warned them. “You will allow yourselves,” he said, “to be led away by people who find it to their interest to lead you astray. It is only out of pity for your situation and your inexperience in the ways of government that we condescend to reason with you, otherwise the question would not be reasoning, but commanding and being obeyed.”

He told them that they had been for more than thirty-four years the subjects of the King of Great Britain. “Show now that you are grateful for his favours and ready to serve your King when your services are required. Manage to let me have here, in ten days, fifty of your people to assist the poor to build their houses to shelter them from the bad weather. They shall be paid in ready money and fed on the King’s provisions.”

Le Loutre, disregarding all this warning and exhortation, aroused the native Indians of the province, the Micmacs, against the English newcomers. He despatched them stealthily to slay and to destroy. Twenty Englishmen were surprised and captured at Canso while gathering hay. Eight Indians, pretending to barter furs, went on board two English ships and tried to surprise them. Several of the sailors were killed. A sawmill had been built near Halifax. Six unsuspecting men went out unarmed to hew some timber. Of these four were killed and scalped, and one was captured. So frequent became the Indian attacks that the men of Halifax formed themselves into a militia, and a sentry paced the streets every night. Cornwallis offered £100 for the head of Le Loutre. Ten guineas were offered for an Indian, living or dead, or for his scalp.

To build a fort to counterbalance the Fort Beauséjour of the French was imperative. The latter was situated on the western bank of a little stream called the Missaguash, which the French claimed as the boundary between Canada and Acadia. Opposite, near Beaubassin, Colonel Lawrence was sent with 400 men to build the English fort. Le Loutre and his Acadians did their utmost to prevent the English landing and building the fort, which was christened Fort Lawrence. The commander of this post, Captain Howe, reasoned with the stubborn Acadians, many of whom perceived the good sense of his arguments and acknowledged his good influence. One bright autumn day a Frenchman in the dress of an officer advanced to the opposite side of the stream waving a white handkerchief. Howe, ever polite, advanced to meet him. As he did so, some Indians, who were in ambuscade pointed their guns at him and shot him dead. La Corne, the French commandant, was filled with shame and horror at this dastardly murder. He would like to have got rid of Le Loutre, but the priest was too strong for him. His influence with the Quebec authorities was great, and the Acadian people dreaded Le Loutre’s fierce anger.

Notwithstanding, there were a number of Acadians who consented to take the oath of allegiance to King George. When the French Governor at Quebec was apprised of this he issued a proclamation that all Acadians must either swear loyalty to France and be enrolled in the Canadian militia, or suffer the penalty of fire and sword. By way of rejoinder, the English Governor of Nova Scotia declared that if any Acadian taking the oath of allegiance to King George should afterwards be found fighting amongst the French soldiers, he would be shot. Thus were the unhappy Acadians between two fires. A considerable number removed their settlements to the Canadian side of the boundary. Some travelled even as far as Quebec. But the majority who remained continued to cause great anxiety to the English authorities in Nova Scotia.

In 1754 the French contemplated an invasion of Nova Scotia, much to the alarm of Halifax, knowing that in the absence of the English fleet Louisbourg could send a force in a few hours to overrun the country. Were not the Acadians there to furnish provisions to the French invaders, and in forty-eight hours 15,000 armed Acadians could be collected at Fort Beauséjour. The outlying English forts would be destroyed, and Halifax starved into surrender. With New Scotland reduced, New England would be the next victim. Lawrence and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, taking counsel together, resolved to strike a blow instantly before troops from France or Quebec could arrive, and drive the French out of the isthmus. Two thousand men were raised, and the command given to an English officer, Colonel Monckton. On the 1st June 1755 the English war-party arrived here in Chignecto Bay.

As commandant at Fort Beauséjour one Vergor had succeeded La Corne. When he saw the English ships approach, Vergor issued a proclamation to the neighbouring Acadians to hasten to his defence. Fifteen hundred responded, and three hundred of these he took into the fort. The others he ordered to retire into the woods and stealthily harass the enemy.

When the bombardment was at its height, and Vergor was hourly expecting help from Louisbourg, a letter arrived to say that assistance could not come from that quarter. An English squadron was cruising in front of Louisbourg harbour, and the French frigates were thereby prevented from putting out to sea.

The Acadians became disheartened, and in spite of threats deserted by dozens. One morning at breakfast a shell from an English mortar crashed through the ceiling of a casemate, killing three French officers and an English captain who had been taken prisoner. Vergor saw that he had begun to strengthen his fort too late. There was now no hope—the guns of the English were too near. He despatched a flag of truce and surrendered Fort Beauséjour.

