Chapter 8

"Down in the village day by dayThe people gossip in their way,And stare to see the Baroness passOn Sunday morning to early mass;And when she kneeleth down to pray,They wonder, and whisper together, and say,'Surely this is no heathen lass!'And in course of time they learn to blessThe Baron and the Baroness."And in course of time the curate learnsA secret so dreadful, that by turnsHe is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.The Baron at confession hath said,That though this woman be his wife,He hath wed her as the Indians wed,He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!"

"Down in the village day by day

The people gossip in their way,

And stare to see the Baroness pass

On Sunday morning to early mass;

And when she kneeleth down to pray,

They wonder, and whisper together, and say,

'Surely this is no heathen lass!'

And in course of time they learn to bless

The Baron and the Baroness.

"And in course of time the curate learnsA secret so dreadful, that by turnsHe is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.The Baron at confession hath said,That though this woman be his wife,He hath wed her as the Indians wed,He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!"

"And in course of time the curate learns

A secret so dreadful, that by turns

He is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.

The Baron at confession hath said,

That though this woman be his wife,

He hath wed her as the Indians wed,

He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!"

Then there was trouble, but it seems to have been soon cured by a Christian wedding:

"The choir is singing the matin song,The doors of the church are opened wide,The people crowd, and press and throng,To see the bridegroom and the bride.They enter and pass along the nave;They stand upon the father's grave;The bells are ringing soft and slow;The living above and the dead belowGive their blessing on one and twain;The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain,The birds are building, the leaves are green,And Baron Castine of St. CastineHath come at last to his own again."

"The choir is singing the matin song,

The doors of the church are opened wide,

The people crowd, and press and throng,

To see the bridegroom and the bride.

They enter and pass along the nave;

They stand upon the father's grave;

The bells are ringing soft and slow;

The living above and the dead below

Give their blessing on one and twain;

The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain,

The birds are building, the leaves are green,

And Baron Castine of St. Castine

Hath come at last to his own again."

In course of time the son of the Baron by his Tarratine princess became chief of the tribe and ruled it until in a raid in 1721 he was captured by the English and taken to Boston. When brought before the Council there for trial he wore his French uniform, and was accused of attending an Abenaqui council-fire. He sturdily replied, "I am an Abenaqui by my mother; all my life has been passed among the nation that has made me chief and commander over it. I could not be absent from a council where the interests of my brethren were to be discussed. The dress I now wear is one becoming my rank and birth as an officer ofthe Most Christian King of France, my master." After being held prisoner several months, he was released, and finally also returned to the ancestral château in the Pyrenees. His lineal descendants are still at the head of the tribe, which has dwindled to almost nothing. Pentagoet honoring the memory, afterwards became Castine. Remains of the old fort and batteries are preserved, and a miniature earthwork commands the harbor. The Tarratines and all the Abenaqui tribes were firm friends of the Americans in the Revolution; there are remnants of them in Canada, but the best preserved is the Indian settlement on Indian Island, in the Penobscot River, above Bangor. For fealty in the Revolution they were given a reservation, where a few hundred descendants now live in a village around their church, having a town hall and schools, with books printed in their own Abenaqui language, and ruled by their tribal officials. This last remnant of a warlike nation with such an interesting history gets a modest subsistence by catching fish and lobsters, and rafting logs on their great river of Norumbega.

ASCENDING THE PENOBSCOT.

The Penobscot drains an immense territory covered with pine, spruce and hemlock forests. Two hundred millions of feet of lumber will be floated down it in a single season. Its bold western bay shore rises into the Camden Mountains, and bothsides of the bay were embraced for thirty miles in the Muscongus Patent, a grant of King George I. which came to the colonial Governor Samuel Waldo, of Massachusetts, and afterwards, by descent through his wife, to General Henry Knox. Thus Knox became the Patroon of Penobscot Bay, building a palace at Thomaston, where he lived in baronial state and spent so much money in princely hospitality that he bankrupted himself and almost ruined his Revolutionary compatriot, General Lincoln, who became involved with him. On this western shore, Rockland, with nine thousand people, is a town of sea-captains, fishermen and lime-burners, its rocks making the best lime of the district, and a hundred kilns illuminating the hills at night. Adjacent are Dix Island, and to the southward Vinalhaven Island, producing fine granites shipped abroad for building. To the northward is Camden, under the shadow of Mount Megunticook, its two peaks rising fourteen hundred feet above the harbor. Out in front is an archipelago of pretty islands, the chief being "the insular town of Islesboro," stretching about thirteen miles along the centre of Penobscot Bay, its ten square miles of irregular contour having of late developed into a region of cottages built in all the pleasant places and making a very popular resort. To the northeastward the massive Blue Hill stands up an isolated guardian behind the peninsula of Castine, where the attractive white houses are spread overthe broad and sloping point enclosing its deep harbor, and its church-spire rises sharply among the trees. In the eastern archipelago of Penobscot Bay are the Fox Island group of about one hundred and fifty islands, and the larger islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven are to the southward, beyond which are the shores of Cape Rosier, making the eastern border of the bay, while through a vista looms up the distant Isle au Haut, an outer guardian upon the ocean's edge. At the eastern horizon behind the cape rise the hazy, bisected, round-topped peaks of Mount Desert, thirty miles away.

Belfast is another maritime town of Penobscot Bay on a deeply-indented harbor under the shadow of the Camden Hills, the place where Weymouth in 1605 landed and set up the cross. It was settled and named by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in 1770, and it looks out pleasantly across the broad bay upon Castine. Above are Searsport and Fort Point, with the ruins of the colonial Fort Pownall, and then the river is quickly contracted into the Narrows, where the swift tides run at Bucksport. The upper river is sinuous and picturesque, and at the head of navigation, sixty miles from the sea, is Bangor, with twenty thousand people, finely located on commanding hills, its chief industry being the sawing and shipment of lumber. The sawmills line the shores and the log-booms extend for miles along the river. The chief assembly room of the city is the Norumbega Hall, and there alsois a Theological Seminary of high standing. It is said that the settlement, which had languished during the Revolution, in 1791 ordered Rev. Seth Noble, its representative in the Legislature, to have it incorporated under the name of Sunbury, but he, being very fond of the old tune of Bangor, wrote that name inadvertently, and it thus was given the town. Thirteen miles northward is Oldtown, another great gathering-place for logs and sawmills, and having the Tarratine Indian settlement on the island in mid-stream. The Penobscot River receives various tributaries above, which drain the extensive northern forests of Maine—the Piscataquis coming from the westward, the Mattawamkeag from the northeast, and the Seboois. The main stream rises near the western Canada border of Maine and flows eastward into Chesuncook Lake, whence its general course to the sea is southeast and south. The river thus drains a broad basin, embracing myriads of lakes in the northern Maine forests, and it has an enormous water-power, as yet only partially utilized.

MOUNT DESERT ISLAND.

