The French were terribly chagrined at the loss of their great fortress, and in 1746 they sent out the "French Armada" of seventy ships under the Duc d'Anville, instructed to "occupy Louisbourg, reduce Nova Scotia, destroy Boston, and ravage the coast of New England." But storms wrecked and dispersed the fleet, and the vexed and disappointed commander died of apoplexy, his Vice-Admiral killing himself. Then a second expedition of forty-four ships was sent under La Jonquiere to retake Louisbourg, but the English squadrons attacked and destroyed this fleet off Cape Finisterre, Admirals Warren and Anson gaining one of the greatest British naval victories of the eighteenth century. The fortress which thus could not be retaken by arms was, however, to the general astonishment, surrenderedback to France by diplomacy. The peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748 ended the war by restoring Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island to France, and the historian bluntly records that "after four years of warfare in all parts of the world, after all the waste of blood and treasure, the war ended just where it began." France then rebuilt, improved and strengthened the idolized fortress, sending it a powerful garrison.
War was renewed in 1755,—the terrible French and Indian War. Halifax was then the base of British-American operations, and fleets soon blockaded Louisbourg. The French had twelve warships in the harbor and ten thousand men in the garrison, but the British, bewailing the shortsightedness that gave it up by treaty, were bound to retake it at all hazards. They sent a fleet of one hundred and fifty-six warships and transports from Spithead, the most powerful England had down to that time assembled, carrying thirteen thousand six hundred men, with Admiral Boscawen commanding the navy and General Amherst the army, the immortal Wolfe being one of the brigadiers. Rendezvousing at Halifax, this great force sailed against Louisbourg May 28, 1758, the troops landing at Gabarus Bay, and beginning the attack June 8th, with Wolfe leading. The French commander sank five of his warships to blockade the harbor entrance. Wolfe closely followed Pepperell's method, got batteries in position tobombard the city, and silenced the Goat Island Battery by his tremendous cannonade. In time he had destroyed the West Gate, the Citadel and barracks, and burnt three of the French ships by his red-hot balls. Two more ships ran out of the harbor in a fog to escape, and one was captured. Two French frigates alone remained, and a daring attack in boats was made on these, and both were destroyed. Breaches were rent in the walls, so that the place became untenable, and finally, after forty-eight days of terrific siege, Louisbourg, on July 26th, again surrendered to the British. Then more rejoicings came throughout the Empire, Wolfe was made a Major General, and the gain to ocean commerce by the downfall of the fortress, which had been a refuge for privateers, was seen in an immediate decline in marine insurance rates from thirty to twelve per cent. The next year the great British fleet and army sailed away from Louisbourg under Wolfe for the capture of Quebec and the final conquest of Canada. Then went forth the edict of the conqueror that the famous French fortress should be utterly destroyed. It was found as a seaport to be inferior to Halifax, where the admirable harbor is never closed by ice, and where the forts could make the place impregnable. The Louisbourg garrison was withdrawn, and the people scattered, many going to Sydney. All the guns, stores and everything valuable went to Halifax. In 1760 a corps of sappers and miners workedsix months, demolishing the fortifications and buildings, overthrowing the walls and glacis into the ditches, leaving nothing standing but a few small half-ruined private houses, and thus the proud Acadian fortress was humbled into heaps of rubbish. The merciful hand of time, left to complete the ruin, has during the centuries healed most of the ghastly wounds with its generous mantle of greensward, and the neighboring ocean sounds along the low shores the eternal requiem of proud Louisbourg.
THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS.
We have come to the uttermost verge of the Continent in quest of "Down East," and find it elusive and still beyond us. There is yet the remote island of Newfoundland, and we are pointed thither as still "Down East." To the northward, lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are the group of Magdalen Islands, where a steamer calls once a week, sailing from Pictou, these probably being about as far away as one would wish to go in his search. There are thirteen in the group, sixty miles off the extremity of Cape Breton Island, the bleak Cape North. Acadian fishermen live there, the population being about three thousand, and New England fishery fleets visit them for cod, mackerel and seals, with lobsters and sea-trout also abundant, so that these islands have come to be called in the Provinces the "Kingdom of Fish." Amherst Island is the chief, having the villageand Custom House, the surface of this and other islands rising in high hills seen from afar. Coffin Island is the largest of the group, named after Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, the original owner. Coffin was a native of Boston, and in colonial times a distinguished British naval officer. When he was a Captain he took Governor General Lord Dorchester to Canada in his frigate, and designing to enter the St. Lawrence, a furious storm arose. With skill he saved his vessel by managing to get under the lee of these islands, which broke the force of the gale, and Lord Dorchester in gratitude procured the grant of the group for Coffin. There are also the Bird Isles, two bare rocks of sandstone, the principal one called the Gannet Rock. These are haunted by immense numbers of sea-birds, whose eggs the islanders gather. The surf dashes violently against the gaunt rocks on all sides, and they have been visited by the greatest naturalists of the world, who found them a most interesting study. A lighthouse is erected on one of them. Charlevoix, in 1720, recorded his visit here, and his wonder how "in such a multitude of nests every bird immediately finds her own." It is also recorded of this remote region that it, too, is a colonizer, the people of the Magdalen Islands having established three small but prosperous colonies over on the Labrador shore. Outlying the group to the westward, eight miles from Amherst, is the desolate rock, resembling a corpse prepared for burial,known as Deadman's Isle. Tom Moore sailed past this gruesome place in 1804, and wrote the poem making it famous:
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shoreOf cold and pitiless Labrador,Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,Full many a mariner's bones are tossed."Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,And the dim blue fire that lights her deckDoth play on as pale and livid a crewAs ever yet drank the churchyard dew."To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,And the hand that steers is not of this world."
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shoreOf cold and pitiless Labrador,Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,Full many a mariner's bones are tossed."Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,And the dim blue fire that lights her deckDoth play on as pale and livid a crewAs ever yet drank the churchyard dew."To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,And the hand that steers is not of this world."
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shoreOf cold and pitiless Labrador,Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,Full many a mariner's bones are tossed.
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador,
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tossed.
"Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,And the dim blue fire that lights her deckDoth play on as pale and livid a crewAs ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
"Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
"To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,And the hand that steers is not of this world."
"To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world."