Having got Fort Beauséjour (renamed Fort Cumberland) into his hands, Monckton summoned another French stronghold at Baie Verte to surrender. The commandant complied, and the campaign was over. The danger to English settlers in Nova Scotia was removed for ever.

From the portals of the excellently appointed Marshland Club in Amherst I set out in a Canadian-built car with a friend, an ex-member of the Dominion Parliament, to pay a visit to Fort Lawrence and Fort Beauséjour—household words to a Canadian boy versed in even the rudiments of his country’s stirring history. We had some difficulty in finding the exact site of Colonel Lawrence’s fort, which has wholly disappeared.

Yet odd to relate, a prosperous farmer named Lawrence occupies the ground, and upon the site of the old commandant’s house his dwelling is built. At the time of my visit a youth was actively engaged with a scythe in a field where Lawrence’s artillery was placed, the breastworks having long been levelled. Bullets and other relics were occasionally picked up. A couple of the cannon I afterwards saw in use as gate-posts before a private house in Amherst. My friend deplored with me the indifference of the New Scotlanders, and especially the people of Amherst, to their historic shrines—the spots where the deeds in Canada’s story were wrought which make of the Canadian people a free people to-day. I was delighted to hear him say, “Every stone, every brick, belonging to our days of struggle should be a priceless memento—worth its weight in gold.” For I knew that when such sentiment finds utterance on the lips of one good man the root of the matter is there, the idea will flourish, and the fruit will in good season appear.

The Site of Fort Lawrence.

On we went to Beauséjour, on the other side of the Missaguash. Here ruins very similar to those at Louisbourg meet the eye, solid casements and bastions which have resisted the tooth of time, and where now cattle browse peacefully. One of the longest structures, the Governor’s house, solidly built of stone, is now a veritable cattle-shed, in which I counted ten cows herded closely together. But the view across the marshes and Cumberland Basin, across to the Elysian fields and the distant Cobequid mountains, was entrancing. The foreground was bathed in golden sunshine, the background seemed pale purple, as of a mist, while overhead mighty picturesque masses of creamy cumulus cloud rolled like a full sail of some divine argosy. A great dismantled wooden mansion, built in pretentious Georgian style, caught my eye a stone-throw from the fort, dating probably from the Fort Cumberland period, and I bent my steps towards it.

I have never before viewed such complete desolation and decay, the result merely of age and neglect, and not of fire or earthquake. One step within the portals convinced me that to venture further would be to endanger life and to invite the instant collapse of the whole edifice, whose every beam and rafter trembled on the brink of utter destruction. And yet because the house, though expensively built, was built of wood, there was nothing venerable about it or dignified—it rather inspired contempt, as of a dissipated old rogue, whose vices had wrecked his constitution, and was ready to tumble into the gutter. Eager as I am for the preservation of ancient monuments, it was with something like relief that I reflected that this rollicking old ruin was on the other side of the New Scotland frontier.

Twenty miles from Amherst is Joggins, the centre of the Cumberland county coal-fields, which begin at Maccan. I have not the slightest idea who Joggins was, but I feel certain that were he alive to-day he would have every reason to feel proud of the growth and prosperity of his name-place. The output of coal here is very large. The Joggins shore extends along Chignecto Bay, with imposing cliffs, occasionally three or four hundred feet high. Here are exposed some wonderful petrified forests and sections of carboniferous strata, which have been visited and described by scientists of such eminence as Sir Charles Lyell, Sir William Dawson, and Sir William Logan.

The coal area extends inland without a break forty or fifty miles to the neighbourhood of Oxford, the most important colliery being at Springhill, where the annual output is over half a million tons.

From an old resident I got an interesting purview of this part of New Scotland in the early ‘60’s. Half a century ago the whole district, from the mouth of the river Philip to the upper waters of that river, was known as “River Philip.” Neighbouring settlements bore distinctive names, such as “Mount Pleasant,” now Centreville, “Moores,” now Rockley, “Goose River,” now Linden, and “Little River,” which still retains its name.