Beyond the archipelago, eastward from the Penobscot estuary, is the noted island, presenting the only land along the Atlantic coast where high mountains are in close proximity to the sea. It appears to-day just at it did to Champlain when he first saw it in September, 1604, and, being impressed with itscraggy, desolate summits, named it theIsle des Monts déserts, the "Island of Desert Mountains." He then wrote of it, "The land is very high, intersected by passes, appearing from the sea like seven or eight mountains ranged near each other; the summits of the greater part of these are bare of trees, because they are nothing but rocks." In approaching from the southwestward by sea, the distant gray recumbent elephant that has been lying at the horizon gradually resolves its two rounded summits into different peaks; but the finer approach is rather from the northward by the railway route, which is the one most travelled. The quick advance of the train unfolds the separate mountain peaks, and the whole range is well displayed, there being apparently eight eminences, but upon coming nearer, others seem to detach themselves. Green Mountain is the highest, rising over fifteen hundred feet, near the eastern side, while Western Mountain terminates the range on the other side, and at the eastern verge is Newport Mountain, having the fashionable settlement of Bar Harbor at its northern base. There are several beautiful lakes high up among these peaks, the chief being Eagle Lake. Beech and Dog Mountains have peculiarities of outline, and a wider opening between two ponderous peaks shows where the sea has driven-in the strange and deeply carved inlet of Somes' Sound, six miles from the southern side, to almost bisect the island. Hung closely upon the coast ofMaine, in Frenchman Bay, this noted island, the ancient Indian Pemetic, is about fifteen miles long, of varying width, and covers a hundred square miles. It has many picturesque features, its mountains, which run in roughly parallel ridges north and south, separated by narrow trough-like valleys, displaying thirteen distinct eminences, the eastern summits being the highest, and terminating generally at or near the water's edge on that side in precipitous cliffs, with the waves dashing against their bases. Upon the southeastern coast, fronting the ocean, as a fitting termination to the grand scenery of these mountain-ranges, the border of the Atlantic is a galaxy of stupendous cliffs, the two most remarkable being of national fame—Schooner Head and Great Head—the full force of old ocean driving against their massive rocky buttresses. Schooner Head has a surface of white rock on its face, which when seen from the sea is fancied to resemble the sails of a small vessel, apparently moving in front of the giant cliff. Great Head, two miles southward, is an abrupt projecting mass of rock, the grim and bold escarpment having deep gashes across the base, evidently worn by the waves. It is the highest headland on the island. Castle Head is a perpendicular columned mass, appearing like a colossal, castellated doorway, flanked by square towers.

Along the Coast at Bar Harbor, Me.

For more than a century after Champlain first looked upon this island, the French made ineffectualattempts at settlement, but it was not until 1761 that any one succeeded in establishing a permanent home. Then old Abraham Somes, a hardy mariner from Cape Ann, came along, and entering the Sound that bears his name, settled on the shore, and his descendant is said to still keep the inn at Somesville on the very spot of his earliest colonization. After the little colony was planted, the cultivation of the cranberry and the gathering of blueberries kept the people alive, these being almost the only food-products raised in the moderate allowance of soil allotted the island. The population grew but slowly, though artists and summer saunterers came this way, and about 1860 it began to attract the pleasure-seekers. When the island, in its early government, was divided into towns, the eastern portion was called, with a little irony, Eden. Bar Harbor, an indentation of Frenchman Bay, having a bar uncovered at low tide, which named it, being easy of access, the village of East Eden on its shores became the fashionable resort. It has a charming outlook over the bay, with its fleets of gaily-bannered yachts and canoes and the enclosing Porcupine Islands, but there is not much natural attractiveness. It is a town of summer hotels and boarding-houses, built upon what was a treeless plain, the outskirts being a galaxy of cottages, many of great pretensions. Here will congregate ten to twenty thousand visitors in the season, and Bar Harbor has become one of the most fashionable resortson the Atlantic coast. Its bane, however, is the fog, a frequent sojourner in the summer, though even fogs, in their way, have charms. There are days that it lies in banks upon the sea, with only occasional incursions upon the shore, when under a shining sun the mist creeps over the water and finally blots out the landscape. But light breezes and warm sunshine then soon disperse it and the view reappears. The fog-rifts are wonderful picture-makers. Sometimes the mist obscures the sea and lower shores of the attendant islands, leaving a narrow fringe of tree-tops resting against the horizon, as if suspended in mid-air. Often a yacht sails through the fog, looking like a colossal ghost, when suddenly its sails flash out in the sunlight like huge wings. Thus the mist paints dissolving views, so that the fogs of Mount Desert become an attraction, and occasionally through them appears the famed mirage which Whittier describes:

"Sometimes in calms of closing dayThey watched the spectral mirage play;Saw low, far islands looming tall and high,And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky."

"Sometimes in calms of closing day

They watched the spectral mirage play;

Saw low, far islands looming tall and high,

And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky."

Somes Sound has off its entrance on the southern side of Mount Desert, the group of Cranberry Islands with a lighthouse on Baker's Island, the outermost of the cluster. These make a picturesque outlook for the summer settlements which have grownaround the spacious indentations of North East Harbor and South West Harbor, on either side of the entrance to the Sound. To the eastward is another indentation in the southern coast, Seal Harbor, also a popular resort, having one of the finest beaches on the island. The five high rocky Porcupine Islands partially enclosing Bar Harbor get their names from their bristling crests of pines and spruces, one of them, the Bald Porcupine, having some stupendous cliffs. The visits to the cliffs along the shores and the ascent of the mountains are the chief excursions from Bar Harbor. Four miles southward is the summit of Green Mountain, its sides being rugged, and the charming Eagle Lake to the westward nestling among the mountain peaks. The view from the top is fine, over the deeply-cut Somes Sound, penetrating almost through the island, and the grand expanse of Maine coast, seen, with its many bays and islands, stretching from the Penobscot northeast to Quoddy Head. All around to the southward and eastward spreads the open ocean bounded by the horizon, and like a speck, to the south-southeast, twenty miles away, is the lighthouse upon the bleak crag known as Mount Desert Rock, far out at sea, the most remote beacon, in its distant isolation, upon the New England coast.

ENTERING THE MARITIME PROVINCES.

The Maine coast beyond Mount Desert has more deep harbors and long peninsulas. Here are Englishman'sBay, Machias Bay, Cutler Harbor and others, and finally Passamaquoddy Bay, opening into the Bay of Fundy. Grand Manan Island lies off this Bay, the first land of the British Maritime Provinces, twenty-two miles long and distant about nine miles from the coast of Maine, the frowning yet attractive precipices of its western verge rising four hundred feet. Over opposite in Maine, as the strait between the two narrows, are dark, storm-worn crags, which end with a promontory bearing a conspicuously red and white-striped lighthouse tower. This is the termination of the coast of Maine and of the United States at Quoddy Head, and the entrance to St. Croix River to the northward, the boundary between New England and the Canadian Province of New Brunswick. Quoddy Head is a long peninsula, with Campobello Island directly in front. Just beyond is another peninsula, bearing a village of white cottages, rising on the slopes of a high rounded hill having a church with a tall spire perched upon its pinnacle. This is Lubec, the easternmost town of the United States. Out in front upon Campobello lived for many years the eccentric old sailor, William Fitzwilliam Owen, a retired British Admiral, who built there on the rocks a regulation "quarter-deck" of a man-of-war, whereon he solemnly promenaded in full uniform and issued orders to a mythical crew. Finally he died, and as he had desired, was buried by candlelight in the churchyard of the little chapelhe had built on the island. Campobello is now a summer resort, with numerous hotels and cottages. All these waters are filled with wicker-work fish-weirs, wherein are caught the herring supplying the Eastport sardine-packing establishments. This is another town of white houses on an island adjoining the mainland, having a little fort and a prominent display of the sardine-factories in front, with a background of fir-clad hills in Maine.

St. Croix River falling into Passamaquoddy Bay is, for its whole length of one hundred and twenty-five miles, the national boundary. Upon Neutral Island near its mouth was made the first unfortunate settlement of Acadie by the Sieur De Monts in 1604. He named both the island and river St. Croix because, just above, various bends of the river and its branches form a cross. The St. Croix discharges the noted Schoodic Lakes far up in the forest on the boundary, which have become a favorite resort of sportsmen and anglers. It brings down many logs, and the sawmills have made the prosperity of the twin towns of Calais and St. Stephen on its banks, which represent the two nations, and being very friendly, are connected by a bridge. Upon a peninsula near the mouth of the river is St. Andrews, in New Brunswick, which like most other places in this pleasant region is developing into a summer resort. When De Monts came and landed, he named the country Acadie because that was what the Indians called it.The Indians, however, in pronouncing it made the sound like "a-quoddy," and from this is derived Passamaquoddy, the name of the bay into which the St. Croix flows, the wordPesmo-acadiemeaning the "pollock place of plenty," as these fish were prolific there. It is at North Perry in Maine, a village on the western verge of the bay and between Eastport and Calais, that the Government has erected the obelisk marking the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, midway between the equator and the pole.

