Nova Scotia : the province that has been passed

By by Beckles Willson

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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

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._”

[Illustration: “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_

    Martello Tower at Halifax                    _Facing page_   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.

[Footnote 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.”

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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 bur^t (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.”

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: IN THE PUBLIC GARDENS, HALIFAX.]

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: BEDFORD BASIN NEAR HALIFAX.]

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: VICTORIA PARK, WINDSOR, N.S.]

[Illustration: 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]
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!”

[Footnote 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.]

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,

[Footnote 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.]

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.

“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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Footnote 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.”

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: ANNAPOLIS—THE OLDEST GRAVEYARD ON THE CONTINENT.]

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: OFF THE PIER AT DIGBY.]

[Illustration: 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.”

[Illustration: THE HOME OF “EVANGELINE.”]

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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.               9,000,000
Yarmouth.                  13,597,452
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.

[Footnote 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
Freezers 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?

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: AT KINGSPORT.]

[Illustration: “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.

[Illustration: 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!

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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.

[Illustration: THE ROAD TO LOUISBOURG.]

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 24: _Moose Killed in Nova Scotia._

+———————————+—————————+———————+————————+————————+—————————+
|County.    | Number. | Bulls.| Cows.  |Sex not |Killed in|
|           |         |       |        |Given.  |  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    |  4     |   48    |
|Hants      |  17     |  6    |  10    |  1     |   14    |
|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_.

THE END.


    Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
    Edinburgh & London



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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