Four post-offices, kept generally in trunks, served the commercial and social wants of the whole length of the river. They were listed as “Mouth of the River,” somewhere on the post road between Pugwash and Amherst. “Head of Tide,” now Oxford. “River Philip Corner,” where the old road from Amherst to Londonderry crosses the river, and “Upper River Philip,” where at that time one Rufus Black, one of Samuel Slick’s hosts, carried on an extensive lumbering and mercantile business. There were no railways nearer than Truro on the one side and Moncton on the other. The only prophetic suggestion of the present Intercolonial Railway was a stretch of embankment somewhere on the Nappan marshes, which had been thrown up in some spasmodic, perhaps electioneering, effort, in the days when Joseph Howe was strenuously contending for an “Inter-Provincial,” “All British” line from Halifax to Quebec.

On its last legs—Cumberland House, near Amherst, N.S.

What is now the town of Springhill, with a population of 5700, was then a sparsely-settled farming district on the foothills of the mountain, with, perhaps, ten or fifteen farm residences in the whole section, the most important of which was the old “Nathan Boss” place, as a stopping-place on the road between river Philip and Parrsboro, where travellers frequently took passage by sailing packet, from Parrsboro to Windsor, and thence to Halifax by rail.

At Springhill, the coal areas, then almost unknown and undeveloped, were held by the “Old English Mining Association.” One pit, or more correctly speaking, a hole in the ground, was operated in a small way, the coal being raised by horse-power and distributed to consumers in adjacent districts by horse and cart. The thing was but an experiment, and the consumption, even for a small district, was very limited, as the best of hard wood existed in abundance for fuel.

At Athol one may motor or take a regular stage-coach across the isthmus by a beautiful road to Parrsboro on the Basin of Minas, or one may take the Cumberland Railway at Springhill Junction, distant thirty-two miles from Parrsboro. I found Parrsboro but little changed from my last visit. To my mind it is one of the pleasantest little towns in the whole of Nova Scotia, and is visited by many summer tourists who appreciate the fishing, shooting, boating, and beautiful scenery to be had hereabouts. The harbour is sheltered by Partridge Island, a pleasant headland hard by, upon which a hotel is built, and from which there are pretty views of the Basin and neighbourhood. Parrsboro is a lumber port, handling nearly all the product of the southern forests of Cumberland as Pugwash does on the north. To the north and west of Parrsboro some of the best moose hunting in New Scotland is to be had, while partridge, geese, brant ducks, and other marine birds are abundant. A few miles behind me the Cobequid Hills, a long range running east and west from Cape Chignecto to north of Cobequid Bay.

From Parrsboro, where there is a good deal of shipping, a steamer plies across the Basin of Minas to Kingsport, Hantsport, and Windsor, and another to St. John. Indeed it is only eight or ten miles across the Basin, whereas it is ten times that distance round by land.

On my return journey to Halifax, I must not forget to record that I enjoyed the privilege of a spirited conversation in pidgin English with a Canton Chinaman, who smoked a large cigar, and wore a queue under his Panama hat.

A Fine Catch near the Mira River.

Odd as this Far East of Canada seems as a habitat for Chinamen, yet there is hardly a town or village where Wun Lung, or Sam Kee, or John Sing has not penetrated, and set up his peculiar and odoriferous little establishment for the destruction of linen. It is one of the curiosities of industry why the Chinese should have taken to this particular occupation. It began in the Far West, when the affluent miner and rancher, discovering the merits of a boiled shirt on Sundays, and that a glazed front and collar is an additional mark of gentility, sent his linen all the way to ‘Frisco. Then up rose the wily heathen to hit upon another use for the rice flour of his native larder, and thereby gratify, at ten cents the garment, the vanity of the early Argonauts. The art he communicated to others of his race, it spread north, south, east, and west, and in the process of time one hundred thousand flat-irons were actuating from Los Angeles to Labrador. Thus was the immediate industrial future of the invading Mongol assured.

The Legislature was not in session at the time of my visit to Halifax. But I met in a friendly way many of the legislators, and I learnt a good deal of the local needs, real or fancied, which agitate this community and all other communities on the face of the earth, but which are of little interest to the outside world. Considering that the population of the Province is only half a million souls, the machinery of government would seem somewhat cumbrous. First of all, Nova Scotia sends 20 members to the Federal House of Commons at Ottawa, and 10 members to the Senate. The Provincial Parliament consists of 38 members: there is a Legislative Council of 21 members and an Executive Council of 10 members. Moreover, there is a system of local government operating in the eighteen counties.

The Federal Parliament alone deals with such important matters as revenue duties, railway grants, the judiciary and the postal system, leaving to the Halifax Legislature the schools, public roads and bridges, local railways, and the royalties on minerals owned by the Province. The County and Township Councils regulate the taxation for roads, schools, and other purposes, every citizen directly voting his own taxation, although such taxes are supplemented by grants from the Provincial Government, which has a unique and perennial source of wealth in the mining royalties.