The Canadian Province of New Brunswick into which we have now come in the journey "Down East" is described as "a region of ships, of pine trees, salmon, deals, hemlock bark and most excellent red granite." The first impression upon entering it is made by the highways, where the change from the United States to the British methods is shown in the reversal of the usual "rule of the road," from right to left. The vehicles all "keep to the left," and hence the appropriate proverb:

"The rule of the road is a parodox quite,In driving your carriage along,If you keep to the left you are sure to go right,If you keep to the right you go wrong."

"The rule of the road is a parodox quite,

In driving your carriage along,

If you keep to the left you are sure to go right,

If you keep to the right you go wrong."

We have also got into the region of the Bay of Fundy, the PortugueseBayo Fondo, or "deep bay," with its high tides. This huge inlet of the Atlantic is about one hundred and seventy miles long, thrust up betweenNew Brunswick and Nova Scotia, stretching from thirty to fifty miles wide between them. Its eastern extremity branches into two arms, the northern, Chignecto Bay, about thirty miles long, and the southern, Minas Channel, opening into the Minas Basin. Besides the St. Croix, this bay also receives St. John River, the greatest in the Maritime Provinces. The bay is remarkable for its tides, which are probably the highest in the world, owing to the concentration of the tidal wave by the approach of the shores and the gradual shoaling of the bottom. The very moderate tides of the Massachusetts coast increase to about nine feet rise at the mouth of the Kennebec. The configuration of the Maine coast to the northeast further increases this to fifteen or twenty feet rise at Eastport. Beyond this the Bay of Fundy is a completecul-de-sac, and the farther the tide gets in the higher it rises. In St. John harbor it becomes twenty-one to twenty-three feet, and farther up it is greater, in Minas Basin the rise reaching forty feet, and in Chignecto Bay, near the upper extremity, sixty feet. These tremendous tides cause peculiar phenomena; they make the rivers seem to actually run up-hill at times, while the tidal "bore" or wall of water, which is the advance of the flood, moves up the streams and across the extensive mudflats with the speed of a railway train, often catching the unsuspecting who may be wandering over them. The elaborate wharves made for boat-landings arebuilt up like three-story houses, with different floor-levels, so as to enable the vessels to get alongside at all stages of the tide.

THE CITY OF ST. JOHN.

Upon St. John's Day, June 24, 1604, De Monts piloted by Champlain, coasting along the monotonous forest-clad shores of New Brunswick, sailed into the mouth of the River St. John, and named it in memory of the day of its discovery. Off the entrance is Partridge Island, now surmounted by a lighthouse and what is said to be the most powerful fog-siren in the world, whose hoarse blasts can be heard thirty miles away, a necessity in this region, where fogs prevail so generally. From the Negro Head, a high hill on the western shore, a breakwater extends across the harbor entrance, and within is the city covering the hills running down to the water as the inner harbor curves toward the westward. Timber being the great export, lumber-piles and timber-ships fill the wharves, sawdust floats on the water, and vessels are anchored out in the stream loading deals from lighters.

De Monts found some Micmac Indians at St. John, but he did not remain there, and it was not until 1634 when Claude de St. Estienne, Sieur de la Tour, a Huguenot who had been granted Acadie by King Charles I. of England, came out with his son and built a fort at the mouth of St. John River, the sonCharles de la Tour for some years afterwards holding it and enjoying a lucrative trade. The French King, however, had made a rival grant of Acadie, which had come into possession of Charles de Menon, Sieur d'Aulnay Charnisay, who made a settlement at Annapolis Royal over in Nova Scotia, where De Monts took the remnant of his unfortunate colony from St. Croix River. D'Aulnay envied La Tour his prosperity, provoked a quarrel, accused him of treason, and finally came over and blockaded the mouth of the St. John with six ships. La Tour, anticipating this attack, had implored aid from the Huguenots in France, and they sent out the ship "Clement" with one hundred and forty men, which remained in the offing. One cloudy night La Tour and his wife slipped out of the harbor on the ebb tide in a boat and got aboard the ship, which carried them to Boston, where additional help was sought. Old Cotton Mather records that the Puritans hearkened unto him and searched the Scriptures to see if there was Divine sanction for interference in a French quarrel. They found sundry texts that were interpreted as possibly forbidding such action, but they nevertheless concluded "it was as lawful for them to give La Tour succor as it was for Joshua to aid the Gideonites against the rest of the Canaanites, or for Jehoshaphat to aid Jehoram against Moab." So they quickly started five Massachusetts ships that way, with which La Tour raised the blockade and droveD'Aulnay across the Bay of Fundy back to his own post of Annapolis Royal. D'Aulnay did not rest content under defeat, however, but two years later again attacked the fort. Two spies, who had gained entrance in the disguise of monks, informed him La Tour was absent, the fort being under command of his wife. Expecting easy victory, he ordered an assault, but was met by Madame La Tour at the head of the little garrison and defeated with heavy loss. He awaited another opportunity, and in 1647 when La Tour was away on a trading expedition, leaving but a small force, he again attacked. During three days his assaults were repulsed, but a treacherous sentry admitted the enemy within the fort. Even then the brave woman fought with such intrepidity that she was given her own terms of capitulation. No sooner had she surrendered, however, than D'Aulnay violated his agreement and hanged the garrison, compelling Madame La Tour to witness it with a halter around her neck. This so preyed upon her mind that a few days afterwards she died of a broken heart. Whittier has woven this story into his romantic poemSt. John, describing La Tour returning to the fort and expecting his wife's greeting, but instead he found its walls shattered and the buildings burnt. A priest appearing, La Tour seizes him, demanding an explanation, and thus spoke the priest:

"'No wolf, Lord of Estienne, has ravaged thy hall,But thy red-handed rival, with fire, steel and ball!On an errand of mercy, I hitherward came,While the walls of thy castle yet spouted with flame."'Pentagoet's dark vessels were moored in the bay,Grim sea-lions roaring aloud for their prey.''But what of my lady?' cried Charles of Estienne:'On the shot-crumbled turret, thy lady was seen:"'Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, her hand grasped thy pennon,While her dark tresses swayed in the hot breath of cannon!But woe to the heretic, evermore woe!When the son of the Church and the Cross is his foe!"'In the track of the shell, in the path of the ball,Pentagoet swept over the breach of the wall!Steel to steel, gun to gun, one moment—and thenAlone stood the victor, alone with his men!"'Of its sturdy defenders, thy lady aloneSaw the cross-blazoned banner float over St. John.''Let the dastard look to it,' cried fiery Estienne,'Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again.'"'Alas for thy lady! No service from theeIs needed by her whom the Lord hath set free:Nine days in stern silence her thraldom she bore,But the tenth morning came, and Death opened her door!'"

"'No wolf, Lord of Estienne, has ravaged thy hall,But thy red-handed rival, with fire, steel and ball!On an errand of mercy, I hitherward came,While the walls of thy castle yet spouted with flame.

"'No wolf, Lord of Estienne, has ravaged thy hall,

But thy red-handed rival, with fire, steel and ball!

On an errand of mercy, I hitherward came,

While the walls of thy castle yet spouted with flame.

"'Pentagoet's dark vessels were moored in the bay,Grim sea-lions roaring aloud for their prey.''But what of my lady?' cried Charles of Estienne:'On the shot-crumbled turret, thy lady was seen:

"'Pentagoet's dark vessels were moored in the bay,

Grim sea-lions roaring aloud for their prey.'

'But what of my lady?' cried Charles of Estienne:

'On the shot-crumbled turret, thy lady was seen:

"'Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, her hand grasped thy pennon,While her dark tresses swayed in the hot breath of cannon!But woe to the heretic, evermore woe!When the son of the Church and the Cross is his foe!

"'Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, her hand grasped thy pennon,

While her dark tresses swayed in the hot breath of cannon!

But woe to the heretic, evermore woe!

When the son of the Church and the Cross is his foe!

"'In the track of the shell, in the path of the ball,Pentagoet swept over the breach of the wall!Steel to steel, gun to gun, one moment—and thenAlone stood the victor, alone with his men!

"'In the track of the shell, in the path of the ball,

Pentagoet swept over the breach of the wall!

Steel to steel, gun to gun, one moment—and then

Alone stood the victor, alone with his men!

"'Of its sturdy defenders, thy lady aloneSaw the cross-blazoned banner float over St. John.''Let the dastard look to it,' cried fiery Estienne,'Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again.'

"'Of its sturdy defenders, thy lady alone

Saw the cross-blazoned banner float over St. John.'

'Let the dastard look to it,' cried fiery Estienne,

'Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again.'

"'Alas for thy lady! No service from theeIs needed by her whom the Lord hath set free:Nine days in stern silence her thraldom she bore,But the tenth morning came, and Death opened her door!'"

"'Alas for thy lady! No service from thee

Is needed by her whom the Lord hath set free:

Nine days in stern silence her thraldom she bore,

But the tenth morning came, and Death opened her door!'"

La Tour returned, but hardly in the manner justifying the revenge indicated in the poem. D'Aulnay died shortly afterwards, whereupon La Tour recaptured his fort and domain in 1653, but not at the head of an army, diplomatically accomplishing his victory by marrying D'Aulnay's widow. This post was known as Fort La Tour until the British conquest in the eighteenth century, when it was changedto Fort Frederick. It then became a fishing station, and was plundered in the Revolution. Afterwards, in 1783, about ten thousand exiled tories from the United States were landed there, this being the "Landing of the Loyalists" commemorated on May 18th as the founding of St. John, the charter dating from that day in 1785. Benedict Arnold was one of these refugees, he living in St. John for several years from 1786. A Monument in King Square commemorates the landing of the loyalists and the grant of the charter. Being built largely of wood, the city suffered from many disastrous fires, the worst being in June, 1877, when one-third of the place was burnt, involving a loss of over sixteen hundred buildings and nearly $30,000,000. St. John rose from the ruins with great vitality, the new construction being largely of brick and stone. The population now exceeds forty thousand.

THE RIVER ST. JOHN.

The great curiosity of St. John is the "reversible cataract" in the river, caused in the gorge just west of the city by the enormous tides of the Bay of Fundy. The great river above the city is a wide estuary, but before entering the harbor it is compressed into a short, deep and narrow gorge, barely one hundred and fifty yards wide in some places, and obstructed by several rocky islets. As this is the best crossing-place, two bridges are thrown side byside over the chasm, one for a railway and the other for a street, resting upon the limestone cliffs a hundred feet above the water. As the tide ebbs and flows, the rushing river currents make the reversible cataract, almost under the bridges, with the water pouring down both ways at different tidal stages. Through this contracted pass the entire current of the vast St. John valley finds its outlet to the sea. When the ebb tide quickly empties the harbor below, the accumulated river waters cannot get into the gorge fast enough to reduce as rapidly the level of the broad basin above, and they consequently rush down, a cataract, swelling sometimes to ten or twelve feet at the upper entrance to the gorge, and make whirling, seething rapids below. When the tide turns, this outflow is gradually checked by the rise in the harbor, but soon the tremendous incoming flood from the Bay of Fundy overpowers the river current, fills up the gorge, and rapidly rising in the gorge rushes inward to the broad basin, thus making the cataract fall the other way. Twice every day this ever-changing contest is fought, and were it not for the obstruction made by this narrow, rocky gateway, these enormous tides would rush along in full force and overflow a large surface of the very low-lying interior of New Brunswick. The river makes a sharp bend just at the outlet of the gorge, turning from south to northeast around a rocky cape protruding far into the stream; then it broadens out into arounded bay, and a short distance beyond sharply bends again into the harbor of St. John. Vessels are taken through the gorge at proper tidal stages, guided by tugs and floating at high speed with the rushing current. This is one of the most remarkable exhibitions made of the curious influence of these enormous Bay of Fundy tides.

The River St. John, flowing out of the vast forests of Maine, stretches four hundred and fifty miles from its sources to the sea. The Micmac Indians of its upper reaches called it Ouangondie, while the Etechemins of the lower waters and the St. Croix valley named it Looshtook, or the "Long River." Its sources interlock in the Maine forests, at two thousand feet elevation, with those of the Penobscot flowing south and the Chaudiere flowing north to the St. Lawrence, near Quebec. At first the St. John flows northwest, then east and southeast to its Grand Falls, then by a winding southern course to the Bay of Fundy. For a long distance its upper waters are the national boundary between Maine and Canada. It receives several large tributaries and drains a valley embracing seventeen millions of acres. The immense forest wilderness of Maine, wherein are the sources of these streams, is seven times the size of the famous "Black Forest" of Germany. Upon the upper St. John waters are various villages of French Acadians, the descendants of those who were driven out of Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century.It receives the Allegash, St. Francis, Madawaska, Grand and St. Leonard's Rivers, and thus comes to its cataract with augmented waters—the Grand Falls. Above, the stream expands into a broad basin, flowing from which its enormous current is compressed into a narrow rock-bound canyon, and after running down a moderate incline suddenly plunges over the front and sides of an abyss. This is about sixty feet deep and formed of slate, the water falling into the cauldron below, and also over the outer ledges in minor cascades. Then, with lightning rapidity the foaming current dashes through another canyon of two hundred and fifty feet width for three-fourths of a mile, the walls, of dark, rugged rock, being one hundred and fifty feet high. Within this terrific chasm there is a descent of sixty feet more, in which the waters do not rush along as in the rapids below Niagara, but are actually belched and volleyed forth, as if shot out of ten thousand great guns, with enormous boiling masses hurled into the air and huge waves leaping high against the enclosing cliffs. This ungovernable fury continues throughout most of the passage, the stream at times heaping itself all on one side, and giving brief glimpses of the rocky bed of the chasm. Finally an immense frothy cataract flows over into a lower basin, said to be unfathomable, where the stream becomes tranquil and then goes along peacefully between its farther banks. Majestic scenery surrounds theseGrand Falls, there being high mountains in all directions.

Like all great cataracts, this one has its romance and tragedy. Alongside the final unfathomable basin rises a towering precipice two hundred feet high, its perpendicular wall as smooth as glass. Down it the ancient Micmacs hurled their captives taken in war. The implacable foes of these Micmacs, as of all the tribes allied to the French, were the New York Iroquois, and particularly the Mohawks. Once a party of Mohawks penetrated all the way to this remote region, surprising and capturing a Micmac village with a fearful massacre. One young squaw, who promised obedience, they spared, because they wanted her to guide them down the river. She was put in the foremost canoe, and the fatigued Mohawks lashed their canoes together to float with the current in the night, and then went to sleep. The girl was to guide them to a safe landing above the cataract, so they could land and next day go around the portage. She steered them into the mid-stream current instead, and dropping quietly overboard swam ashore. They floated to the brink of the cataract, and when its thunders awoke them, too late for safety, the whole party were swept over and perished. This was the last Mohawk invasion of the region. Twenty miles below, the Tobique River comes into the St. John, and is regarded as the most picturesque stream in New Brunswick, being noted for its lumber campsand good angling. Here is Andover, a little village supplying the lumbermen, and also Florenceville and Woodstock, with busy sawmills. For miles the river shores are lofty and bold, affording charming scenery. The Meduxnekeag flows in from the Maine forests, bringing down many logs, and below the Meduntic Rapids are passed. Then the Pokiok, its Indian name meaning the "dreadful place," flows to the St. John through a sombre and magnificent gorge four hundred yards long, very deep and only twenty-five feet wide. The little river, after plunging down a cataract of forty feet, rushes over the successive ledges of this remarkable pass until it reaches the St. John. For a long distance the great river passes villages originally settled by disbanded British troops after the Revolution and now peopled by their descendants, and then it winds through the pastoral district of Aukpaque, which was held by Americans within New Brunswick for two years after the Revolution began, they finally retreating in 1777 over the border into the wilderness of Maine, and reaching the coast at Machias. Seven miles below is Frederickton, the New Brunswick capital, a small city, quiet and restful, with broad streets lined by old shade trees, and covering a good deal of level land adjoining the river. It has a fine Parliament House, a small but attractive Cathedral, with a spire one hundred and eighty feet high, and on the hills back of the town is the University of New Brunswick.The Nashwaak River flows in opposite among sawmills and cotton-mills, and there was the old French Fort Nashwaak where the Chevalier de Villebon, who was sent in 1690 to govern Acadie, fixed his capital (removing it from Annapolis Royal), and used to fit out expeditions against the Puritans in New England, they attacking him once in retaliation, but being beaten off. The St. John passes through a pleasant intervale below, the garden-spot of the Province, where at Maugerville was the earliest English settlement on the river, colonized from New England in 1763, after the French surrender of Canada. Then the St. John receives Jemseg River, the outlet of Grand Lake, where a French fort was built as early as 1640 and was fought about for more than a century. This is a deep, slow-winding stream in a region of perfect repose, having opposite its outlet Gagetown, a pretty place with a few hundred people, and said to be the most slumbrous village of all this sleepy region:

"Oh, so drowsy! in a daze,Sleeping mid the golden haze;With its one white row of streetCarpeted so green and sweet,And the loungers smoking, still,Over gate and window sill;Nothing coming, nothing going,Locusts grating, one cock crowing,Few things moving up or down;All things drowsy—Drowsytown!"

"Oh, so drowsy! in a daze,

Sleeping mid the golden haze;

With its one white row of street

Carpeted so green and sweet,

And the loungers smoking, still,

Over gate and window sill;

Nothing coming, nothing going,

Locusts grating, one cock crowing,

Few things moving up or down;

All things drowsy—Drowsytown!"

The St. John below is much like a broad and placid lake flowing through a pastoral country, having long tributary lakes and bays, including the extensive and attractive Kennebecasis, which is the favorite rural resort of the St. John people and the scene of their aquatic sports. The river farther down broadens into Grand Bay, and then passing the narrow gorge of the "reversible cataract," makes the expansive harbor of St. John, and is ultimately swallowed up by the Bay of Fundy.

ANNAPOLIS AND MINAS BASINS.

From St. John River across the Bay of Fundy to Digby Gut in Nova Scotia is forty-five miles. For one hundred and thirty miles, the North Mountain Ridge, elevated six hundred feet, stretches along the bay upon the Nova Scotia shore, sharply notched down at Digby Gut, the entrance to Annapolis Basin. This strait, barely a half-mile wide, is cut two miles through the mountain ridge, having a tidal current of six miles an hour, and within is a magnificent salt-water lake, surrounded by forests sloping up the hillsides, and one of the pleasantest sheets of water in the world. It is no wonder that De Monts, when his colonists abandoned the dreary island in St. Croix River, sought refuge here, and that his companion, Baron de Poutrincourt, obtained a grant for the region. It is one of the most attractive parts of Acadia, and as the old song has it:

"This is Acadia—this the landThat weary souls have sighed for;This is Acadia—this the landHeroic hearts have died for."

"This is Acadia—this the land

That weary souls have sighed for;

This is Acadia—this the land

Heroic hearts have died for."

Digby is within the Gut, fronted by a long and tall wooden wharf that has to deal with fifty feet of tide, its end being an enormous square timber crib, built up like a four-story house. The town is noted for luscious cherries and for "Digby Chickens," the most prized brand of herrings cured by the "Blue-noses," and it has also developed into quite an attractive watering-place. To the southwestward a railway runs to Yarmouth, at the western extremity of Nova Scotia, a small but very busy port, having steamer lines in various directions. To the northeastward Annapolis Basin stretches sixteen miles between the enclosing hills, gradually narrowing towards the extremity. Here, on the lowlands adjoining Annapolis River, is the quaint little town of Annapolis Royal and the extensive ramparts of the ancient fort that guarded it, covering some thirty acres. This was the original French capital of Acadia, and the first permanent settlement made by Europeans in America north of St. Augustine, De Monts founding the colony in 1605. He named it Port Royal, but the English Puritans a century later changed this, in honor of their "good Queen Anne," to Annapolis Royal. Almost from the first settlement to the final capture by the Puritan expeditionfrom Boston in 1710, its history was a tale of battles, sieges and captures by many chieftains of the rival nations. As the Marquis of Lorne in his Canadian book describes it: "This is the story which is repeated with varying incidents through all the long-drawn coasts of the old Acadia. We see, first, the forest village of the Red Indians, with its stockades and patches of maize around it; then the landing from the ships, under the white flag sown with golden lilies, of armored arquebussiers and spearsmen; the skirmishing and the successful French settlement; to be followed by the coming of other ships, with the red cross floating over the high-built sterns, and then the final conflict and the victory of the British arms." Now everything is peaceful, and the people raise immense crops of the most attractive apples for shipment to Europe.

East of Annapolis is the "Garden of Nova Scotia." The long ridge of the North Mountain on the coast screens it from the cold winds and fogs, while the parallel ridge of the South Mountain stretches for eighty miles, and between these noble ranges, which are described as "most gracefully moulded," is a broad and rich intervale extending to the Basin of Minas and the land of Evangeline, which Longfellow has made so sadly poetical. Good crops of hay grow on the fertile red soils, which the farmers gather with their slowly-plodding ox-teams; and of this region the poet sang mournfully:

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms,Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring oceanSpeaks, and in accents disconsolate, answers the wail of the forest."

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms,

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate, answers the wail of the forest."

To-day, however, "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks" are not there, excepting in stunted growth in occasional thickets, the land being meadow and grain fields, with many orchards. Upon a low-lying peninsula, washed by the placid waters of the Basin of Minas, is the "Great Meadow," the Grand Pré of the unfortunate Acadians, where in that early time they had reclaimed from the enormous tides some three square miles of land, while south of the meadow, on somewhat higher ground, was their little village. Beyond it the dark North Mountain ridge stretches to the promontory of Cape Blomidon, dropping off abruptly six hundred feet into the Basin of Minas. The contented French lived secluded lives here, avoiding much of the ravages of the wars raging elsewhere around the Bay of Fundy, and when France ceded Nova Scotia to England in 1713 they numbered about two thousand. They took the oaths of loyalty to the British crown, but in the subsequent French and Indian wars there was much disaffection, and it was determined in 1755 to removeall the French who lived around the Bay of Fundy, numbering some eight thousand, so that a loyal British population might replace them. In September the embarkation began from Grand Pré, one hundred and sixty young men being ordered aboard ship. They slowly marched from the church to the shore between ranks of the women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings upon them, they also praying and weeping and singing hymns. The old men were sent next, but the wives and children were kept till other ships arrived. These wretched people were herded together near the sea, without proper food, raiment or shelter for weeks, until the transports came, and it was December before the last of them had embarked. In one locality a hundred men fled to the woods, and soldiers were sent to hunt them, often shooting them down. Many in various places managed to escape, some getting to St. John River, while not a few went to Quebec, and others found refuge in Indian wigwams in the forests. There were seven thousand, however, carried on shipboard from the Bay of Fundy to the various British colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia, being landed without resources and having generally to subsist on charity. To prevent their returning, all the French villages around the Bay of Fundy were laid waste and their homes ruined. In the Minas district two hundred and fifty houses and a larger number of barns were burnt. Edmund Burke in the BritishParliament cried out against this treatment, saying: "We did, in my opinion, most inhumanly, and upon pretences that, in the eye of an honest man, are not worth a farthing, root out this poor, innocent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or to reconcile gave us no sort of right to extirpate." The sad story of Grand Pré and of Evangeline was historic before Longfellow's day, but he made it immortal.

MINAS TO HALIFAX.