Although the Legislature and Council is so numerous, the real labour of the Executive really falls upon two or three pairs of shoulders—chiefly those of the Premier and the Attorney-General and the Commissioner of Works and Mines. Although the Hon. George Henry Murray, K.C., is only fifty, he has been the First Minister of the Crown in New Scotland for sixteen years, succeeding Mr. Fielding when the latter joined the Laurier Cabinet in 1896. Mr. Murray is one of those politicians who, like his party chief, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, exhibits prudence and probity in power, and having the honour of his country at heart fully enjoys the confidence of the people.

Under his political leadership, which is not likely to be disturbed, save by considerations of health, now, I was glad to find, no longer imminent, the fortunes of both land and people are certain to advance hopefully into the future.

Considering its unrivalled water-power facilities, New Scotland might easily become a great manufacturing country, as New England has long been. Manufacturing has made considerable progress in recent years; but the Province only occupies the third place in manufactures, Ontario and Quebec far outstripping her. There are now some twelve hundred establishments, with a total capital, including lands, building, machinery and motive power, tools and implements, and working capital, of 34,586,416 dollars, paying out 4,395,618 dollars in wages to 21,010 men, women, and children.[23]

[23] Nova Scotia puts a very small tax on its industries. The total provincial and municipal taxes on manufacturing industries in the census year were but 73,276 dollars, and of this only 2566 dollars augmented the revenue of the Province.

The products of Nova Scotia’s manufactories were 63,700,000 dollars in 1911. These included food products, textiles, iron and steel products, paper and printing, liquors and beverages, chemicals and allied products, clay, glass and stone products, metals and their products, tobacco, vehicles for land, vessels for water, and miscellaneous industries. The value of the manufactured products in Nova Scotia has more than doubled in a single decade, and to this result the increased output in connection with the iron and steel industries has of course greatly contributed.

The province’s position now may well be called, in respect to the establishment of manufacturing industries, truly strategic. Her situation on the ocean highway enables her to assemble all the raw materials cheaply, and to manufacture at lowest cost for the home and foreign market. Here are the only coal-fields in Eastern Canada, those on the seaboard being practically inexhaustible. Pig-iron from the increasing furnaces of the Province has already been exported to markets distributed along the whole seaboard of the United States, to most parts of the world, and to some parts of Germany. Gold, steel, gypsum, pulp for paper manufacturing, grindstones, building stones, timber, fish, fruit, and many manufactured goods are exported abroad. Nova Scotia’s ships for 200 years frequented the ports of the world, and carried on a thriving and ever increasing trade.

All this abundance of coal, and other minerals, combined with her geographical position in relation to Great Britain and Europe, the North Atlantic Coast of America, the West Indies, and South America, leaves no room for doubt that the Province is destined to become one of the great manufacturing centres of the world.

“I don’t know what more you’d ask,” cried Sam Slick; “almost an island, indented everywhere with harbours, surrounded with fisheries. The key of the St. Lawrence, the Bay of Fundy, and the West Indies; prime land above, one vast mineral bed beneath, and a climate over all temperate, pleasant and healthy. If that ain’t enough for one place, it’s a pity—that’s all.”

And so I part from this little book about New Scotland—an imperfect survey, but not intended to be compendious; only that to the British reader, willing to know something of the people, the land, and the resources of our great Western Dominion, a new Province may, like the film pictures of a cinematograph, “swim into his ken.”

More and more will the Nova Scotians increase in culture as in wealth, more and more will their country become a great Imperial asset. To apply here to New Scotland a famous passage of Froude’s concerning the story of Old Scotland, turn where one may, “weakness is nowhere; power, energy, and will are everywhere. Sterile as the landscape where it will first unfold itself, we shall watch the current winding its way with expanding force and features of enlarging magnificence, till at length the rocks and rapids will have passed—the stream will have glided down into the plain to the meeting of the waters—from which as from a new fountain the united fortunes of the British Empire flow on to their unknown destiny.”

APPENDIX A

TO ENCOURAGE SETTLEMENT ON FARM
LANDS IN NOVA SCOTIA

The following interesting measure became law during the 1912 session of the Nova Scotia Legislature. Further particulars respecting its operation may be obtained from Mr. Arthur S. Barnstead, Secretary of Industries and Immigration, 197 Hollis Street, Halifax, and Mr. J. Howard, Agent-General, 57A Pall Mall, London, S.W.

An Act for the Encouragement of Settlement on Farm Lands

Whereas, it is desirable that agricultural settlement should be further promoted in this Province, and that facilities should be afforded whereby settlers will be encouraged to purchase or acquire for themselves farm holdings:

And whereas, there are in the Province farms unoccupied and untilled, arable tracts not yet brought under cultivation, and other lands available for settlement and suitable therefor:

And whereas, it is desirable to settle on those lands selected farmers from the British Isles or elsewhere, who wish to acquire lands of their own, but are unable to do so, and it is further desirable to give assistance in the purchase of farms to those who are already engaged in or desire to engage in agriculture within the Province who possess the necessary qualifications:

And whereas, there are in the British Isles and elsewhere many men with practical experience in farming, who might be induced with advantage both to themselves and to the Province to settle in Nova Scotia, or to return to this Province, if previously resident here, provided facilities are available that will assist them, in the purchase of farm land and buildings by way of loans or mortgages;

Therefore be it enacted by the Governor, Council and Assembly as follows:

Interpretation.

1. In this Chapter, unless the context otherwise requires, the words “loan company” or “trust company” mean any loan company or companies, or loan society, carrying on the business within the Province of Nova Scotia of lending money on mortgages of real estate.

The word “farmer” includes persons who have removed, or who contemplate removing to this Province from other places, to settle in this Province and engage in farming, and other persons who may already be engaged or about to engage in farming in this Province.

The word “inspector” means any inspector or assistant inspector appointed by the Governor-in-Council under the provisions of this Act.

2. Whenever a loan company will agree, upon receiving the guarantee herein mentioned, to advance to a farmer on mortgage of farm lands and buildings thereon on terms approved by the Governor-in-Council, an amount not exceeding eighty per cent. of the value of such farm lands and buildings as appraised by such loan company, the Governor-in-Council upon such appraisement being confirmed by the inspector, and upon receiving a report from the inspector, is empowered from time to time to authorise the Provincial Secretary or Deputy Provincial Secretary to give a guarantee in writing to such loan company against loss on any such mortgage to an amount not exceeding the difference between fifty per cent. of such appraised value and the amount of the loan, together with interest thereon. Such guarantee may be in the form in the Schedule to this Act, or to the like effect.

3. Whenever a loan company will agree to advance to a farmer on a first mortgage of farm lands and buildings thereon, on terms approved by the Governor-in-Council, an amount up to at least fifty per cent. of the value of such farm lands and buildings as appraised by such loan company, the Governor-in-Council upon such appraisement being confirmed by the inspector and upon receiving a report from the inspector, may arrange with such loan company to advance to such persons through such loan company out of funds provided for the purpose an additional amount not exceeding the difference between fifty per cent. and eighty per cent. of such appraised value, provided that this additional amount of advance on any one loan shall not exceed the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars.

4. All repayments of principal made on any mortgage given under the provisions of the next two preceding sections of this Act shall be first applied by the loan company making the same, towards the reduction of any Government guarantee or advance; provided that the Governor-in-Council may agree to defer the repayment by the farmer of the instalments of principal and interest on the additional amount loaned or guaranteed by the Governor-in-Council, under the preceding sections, for a period not to exceed five years from the time of effecting the loan.

5. The Governor-in-Council may appoint an inspector or inspectors to appraise and report on farm lands and buildings thereon, and to perform such other duties as may be delegated by the Governor-in-Council. The Governor-in-Council may also appoint such assistant inspectors and other officers, assistants and persons, as may be necessary for the carrying out of the provisions of this Act, and may prescribe their duties and may fix the salaries, compensation or fees of any person appointed under the provisions of this section.

6. The Governor-in-Council is authorised from time to time to purchase real estate in farming districts, sub-divide it into farms or lots, erect buildings and fences, prepare the land for crops and sell said real estate to farmers in such parcels or lots and on such terms as may be approved by the Governor-in-Council.

7. The Governor-in-Council may make regulations for the carrying out effectively the provisions of this Act.

8. The Governor-in-Council is authorised to borrow on the credit of the Province, a sum not exceeding two hundred thousand dollars, for the purpose of providing a fund for the purposes of this Act.

9. The Provincial Secretary shall make an annual report to the Legislature of all loans effected and the terms thereof.

Schedule.

In the matter of Chapter ...., Acts 1912.