The Basin of Minas, in the Micmac Indian tradition, was the beaver-pond and favorite abiding-place of their divinity, Glooscap. On the great promontory of Cape Blomidon, which stretches northward to enclose the Basin on its western side, he had his home. The ridge of the cape turns sharply to the westward and ends in Cape Split, alongside the Minas Channel. This formation has been compared to the curved handle of a huge walking-stick, the long North Mountain stretching far away being the stick. The Micmacs tell us that this ridge, now bent around to the westward, was Glooscap's beaver-dam, which he beneficently swung open, so that the surplus waters might run out and not overflow the meadows around the Basin of Minas. In swinging it around, however, the terminal cliff of Cape Split was broken off, and now rises in a promontory four hundred feet high just beyond the main ridge. Glooscap, we are told, began a conflict in the Basin with the GreatBeaver, and threw at him the five vast rocks now known as the Five Islands on the northern shore to the eastward of Parrsboro'. The Beaver was chased out of the Basin, westward through the Minas Channel, and as a parting salute Glooscap threw his kettle at him, which overturning, became Spencer's Island, on the northern shore beyond Cape Split. The enormous tides run through the Minas Channel at eight miles an hour, and they helped to drive the Great Beaver over to St. John, where Glooscap finally conquered and killed him.

The formation around the head of the Bay of Fundy is largely of rich and fertile red lowlands, marsh and meadow, much of it being reclaimed by dyking. The same formation is carried over the Chignecto isthmus, east of the bay, where the Nova Scotia Peninsula is joined to the mainland. This is only seventeen miles wide, and across it has been projected the "Chignecto Ship Railway," designed to shorten by about five hundred miles the passage of vessels around the Nova Scotia Peninsula into the St. Lawrence. It is a system of railway tracks on which the design was to carry ships over the isthmus. Vessels of two thousand tons were to be lifted out of the water, placed in a huge cradle, and drawn across by locomotives. The project, estimated as costing $5,000,000, was stopped in partial completion for want of funds. On the meadow land to the southward of the Basin of Minas is Windsor on the Avon,a small shipping town, in which the most famous building near the river is a broad and oddly-constructed one-story house, called the Clifton Mansion, which was the home of the author ofSam Slick—Judge Thomas C. Haliburton, a native of Windsor, who died in 1865. Beyond is Ardoise Mountain, rising seven hundred feet and having on its northern verge the great Aylesford sand-plain whereofSam Slicksays: "Plain folks call it, in a gin'ral way, the Devil's Goose Pasture. It is thirteen miles long and seven miles wide; it ain't just drifting sands, but it's all but that, it's so barren. It's uneven or wavy, like the swell of the sea in a calm, and it's covered with short, thin, dry, coarse grass, and dotted here and there with a half-starved birch and a stunted, misshapen spruce. It is just about as silent and lonesome and desolate a place as you would wish to see. All that country thereabout, as I have heard tell when I was a boy, was once owned by the Lord, the king and the devil. The glebe-lands belonged to the first, the ungranted wilderness-lands to the second, and the sand-plain fell to the share of the last—and people do say the old gentleman was rather done in the division, but that is neither here nor there—and so it is called to this day the Devil's Goose Pasture." Over this sand-plain and the rocky, desolate ridge beyond, runs the great railway train of the Provinces, on the route between St. John and Halifax—dignified by the title of the "Flying Bluenose." It crossesthe bleak flanks of Ardoise Mountain and Mount Uniacke, with its gold mines, through a region which the local chronicler describes as having "admirable facilities for the pasturage of goats and the procuring of ballast for breakwaters;" and then comes to the pleasant shores of Bedford Basin, running several miles along its beautiful western bank down to Halifax harbor.

THE GREAT BRITISH-AMERICAN FORTRESS.

The city of Halifax is the stronghold of British power in North America, and is said to be, with the exception of Gibraltar, the best fortified outpost of the British empire. It is a fortress and naval station of magnificent development upon an unrivalled harbor. This is an arm of the sea, thrust for sixteen miles up into the land, and the Indians called it Chebucto, meaning the "chief haven." A thousand ships can be accommodated on its spacious anchorages. Its Northwest Arm, a narrow waterway opening on the western shore just inside the entrance, makes a long peninsula with water on either side, which in the centre rises into Citadel Hill, two hundred and fifty-six feet high. Upon its eastern slopes, running down to the harbor and spreading two or three miles along it, is the narrow and elongated town, having the Queen's Dockyard at the northern end. Covering the broad hilltop is the spacious granite Citadel of Fort George, its green slopes, coveredwith luxuriant grass, being now devoted to the peaceful usefulness of a cow-pasture. Along the harbor and across in the suburb of Dartmouth are the streets and buildings of the town, containing forty thousand people. To the southward is the modern green-covered Fort Charlotte on St. George's Island, commanding the entrance and looking not unlike a sugar-loaf hat, and both shores are lined with powerful batteries and forts that make the position impregnable. The Citadel was begun by the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father, when he commanded the British forces in Canada in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and it has since been enlarged and strengthened. At the entrance gate, grim memorials of the past, are mounted two old mortars, captured at the downfall of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton, in 1758.

Halifax did not have an early settlement, though in the Colonial times the French came into Chebucto to refit their ships. The Massachusetts Puritans, who had long been fighting the French and Indians, first recognized its importance, and in 1748 they sent a petition to Parliament urging the establishment of a post there, and $200,000 was voted for a colonizing expedition, of which the English "Lords of Trade," George Montagu, Earl of Halifax, being the chief, took charge, hoping for commercial as well as military advantage. Lord Edward Cornwallis commanded the expedition, which brought twenty-fivehundred colonists, largely disbanded soldiers, into Chebucto, landing June 21, 1749, and founding Halifax, named in honor of the Chief Lord of Trade. They were soon attacked by the French and Indians, the suburbs being burnt, and they were harassed in many ways, leading to the erection of stockades and forts for defense; but they held the place, and it was the control of this fine harbor which finally enabled the British to secure Canada. The fleets and armies were concentrated here that took and destroyed the famous fortress of Louisbourg, which, with Quebec, held the Dominion for the French, and here was also organized the subsequent expedition under Wolfe that captured Quebec and ended a century and a half of warfare by the cession of Canada to England. In the American Revolution, Halifax was a chief base of the British operations, and when that war ended, large numbers of American loyalists exiled themselves to Halifax. There is now maintained a garrison of two thousand men and a strong fleet at Halifax, and the sailor and the soldier are picturesque features of the streets. The city has pleasant parks and suburbs, but everything is subordinated to the grim necessities of the fortress, although in all its noted career Halifax has never been the scene of actual warfare.

The Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia is indented by numerous bays that are good harbors, most of them having small towns and fishery stations. The westernportal of Halifax harbor is Chebucto Head and Cape Sambro, with dangerous shoals beyond. There have been many serious wrecks in steering for this entrance during fogs, one of the most awful being the loss of the steamship "Atlantic" in 1873, when five hundred and thirty-five persons were drowned. Westward from Sambro are the broad St. Margaret's and Mahone Bays, and beyond, Lunenburg on its spacious harbor, a shipping and fishery town of four thousand people. To the westward are Bridgewater, Liverpool and Shelburne, with Cape Sable Island at the southwestern extremity of Nova Scotia, having behind it Barrington within a deep harbor. Off shore is Seal Island, with its great white guiding light, this being called, from its position, the "Elbow of the Bay of Fundy," and then around the "Elbow" is reached the broad estuary of the Tusket River and the beautiful archipelago of the Tusket Islands. The Tusket is one of the noted angling and sporting districts of the Province, this river draining a large part of the lake region of southwestern Nova Scotia, and having a succession of lakes connected by rapids and carrying a large amount of water down to the sea. There are eighty of these lakes of varying sizes. The salmon in the spring run up numerously, and the trout seek the cool recesses of the forests, while the rapids, the many islands and the charming woodlands are all attractive. In the archipelago of the estuary are some three hundred islands, thegroup extending out into the sea and having the powerful tidal currents flowing through their tortuous passages with the greatest velocity. These islands vary from small and barren rocks up to larger ones rising grandly from the water and thickly covered with trees, the channels between being narrow and deep. Among these islands are some of the best lobster fisheries in America.