The Province of Nova Scotia hereby guarantees the payment of ...., principal to the extent of $ .... of a mortgage from (name of farmers) to .... (name of Loan Company) on the lands hereinafter described, and interest thereon provided that all repayments of principal on said mortgage shall be first applied towards the reduction of the amount so guaranteed.

The said lands are described as follows, that is to say: (description).

Dated at Halifax, N. S. the .... day of ...., A. D., 19....

.......................

Provincial Secretary.

APPENDIX B

SPORT IN NOVA SCOTIA

It is a little singular that although Nova Scotia is one of the most interesting and prolific sporting countries in the world, it has attracted so few British tourists. It certainly offers abundance of game and fish, and when it is made easily accessible, thousands of Englishmen might profitably spend a happy, bracing holiday there. It is celebrated for the greatest of the deer family, the moose, which was killed last year in nearly every county in the Province,[24] and the species is steadily increasing in numbers, thanks to a stricter carrying out of the game law. The woodcock shooting in Nova Scotia is celebrated, and the ruffed grouse (partridge), the king of game birds, was killed last year in unprecedented numbers; while in the countries to the south of us its gradual decrease has been bitterly mourned. Duck and geese are abundant in some districts. Bear and wild-cat are plentiful, too plentiful in fact, though hard to approach. Hares offer a fine opportunity for the beagles.

[24] Moose Killed in Nova Scotia.

County.

Number.

Bulls.

Cows.

Sex not
Given.

Killed in
1907.

Annapolis | 106 | 52 | 48 | 6 | 54
Colchester | 29 | 11 | 14 | 4 | 21
Cumberland | 21 | 12 | 4 | 5 | 10
Digby | 42 | 20 | 21 | 1 | 25
Guysboro | 61 | 35 | 22 | 41 | 48
Halifax | 151 | 72 | 62 | 17 | 153
King’s | 15 | 8 | 7 | 0 | 8
Lunenburg | 12 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 24
Queen’s | 12 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 7
Pictou | 47 | 28 | 12 | 7 | 49
Shelburne | 30 | 18 | 10 | 2 | 33
Yarmouth | 47 | 26 | 20 | 1 | 40
| —— | —— | —— | —— | ——
Total | 590 | 300 | 240 | 50 | 486

Adding to these about 100 that were not reported, owing to a misunderstanding of the new law, and another 100 probably killed illegally and never reported, we arrive at a total of some 800 moose killed in Nova Scotia during the autumn.

As for fishing, in no country in the world are trout more plentiful nor more gamey, and one variety, the salvelinus fortinalis, or speckled brook-trout, is the most beautiful of all. There is good salmon-fishing, which is likely to become better still, as public opinion is awakening to the dangerous breaches of the law on the part of the net-fishermen at the mouths of the streams.

According to the Nova Scotia Game Act (1909), the Moose season is from September 16th to November 16th. Moose are hunted in two ways, “calling” and “still-hunting.” Calling is the method almost exclusively pursued in the mating time, which lasts approximately from the first week in September to the 20th of October. It consists in luring the bull-moose within rifle-shot by means of imitating, through a speaking-horn of birch-bark, the call, or low, of the cow, or sometimes, though much seldomer, the challenge of a rival bull. This can be done only in absolutely calm weather, since the bull, which trusts for its safety to its abnormal sense of smell, will otherwise infallibly go to leeward of the hunter, get his scent, and then, of course, retire without showing itself. A calm is also necessary if the sound of the call is to penetrate to any distance. A certain class of writers, nearly all inexperienced, have decried the method of calling as unsportsmanlike, insisting that it is an easy art, that the moose is off its guard and all too ready to be fooled, and that the guide does all the work, while the hunter merely waits and shoots when the quarry appears. There are many fallacies in this view. Calling is not an easy art, the bull is by no means off its guard, but just the very contrary; and the argument against the secondary rôle of the sportsman might also be applied to bird-shooting over dogs. It is very fascinating to witness the art of the guide as he calls a moose, and there are moments, as the bull approaches and appears, that still-hunting cannot match for excitement. Besides, there is no law against the sportsman doing the calling himself, if he has a mind, and many have attempted it successfully after some years of experience with good callers.

When the moose have paired, the bull can no longer be called, and the method employed for the rest of the season is that of still-hunting, or stalking (creeping up to) the animals under cover of a wind while they are in their “yards,” a yard being the range, of greater or less extent, covered by one moose-family during the late autumn and winter. It commonly consists of a combination of swamp and ridge, though this differs according to the character of the country. The ideal conditions for approaching the game are a high wind and soft-going underfoot, either soaked with rain, or better, covered with light snow, which makes tracking much easier. Still-hunting requires much more physical exertion on the part of the hunter, and is not recommended to ladies, or in fact any but the robust. Still-hunting gets better as the season approaches its end.

The caribou is a cousin of the European reindeer, and ranges from Maine and Newfoundland northward and northwestward to Hudson Bay and the Pacific. There are two general species, the woodland and the barren-ground, the latter inhabiting the regions farther north. The woodland caribou (rangifer caribou) is the largest of its kind, and once overran the whole of Nova Scotia, but is now practically confined to the island of Cape Breton, where it is still plentiful. A very large specimen weighs about 400 lbs., and stands four feet high at the shoulders. The peculiar construction of the caribou’s hoofs enables it to travel easily over snow into which any other of the deer family would sink helplessly. It is polygamous, one bull possessing several cows.

It is killed by still-hunting. The outfit is the same as for moose, with the addition of a good field-glass.

The caribou is protected by the Nova Scotia law until 1912.

Bruin’s representative in Nova Scotia is the Black Bear or Ursus americanus, a large specimen of which will weigh about 400 lbs. It will eat anything from ants to sheep, and has a predilection for calf-moose, many of these helpless little creatures falling victims to his voracity, in spite of the mother’s defence. A bear will almost never face a man, but a mother with young cubs forms a distinct exception to this rule, and should an unarmed sportsman meet such a combination in the woods, the best thing for him is not to wait for a nearer introduction. The only practical way to hunt bears systematically is by means of a good bear-hound (fox-hound trained to this work), which tracks Bruin to his den. Bears are often met by accident and shot, and in this Province they have a way of coming to a moose-caller, hoping for a meal of calf. Many are trapped, sometimes in a large dead-fall, but usually in a steel Newhouse bear-trap, so placed that the bear must walk over the trap to get at the bait, which is either of meat or a bundle of trout, soaked sometimes in molasses or honey. In some counties there is a bounty of $2 on bears, which might be made general throughout the Province.

Wild-cats are very numerous and play havoc with game-birds and hares, as well as with the farmer’s lambs. There is therefore a bounty of $1 on them in some counties. The wild-cat (lynx rufus, bay lynx or bobcat) is a strong, savage, and exceedingly shy animal, almost never seen unless tracked and brought to bay by trained hounds, or when caught in traps or snares. A very large one will weigh 40 lbs. and measure four feet from tail to nose. Its pelt makes a pretty mat. In spite of all backwoods traditions, there is no record of a wild-cat attacking a man.

Nova Scotia offers excellent game-bird shooting, the three classes of wild-fowl, forest-birds, and shore-birds or waders, being well represented. They comprise wild ducks, geese, ruffed grouse (partridge), woodcock, snipe, plover, yellowlegs, sandpiper, curlew, and others. The best places and seasons for these birds may be ascertained at the Capital.

At present in Nova Scotia there is a tendency to protect game-birds of all kinds, and on that account non-residents are required to pay the same license for shooting them as for moose, $30, a tax the size of which is not conducive to the encouragement of visiting bird-hunters.

Fishing.—Along the entire shore of Nova Scotia the usual salt-water fish may be caught in abundance, such as cod, pollock, perch, flounders, &c., but neither the native nor the visitor has as yet paid much attention to the big game fishes that occupy so much of the angler’s time farther south. Two of these are among the choicest there are, the striped bass and the leaping tuna, though the latter is not eaten on this side of the Atlantic, except by our Italian fellow-citizens.

The two great game fishes of Nova Scotia are the Atlantic salmon (salmo salar), and the speckled or brook trout (salvelinus fontinalis). Large toque (salvelinus ramaycush), or lake trout, are found in several lakes, as in Nine-Mile Lake, Lunenburg County. A land-locked variety of the salmon, the Sebago salmon (salmo salar sebago), is found in some waters, as Grand Lake and Beaver Bank Lake in Halifax County.

Nova Scotia was once famous for her salmon-streams, and such rivers as the Medway, Mersey, St. Mary’s, Margaree, Tusket, Salmon, Petite Riviere, Tangier, Mira and others, still offer really excellent sport, which is sure to increase in quality with greater care in the preservation of the fish.