Eastward from Halifax are more deep bays and good harbors, but the shores are only sparsely peopled, being mostly a wilderness yet to be permanently occupied, though the venturesome fishermen have their huts dropped about in pleasant nooks. Here are Musquidoboit and Ship harbors, with Sherbrooke village in Isaac's harbor. Beyond, the long projecting peninsula of Guysborough terminates in the famous Cape Canso, the eastern extremity of Nova Scotia. This peninsula was named in honor of Sir Guy Carleton, and has the deep indentation of Chedabucto Bay on its northern side. Here is a village of a few hundred sailors and fishermen, where the French had a fort in the seventeenth century, until the Puritans under Sir William Phips came from Boston in 1690, drove them out and burnt it. Off this coast and ninety miles out at sea to the southward is the dreaded Sable Island, a long and narrow sandspit without trees, producing nothing but salt grass and cranberries. A lighthouse stands at either end, and there are three flagstaffs for signals at intervalsbetween them, with also a life-saving station, and the bleaching bones of many a wreck imbedded in the sands. It has few visitors, excepting those who are cast away, and everyone avoids it. Yet, strangely enough, the first American explorers were infatuated with the idea of planting a colony on this bleak and barren sandbar, and its history has mainly been a record of wrecks. Cabot originally saw this island, and in 1508 the first futile attempt was made to settle it, the colony being soon abandoned, though some live-stock were left there. Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583 lost his ship "Delight" here, with a hundred men, and going home on her consort, he lost his own life on the Azores. It was on this fateful voyage that Sir Humphrey, on his storm-tossed vessel "Squirrel," sweeping past the other, shouted to her crew: "Courage, my lads, we are as near Heaven by sea as by land." In 1598 a colony of forty French convicts was placed on the island and forgotten for seven years, when they were hunted up and twelve survivors found, whom the King pardoned, and they were then carried back to France dressed in seal-skins and described as "gaunt, squalid and long-bearded." This seems to have ended the attempts to colonize Sable Island. The Spaniards sent out an expedition to settle Cape Breton, but the fleet was dashed to pieces on this island. The great French Armada, sailing to punish the Puritans for capturing Louisbourg, suffered severelyon its shoals. The French afterwards lost there the frigate "L'Africaine," and later the steamer "Georgia" was wrecked. It is a long, narrow island, bent in the form of a bow, spreading twenty-six miles including the terminating bars, and nowhere over a mile wide. A long, shallow lake extends for thirteen miles in the centre. There is the French Garden, the traditionary spot where the convicts suffered during their exile, and a graveyard where the shipwrecked are buried. Wild ponies gallop about, the descendants of those left by the first settlers, seals bask on the sands, and ducks swim the lake. Such to-day is Sable Island.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

From Halifax a railroad leads northward across Nova Scotia to Pictou. It passes through the gold-digging regions of Waverley, Oldham and Renfrew, then over the rich red soils of the head of the Bay of Fundy and down the Shubenacadie River, meaning the "place of wild potatoes," and reaches Truro, an active manufacturing town of over five thousand people near the head of Cobequid Bay. Beyond, through forests and hills, it crosses the peninsula to the Pictou coal-fields and comes out on Northumberland Strait at Pictou harbor. The coal is sent here for shipment, the name having come from the Indian wordPictook, meaning "bubbling or gas exploding," in allusion to the boiling of the waters near the coal-beds.Over across the Strait is Prince Edward Island, its red bluff shores along the edge of the horizon surmounted by a fringe of green foliage. The Micmacs recognized its peculiarity, calling it Epayquit, or "Anchored on the Wave." It is one hundred and thirty miles long and rather narrow, having deep bays, sometimes almost bisecting the island. The surface is low and undulating, with fertile soils mostly derived from the old red sandstone. The French first called it the Isle de St. Jean, but after the cession to England an effort was made to call it New Ireland, as Nova Scotia was New Scotland, and finally in 1800 it was given the present name in honor of Queen Victoria's father. It raises horses, oats, eggs and potatoes, and relatively to size is the best populated of all the Maritime Provinces. Charlottetown, inside of Hillsborough Bay,—called popularly "Ch-town," for short,—is the capital, a quiet place with about eleven thousand population, the Parliament House being its best building. A narrow-gauge railway is constructed through the island, near its western terminal being Summerside, on Bedeque Bay, where there is a little trade and three thousand people, probably its most active port.

THE ARM OF GOLD.

The eastern boundary of Nova Scotia is the Canso Strait, separating it from Cape Breton Island. At Canso, its southern entrance, various Atlantic cablesare landed, while others go off southward to New York. This strait is a picturesque waterway, fifteen miles long and about a mile wide, a highway of commerce for the shipping desirous of avoiding the long passage around Cape Breton, and it is called by its admirers "The Golden Gate of the St. Lawrence Gulf." The geologists describe it as a narrow transverse valley excavated by the powerful currents of the drift period. As it leads directly from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf, more vessels are said to pass it than any other strait excepting Gibraltar. It has several villages upon the shores, mainly with Scottish inhabitants, the chief being Port Hawkesbury, Port Mulgrave and Port Hastings, the latter a point for gypsum export. Cape Breton Island is about one hundred miles long and eighty miles wide, its greatest natural feature being the famous "Arm of Gold," thus named in admiration by the early French explorers. Nearly one-half the surface of the island is occupied by the lakes and swamps of this "Bras d'Or," an extensive and almost tideless inland sea of salt water, ramifying with deep bays and long arms through the centre, having two large openings into the sea at its northeastern end, and almost communicating with the Atlantic on its southwestern corner. This "Arm of Gold" has fine scenery, and presents within the rocky confines of the island a large lake, the Great Bras d'Or, where the mariner gets almost out of sight of land. To thesouthward of Cape Breton Island is Arichat, or the Isle Madame, having the Lennox Passage between, this Isle being inhabited by a colony of French Acadian fishermen. Originally this region was colonized by the Count de Fronsac, Sieur Denys, the first French Governor of Cape Breton, in whose honor they always called the Canso Strait the Passage Fronsac, though since then its present title was adopted, being derived from the Micmac name of Camsoke, meaning "facing the frowning cliffs." Each little French settlement here, as on the St. Lawrence, has the white cottages clustering around the church with the tall spire, and the curé's house not far away, usually the most elaborate in the settlement. From the Lennox Passage a short canal has been cut through the rocks into the southwestern extremity of the Bras d'Or, thus actually dividing Cape Breton into two islands.

The village of "St. Peter at the Gate" is passed, and the lake entered at St. Peter's Inlet, a beautiful waterway filled with islands making narrow winding channels. Several of these islands are a Government reservation for a remnant of the Micmacs, and they have a small white church upon Chapel Island, where they gather from all parts of Cape Breton for their annual festival on St. Anne's Day. Beyond, the Great Bras d'Or broadens, an inland sea, the opposite shore almost out of vision, for the lake is eighteen miles across and fully fifty miles long. Thebanks come together at the Grand Narrows, making the contracted Strait of Barra, and then they expand again into another lake, neither so long nor so wide, the Little Bras d'Or to the northeastward, but still nearly fifty miles long, including its northeastern prolongation of St. Andrew Channel. This in turn opens by a wider strait into yet another lake to the northward, upon the farther shore of which is Baddeck. To the westward this lake spreads into St. Patrick's Channel, and to the northeastward there are thrust out in parallel lines the two "Arms of Gold" connecting with the sea. An island over thirty miles long and varying in width separates these two curious arms. These strangely-fashioned lakes present varied scenery; the shores in some places are low meadows, in others gently-swelling hills, and elsewhere they rise into forest-clad mountains. In the pellucid waters swim jelly-fish of exquisite tints. The atmosphere blends the outlines and colors so well that it smoothes the roughness of the wilder regions, and casts a softness over the scene which adds to its charms. Beyond the bordering mountains, to the northward, is a dreary and almost uninhabited table-land stretching to the Atlantic Ocean, where the long projection of remote Cape North stands in silent grandeur within seventy-five miles of Newfoundland.

Upon the verge of the northern Bras d'Or Lake, in a charming situation, is the little town of Baddeck,its houses scattered over the sloping hillsides and the church spires rising among the trees. A pretty island stands out in front as a protective breakwater, for storms often sweep wildly across the broad waters. This is the chief settlement of the lake district, the Highland Scottish inhabitants having twisted its present name out of the original French title of Bedique, there being a population of about one thousand. At the eastern extremity of Cape Breton Island, on an inlet from the Atlantic, and near the terminating arms of the Bras d'Or, is the coal-shipping port of Sydney, with a population of twenty-five hundred, though excepting coal-piers and colliers there is not much there to see. This is the port for the Sydney coal-fields, covering nearly three hundred square miles of the island, and the mine-galleries being prolonged in various places under the ocean. These were the first coal deposits worked in America, the French having got coal out of them in the seventeenth century. They are now all controlled by the wealthy Dominion Coal Company of Boston. Sydney, C. B., is a seaport known from its coaling facilities throughout the world, and while prosaic enough now, it saw stirring scenes in the Colonial times. The early name for its admirable harbor was Spanish Bay, because Spanish fishermen gathered there. It was a favorite anchorage for both French and English fleets in their preparations, as the tide of battle turned, for attacking New Englandor Acadia in the long struggle for supremacy. In 1696 the French assembled in Spanish Bay for a foray upon Pemaquid. In 1711 Admiral Hovenden Walker, returning from his unsuccessful expedition against Quebec, his ships having been dispersed by a storm, collected in this capacious roadstead the most formidable fleet it had seen, forty-two vessels. The doughty British Admiral felt so good about it that he set up on shore a large signboard made by his carpenters, whereon was inscribed a pompous proclamation claiming possession of the whole country in honor of his sovereign Queen Anne. The French soon came along, however, and smashed his signboard, built their fortress of Louisbourg, and there was a half-century of warfare before the proclamation was made good and England had undisputed possession. The settlement on Spanish Bay was not named after Lord Sydney and made the Cape Breton capital until 1784, when exiled loyalists came from the United States to inhabit it.

THE GREAT ACADIAN FORTRESS.

Upon the seacoast, twenty-five miles southeast of Sydney, is a low headland with a dark rocky island in the offing. This headland is Cape Breton, originally named for the Breton French fishermen who frequented it, and it in turn named Cape Breton Island. Just west of Cape Breton is an admirable harbor which, being frequented in the early days byEnglish fishermen, the French named theHavre aux Anglais, or the "English Port." Upon Point Rochefort, on its western side, stood the famous French fortress and town of Louisbourg, which was called "the Dunkirk of America." While grass-grown ruins and some of the ramparts are still traceable, and visitors find relics, yet little is left of this great fortress, once regarded as the "Key to New France," or of the populous French town on the harbor which in the eighteenth century had a trade of the first importance. It was twice captured, after remarkable sieges and battles of world-wide renown, causing the most profound sensations at the time, and now absolutely nothing is left of the original place but an old graveyard on the point, where French and English dust commingle in peace under a mantle of dark greensward. There is at present a settlement of about a thousand people around the harbor, mainly engaged in the fisheries. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 transferred Newfoundland and Acadia from France to England, but the French held Cape Breton Island, and many of their refugees came hither. It was not long before the French King, Louis XIV., stirred by Admiral Walker's proclamation and anxious about Canada, determined to fortify the "English Port" and make a commercial depot there, and in 1714 the plan was laid out, the name being changed to Louisbourg. In 1720 work began on a prodigious scale, the intention being to make it theleading fortress in America, and for more than twenty years France devoted its energy and resources to the completion of the stupendous fortifications, attracting inhabitants to the place by bounties, and creating a brisk trade by sea which soon drew inhabitants for a large town. When completed, this town stood upon the neck of land on the southwest side of the harbor enclosed by stone walls having a circuit of nearly three miles. These walls were thirty-six feet high and forty feet thick at the base, with a ditch outside eighty feet wide. The fortress was constructed in the first system of the noted French engineer, Vauban, and required a large garrison. A battery of thirty guns was located on Goat Island, at the harbor entrance, and at the bottom of the harbor opposite the entrance was another, the Royal Battery, also of thirty guns. The land and harbor sides of the town were defended by ramparts and bastions on which eighty guns were mounted, the land side also having a deep moat and projecting bastions, the West Gate on that side being overlooked by a battery of sixteen guns. There was a ponderous Citadel, and in the centre of the town the stately stone church of St. John de Dieu, with attendant nunnery and hospitals. The streets crossed at right angles, and five gates in the walls on the harbor side communicated with the wharves. Such was the greatest stronghold in North America in 1745, the famous Louisbourg fortress.

The people of New England, whose commerce was being preyed upon by privateers which found refuge in its harbor, and whose frontiers were harassed by forays thence directed, we are told by the historian, "looked with awe upon the sombre walls of Louisbourg, whose towers rose like giants above the northern seas." But the Puritans were not wont to lie still under such inflictions, nor to confine their efforts to prayers alone. Massachusetts planned an attack, and the command of the expedition was given William Pepperell of Kittery, a merchant ignorant of the art of war. Then followed one of the most extraordinary events in history. A fleet of about a hundred vessels carried a force of forty-one hundred undisciplined militia upon a Puritan crusade, which was started with religious services, the eloquent preacher, George Whitefield, imploring a blessing and giving them the motto,Nil desperandum, Christo duce. They rendezvoused at Canso, meeting there Commodore Warren and the British West Indian fleet by arrangement, and landing at Gabarus Bay, west of Louisbourg, April 30, 1745. They did not know much about war, but they set fire to some storehouses, and the black smoke drove down in such volumes upon the Royal Battery at the bottom of the harbor that its scared French defenders spiked the guns and fled in the night. The Puritans took possession, beat off the French who attacked them, got smiths at work, who drilled out the spikes,and soon from this, the key to the position, they turned the guns upon the town. Then began a regular siege, though most unscientific in manner. They captured a French ship with stores and reinforcements, and by June had breached the walls twenty-four feet at the King's Bastion, dismounted all the neighboring guns, made the Goat Island Battery untenable, and ruined the town by showers of bombs and red-hot balls. Upon June 15th the British fleet of ten ships was drawn up off the harbor entrance for an attack, and the land forces were arrayed to assault the West Gate, when the French commander, knowing he could hold out no longer, decided to surrender, and on June 17th, the forty-ninth day of the siege, he capitulated.

Thus the grand fortress fell, as the Puritan historian describes it, upon the attack of "four thousand undisciplined militia or volunteers, officered by men who had, with one or two exceptions, never seen a shot fired in anger in all their lives, encamped in an open country and sadly deficient in suitable artillery." He continues: "As the troops, entering the fortress, beheld the strength of the place, their hearts for the first time sank within them. 'God has gone out of his way,' said they, 'in a remarkable and most miraculous manner, to incline the hearts of the French to give up and deliver this strong city into our hands.'" The capture was the marvel of the time, and caused the greatest rejoicings throughoutthe British Empire; while Pepperell, who was made a Baronet, attributed his success, not to the guns nor the ships, but to the constant prayers of New England, daily arising from every village in behalf of the absent army. This victory at Louisbourg gave them an experience to which is attributed the American success at Bunker Hill thirty years afterwards. Colonel Gridley, who planned Pepperell's batteries, is said to have laid out the hastily constructed entrenchments on Bunker Hill, and the same old drums that beat in the siege of Louisbourg were at Bunker Hill, the spirit which this great victory imparted to the Yankee soldiers having never deteriorated.

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