Many conditions combine to make Nova Scotia an ideal trout fishing country, such as the extensive waterways and literally innumerable lakes, the uniform coolness of the water combined with the richness in insect life, and the fact that, though in former times cruelly maltreated by the lumbermen, the forests to a very great extent still stand, thus preserving the water-supply, which experience shows us must decrease and even disappear with the cutting down of the trees. At last the lumber dealers are alive to the benefits of economic forestry, and the Government to the evident fact that streams and lakes must be yearly restocked with fingerlings of both salmon and trout.

Food conditions in this Province do not favour the growth of gigantic trout, one of three pounds being a rarity, but nature has made up by giving a never-ending supply of good fish, ranging from 1 to 4 lb. up to 3 lbs., the average in the best waters being between 3 to 4 and 1 lb. in weight, which any experienced fisherman will acknowledge to be very large. This may not sound so grand as some of the promises of certain interested parties, but it is literally true, and the statement can be added that Nova Scotia yields to no country in the world in the number of trout that can be taken by hook and line at any part of the open season.

Season.—The trout-fishing season opens by law on April 1, and ends on August 31. Fishing through the ice for trout is prohibited, a fact which prevents much fishing before middle of April, as the ice does not commonly go out of the lakes before that date, though exceptions occur. Fishing is at the height of excellence about May 1 or soon after, and continues fine until July, when it falls off somewhat, on account of the trout seeking the cooler waters of the lakes and pools. Nevertheless there is no time, even in the hot weather when a “string of fish” cannot be caught with a fair amount of trouble and skill. Towards the last of August the fishing looks up again and remains fine until the season ends. This period has the advantage of total immunity from insect pests.

As to fishing grounds it would be difficult to find a country hotel in the Province near which some good trout-brook or lake cannot be found; in fact it is always possible to live at a regular country boarding-place and still get all the fishing wanted without spending a night in the woods. But it nevertheless remains true that the farther from the regular haunts of men you go, the better will the fishing be, and most anglers, far from deeming it a disadvantage to live in the open, consider it a priceless privilege to combine the joys of their particular craft with the delights of canoeing and camping out.

Fairy Lake (Kedgeemakooge in the Micmac Indian tongue) is one of the largest (about 10 miles by 5 miles) and most beautiful bodies of water in the Province, lying in Annapolis and Queen’s Counties, and surrounded by the best moose-country, especially on the west and south. The Maitland, West, Little, and other streams flow into it, all affording the best canoeing and leading up to wonderful trout-waters. In the lake itself the fishing is of the very best, such places as the mouths of the streams mentioned, Jeremy’s Bay, &c., being famous, The best pools of all are found near the exit of the Liverpool River, in the celebrated George’s Runs (East and West Runs) and Eelweir, while the river itself is a series of celebrated pools from Fairy Lake down to the great Lake Rossignol.

In the early days the land about Kedgeemakooge was granted by the Government to the Micmac Indians as a reservation, but they have passed away or scattered, and their former camping grounds have been deserted for many decades. Lying so long idle, the Department of Indian Affairs recently decided to lease the lands and apply the yearly rental to the Indian fund of the Treasury.

The lease luckily fell into the hands of a sportsman and a lover of nature who proposes to still preserve, in its natural beauty, this great recreation ground, and open it to a limited number of seekers after health, rest, or sport. Under his conservative supervision the Kedgeemakooge Rod and Gun Club of Nova Scotia, Ltd., has been organised, and incorporated by letters patent. Accepted members are granted all the privileges conveyed by the original lease, as well as the same rights on other lands in the vicinity owned by the lessee.

Initiation fee has been fixed at $100.00, with annual dues such as seem necessary to sustain the requirements of the club, probably not exceeding $5.00.

Building sites, all having water frontage, are free to members, who may select their own lot, put up a tent or a substantial cabin, and own a permanent summer home for their families or friends—a retreat in primitive wilds where real life and perfect freedom, unshackled by social forms, make for health and supreme happiness. Fishing licenses are provided free for members.

Reliable licensed guides are retained by this club, and kept in readiness with motor boats and canoes.

Telephone, daily mail and livery afford constant communication with the outside world for those whose inclination or business interest will not permit entire isolation. On the whole I cannot imagine anything more deserving of the epithet sport de luxe.

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 74—changed uged to urged

Page 116—changed six to five

Page 246—changed West Indgies to West indies

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Table of Contents

- NOVA SCOTIA
- INTRODUCTION
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- NOVA SCOTIA
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- APPENDIX A
- APPENDIX B
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE