# The Tourist's Maritime Provinces/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII
NORTHERN NOVA SCOTIA INCLUDING THE ISLAND OF CAPE BRETON
For steamers, Halifax—Hawkesbury, C. B., see under "Steamers from the United States," Plant Line, Chapter I; for Halifax—"East Coast" points (Spry Bay, Sherbrooke, Isaac's Harbour, Canso, Guysboro, etc.), under "Provincial Railways and Steamers." These trips along the Atlantic coast in small vessels are recommended only to those who are invariably good sailors.
Steamer connection, Quebec—Pictou, and Montreal—Sydney is described under "Steamers from Canadian Ports," Chapter I.
Newfoundland—Nova Scotia. Steamer, Port-aux-Basques to North Sydney. The service is mentioned under "Provincial Railways and Steamers," Chapter I, in connection with North Sydney.
Halifax—Truro, 62 miles by Intercolonial Railway; Truro—Sydney, 214 miles, via Antigonish, Mulgrave and the Bras d'Or Lakes.
Yarmouth—Truro, 228 miles by Dominion Atlantic Railway via Windsor.
St. John—Truro, 209 miles by Canadian Pacific steamer to Digby, and Dominion Atlantic Railway to Truro, via Windsor; and 213 miles by Intercolonial Railway, via Moncton, N. B.
Montreal—Truro, 775 miles, by Intercolonial Railway via Moncton.
Moncton—Truro, 24 miles. The first important Nova Scotia town across the New Brunswick frontier is Amherst, ​an industrial centre. From this point a drive may be taken into New Brunswick to the ruins of Fort Cumberland. Until the New Englanders under Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton captured it from the French in 1755, it was called Fort Beauséjour. (See under Grand Pré historical notes, Chapter V.) Originally there were five bastions, armed by thirty guns and guarded by 800 soldiers. The outlines of the fort are still visible. On another bank of the Missequash, which defines the boundary between the two provinces, the English built Fort Lawrence to defend their claims to Acadia. From this stronghold at the head of Cumberland Basin, the ruins of which have now disappeared, the assailants, of Fort Beauséjour made their attack. This engagement had a decisive effect upon the final cession of their Canadian claims by the French.
Tidnish, on Northumberland Strait, is a favourite beach resort, 17 miles from Amherst.
Through a mining, fishing and hunting country the Intercolonial continues to Springhill Junction (Cumberland Railway to Parrsboro, 32 miles ). At Oxford Junction a line diverges that gives connection with Pugwash Harbour, Wallace, and Tatamagouche, all in a district known for its sporting facilities and affluent farms. Pictou may be reached from Oxford Junction, but the route usually taken is via Stellarton, east of Truro.
The road, Oxford Junction—Truro, rises to a height of over 600 feet at Folleigh Lake, a pretty expanse of water situated among the Cobequid hills. Londonderry is the station for iron mines whose ore is of exceptionally high grade. Truro, at the junction of the main Intercolonial line and the line to the north, is 17 miles beyond Londonderry.
Truro—Stellarton (Pictou)—Antigonish—Guysboro—Mulgrave—Canso—Arichat.
The "sights" of Truro may be compassed in half a day. They include the natural forest park ​called for Queen Victoria, and the Government Farm of 220 acres. The recreation woods, of which the town is quite justly vain, are beyond the outskirts. Except for the laying of walks, the building of rustic spans and climbing stairways, man has intruded little of his handiwork in this shrine of trees and hurrying brooks. A mountain torrent gushing over rocky terraces creates a cascade which Joe Howe admired and which in memory bears his name.
Bible Hill on the opposite side of the well-kept town is occupied by the experimental farm, directed in the interest of Nova Scotia dairying and agriculture. Soil typical of the province is available for the growing of roots, grain and hay. The livestock barns boast prize cattle and horses. Among the latter are several thoroughbreds imported from various districts to raise the standard of Nova Scotia draught and carriage horses. The grounds are ornamented with flower-beds, which border the walks and surround the superintendent's dwelling. The Nova Scotians, tutored by capable specialists like Professor Cummings, head of the Farm and of the Agricultural School, and his associates, are awakening to the call of the land in a broader sense than ever before. Settlers from across the ocean have of late years been invited to tarry in this rich province by the sea instead of pursuing their journey half way across the continent to take up undeveloped claims under pioneer conditions.
​Stellarton, 40 miles beyond Truro, is on the border of the Pictou coal deposits which cover thirty-five square miles. A brief journey by branch railway brings one to Pictou, a trig port on Northumberland Strait from which the steamer of the Charlottetown Steam Navigation Company departs every week-day, unless deterred by ice. In the winter, ice-breaking craft ply between Pictou and Georgetown, Prince Edward Island. Other boats leave here in the open season for Georgetown, and Montague, for Souris, P. E. I. and the Magdalen Islands, and for Mulgrave and the west coast of Cape Breton.
A colony organised by Benjamin Franklin first inhabited this shore, and were succeeded by Scotch farmers who came ten years after Canada became wholly a British possession.
Pictou coal fired the engines of the Royal William, first steamer to cross the Atlantic all the way with-out recourse to sails. She sailed from this harbour for Gravesend, England, in August, 1833.
The century-old Scottish Academy is of interest. In the environs of Pictou are some fine fishing-streams which run through a hill and meadow country.
Pictou-Magdalen Islands, twice a week by S.S. Lady Sibyl. Distance, about 100 m. The thirteen islands which comprise this archipelago are chiefly visited in the spring by fishing fleets in search of bait and the cod on the banks. They were once part of the Colony of ​Newfoundland, but now belong to the County of Gaspé, Province of Quebec. The population of 6000, consists almost entirely of Acadian French, who both fish and farm.
In the reign of Louis XV a fishing depot had already been established here. When George III became Canada's Sovereign the group was given to Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, a native of Boston, and became a feudal state.
Dangerous reefs surround all the islands, which themselves appear like the peaks of rocky shoals. Amherst Island, 11 miles long and 4 wide, has the only harbour of any consequence. It is connected with other islands by sandy links over which it is possible to drive by the edge of the sea. Grindstone Island, a few miles to the north, is a red rock from whose sea-face the surface has been gnawed by the elements. A poem by Stedman rhymes the narrative of a murderous wreck which occurred on this wild shore. There are further settlements on islands that lie toward the east. Alright Island must have been so named in derision. Coffin Island, one of the largest of the group, commemorates the feudal owner, against whose dictates the French inhabitants were wont frequently to rebel. Deadman Island is celebrated in a poem written by Tom Moore in 1804. Brion Island, further out in the Gulf, bears the name of the Seigneur de Brion, patron of the first voyage of Jacques Cartier, who discovered the archipelago in 1534. The Bird Rocks, Little and Big, are the most isolated and for that reason have been chosen by the gannets for a dwelling-place.
At a few of the tiny ports board may be secured in private houses or very plain little hotels at $5 to $7 a week. The views, the trout fishing and scenes characteristic of the sea invite a few visitors. Passengers returning from the Magdalens may stop off at Souris and begin their tour of Prince Edward Island from this easterly port, returning to the mainland via Charlottetown and Pictou, or via Summerside and Point du Chene, N. B.
Pictou—Mulgrave, and thence to towns on the Inverness shore. Cape Breton, by S.S. Kinburn. See paragraphs preceding "Inverness County," this chapter.
​Across the harbour from Pictou is "the Landing" from which an 8-mile branch of the Intercolonial runs to New Glasgow (2 miles east of Stellarton) among the coal-mining and industrial activities that give this section its provincial and extra-provincial fame.
Antigonish is the demure mistress of a wide demesne that rambles by river and lake to upland pastures, that verges ragged glens and dips from hills to sea. "The pretty Catholic village" which all but lured Charles Dudley Warner from his pilgrimage to Baddeck is the capital of "the finest diversified farm county in Nova Scotia." Not only is it dowered in lands, but in the wealth of the ocean, in historic lore, and in varied nature scenes. Trout, bass, mackerel, salmon, clams and lobsters are taken in the streams and on the bay shore of the county, and in the fall geese swarm among the islands at the harbour mouth.
GLENDYR GORGE, ON THE LINE OF THE INVERNESS RAILWAY, CAMP BRETON
​compensate ambitious climbers by vistas that embrace the Cape Breton shore, the Straits of Canso, 30 miles away, the Bay and all the lovely realm between.
One magnificent farm, 9 miles from Antigonish town, has 600 acres extending back from the bay. The great barn, largest in all the province, has a capacity of nearly 200 tons of hay.
The county-seat is a mile from the head of a newly-dredged harbour which will admit shipping and pleasure-craft to wharves near the town. Though the number of inhabitants is but 2000 and has scarcely varied in twenty years, the three banks of the town have a million and a half dollars on deposit.
The harbour shore was the district settled first by Acadians, then by English officers and privates who were granted land in Nova Scotia in recompense for their services in the war of the Colonies against Great Britain. The rigours of the wilderness put out the enthusiasm of most of these, but in a short time, Highlanders, expatriated by ruthless landlords, came to New Scotland and found in the braes and leas of Antigonish County a solace for their misfortune. "In their new homes," relates Monsignor Gillis, Professor of Philosophy at St. Francis Xavier, and sponsor for these brief historical notes, "the Catholics and the Presbyterians selected different localities for their settlements—a circumstance which explains the groupings of the adherents of their respective churches ​in eastern Nova Scotia. Thus, the Highlanders who began in 1790 to trickle into the territory along the shores of Northumberland Strait, were mostly Catholics. The tide of these immigrants continued to ebb and flow for about a quarter of a century, until they penetrated into every nook and corner of the county, interspersed by a few families here and there from the Emerald Isle."
The Catholic Cathedral of St. Ninian is inscribed above its door with the Gaelic words, Tighe Dhe, the House of God. Occasionally sermons are given in the ancient tongue of the Highlands. The University of St. Francis Xavier was founded in 1854 by the Bishop of Arichat. The original college building now has for neighbours a chapel of exquisite interior design and a new science building, both presented by alumni. A new dormitory is about to be constructed on the quadrangle at the rear of the main building. Soft-stepping Sisters perform the labours of dormitory, laundry and kitchen and serve to the chance visitor sugared cakes and tea, with cream from the college dairy. This is said to be the first Roman Catholic College to confer the Arts degree upon women. Its courses are open to both sexes and all sects at a nominal tuition.
To the right of the main building is St. Bernard's Convent for young women. On the hill behind the cathedral is the palace of the bishop of the diocese.
​Near the main street, with its Celtic Hall, its shops and its curling rink is the Royal George Hotel, one of the few in the provinces completely modern in equipment. The wide streets are arched by splendid trees that remind one of New England. Though seven-eighths of the population is Scotch Catholic, by agreement among the citizens a Romanist is elected to the mayoralty one term and a Protestant the next, an arrangement whose tolerance increases one's already agreeable impression of the town.
The road from Antigonish (a name inherited from the Indians) winds through Antigonish and Guysboro Counties to villages on the Atlantic Coast. Snug cottages and domineering hay and cattle barns are their own commentary on the fertility of this farm country which nowhere is more than twenty miles from salt water. The summer temperature in this belt averages 62°, the winter temperature, 26° Fahrenheit. The vital statistics of the County of Antigonish show that fifteen per cent. of those that die within its bounds are over eighty years of age, and three per cent. live to be over ninety. In a certain year, seven died aged over one hundred—an interesting testimonial to the climate and the original stock of the race.
Sherbrooke, 40 miles from Antigonish, is the centre of a district productive of big game and gold quartz. At Goldenville, across the St. Mary River, there is a paying plant in operation. There ​are other mines on the post-road between Lochaber and Sherbrooke, and all along the coast between Halifax and Goldboro. Tangier, 60 miles below the mouth of the St. Mary, was the scene of the first gold strike in Nova Scotia, some fifty years ago. While there are innmnerable deposits on this water-shed, comparatively few veins are deep or wide enough to make their separate operation profitable.
From Heatherton, 12 miles east of Antigonish, a stage departs on the arrival of the express for Guysboro, 24 miles distant, at the head of Chedabucto Bay. The pastoral shores of this out-of-the-way village have a history that dates from the Portuguese discoveries. Nicholas Denys created one of his colonies here. It was he who named the Strait of Fronsac for his patron, Cardinal Richelieu. The many negroes seen on village docks and tilling near-by fields are the progeny of slaves introduced from West Virginia in Revolutionary times by Colonel Molleson, who with other Loyalists came here in 1783 and was apportioned free tracts of land.
Guysboro is so nearly surrounded by water that farmers make schooner delivery of fresh lamb and vegetables, "roobub" and berries, and the thick cream that goes with them at thirty cents a quart jar-full.
The village hotel is an heirloom in the Grant ​family. Each generation has "improved" and "built on" until passages are all up-a-step and down-a-step and go in and out to low rooms with sharp-angled ceilings. The inn is so oddly sweet, the locality so attractive that one wishes to like Guysboro, but cannot, quite, unless by lucky chance one's ancestors fought for Britain too, and one is in a position to prove it to the scrutinous dwellers in the haughty little houses who with "pride in their port, defiance in their eye" regard the trespassing tourist.
There are two ways to leave Guysboro. Until the railway from Dartmouth is completed we return to the Intercolonial by stage and continue to Mulgrave through Tracadie where in the midst of an Acadian settlement there is a trappist monastery founded here nearly a century ago; or the wee steamer that daily (except Sunday) braves the uncertain Atlantic winds will in three hours carry the departing one across Chedabucto Bay and between the green walls of Canso Strait to Mulgrave.
Mulgrave is the station farthest east in Nova Scotia before crossing to Cape Breton. It is also the home port for a fleet of small packets that link numerous sequestered villages with the outer world.
One of these is Canso, which the Indians called "Kamsok" and the French, who were here in the days of de Monts and Denys, "Canseau." Cape Canso is the most easterly foreland on the continent, south of Labrador. Behind it, on a breezy ​mole, is the town famous alike as a fishing and as a cable station.
It was the New Englanders' smacks which went out from Canso that the French molested. Louisbourg, on the Isle Royale, was the price they paid for their zeal. The present fleet of well over a hundred schooners fish the teeming banks that lie a few miles out in the Atlantic and bring in rich cargoes of cod, haddock, mackerel and halibut. Shore "hand-liners" fish from motor-boats and sometimes clear $80 a week. From the Canso lobster hatchery as many as 8,000,000 fry are sometimes despatched at one time.
Because of its out-standing position Canso was chosen by both the Commercial and the Western Union Cable Companies as a terminus on this side of the Atlantic. The cable buildings and the houses of the officials, operators and mechanicians form a fair-sized colony in themselves.
At the entrance to Canso Gut, two hours' sail from Mulgrave, and separated from Cape Breton's southern shore by a slender passage is a halcyon isle of poppy zephyrs, of glistening roads, blue tarns and murmuring beaches that, two centuries and more a-gone, was bequeathed the title customarily given at that time to the eldest daughters of the Kings of France. Isle Madame hoards its fund of story and its reminiscence of years when Arichat was the jauntiest port on the coast, when wharves were alive with brigs, brigantines, shallops ​and schooners, each owned by a different family in the little town that outlines the crescent harbour,—a town three miles long and two streets wide. The wrecks of stocks, piers and stores mark the water-front. In 1765 the Jersey fishing-firm of Robin & Co. set up a station which a few years later was raided by the dashing sea-rover whom a serious-minded local writer refers to as "the well-known pirate, Paul Jones." The ware house erected in 1797 on the south side of the harbour was moved a decade ago, and now does duty as a village store, with an Acadian Boudreau as proprietor. The Jerseymen gave up their plant when the demand for cod in the brine largely superseded that for "salt fish."
Steam vessels usurped brig and schooner. The trade of Arichat declined to a state of torpor. But fortunes made in fish and freighting preserved the inhabitants from poverty. Indeed, many of the dormered houses that lend a graceful air to the main street reflect the comfort and culture that were always the badge of Arichat.
Thirty years ago the women wore the Norman cap but the island metropolis is much too advanced for that now. Occasionally one hears obsolete French and English words interpolated in the native tongue, and very occasionally, as in the case of Cap'n Paddy, one meets a character-type that remains rooted in the memory. Once, Captain Patrick Richard possessed flakes and ​fishing-schooners and sailed the main—a dapper, happy, bewhiskered, tiny Frenchman. When he retired to sun himself on the cottage steps above the harbour, his wife used to sit inside the door "hooking" her wool rugs or mending his clothes, and he was content. For fifty years they had lived in the little cottage, neat as a light-house and gay with Paddy's presence. The wife fell ill—the rugs were folded away, the distaff hung in the attic. The belle-fille came to keep the house. . . . Paddy, though eighty-two, grew restless; his anchor-chain had parted—he was desolé for his first love—the sea. There was a young skipper in need of a deck-boy to watch aboard the banker when the crew went to their trawls. It was the little captain who secured the berth to the distress of his family and his priest. He laughs and rubs his shiny palms as he relates the incidents of that season off the Magdalens, which would have failed but for his knowledge of the best shallows, and would, we wager, have been a drab journey enough but for the jigs of the deck-boy and his blue-eyed cheer. He demonstrates on a homespun rug the steps he used to do in the cabin, just to prove "that his legs were still good" and his heart merry as a dance tune. Alors, when the schooner makes harbour again it was the priest who met him in the road. "Patrice! I thought to see you buried on the banks—never again among us in Arichat." "Monsieur," replied the returned one, "you are ​good man. I respect you and confess to you. But even you may not say me when I die, neither you nor any one but le bon dieu. Perhaps I go again next year!"
The white road that brinks the Cap'n's small domain takes its way over a hill to the port of West Arichat, or Acadiaville. The island is but 16 miles long. The distance is not far even if we drive on to the point opposite Burnt Islands in Lennox Passage where a bridge has lately been laid to the Cape Breton coast, a link long-desired by the islanders as an aid to commerce and sociability. The interior of the island is watered by a chain of lakes where trout and partridge abound and the loon calls eerily. The drive to Descousse by Rocky Bay leads from Arichat to the north of the island 7 miles, edges the bay facing St. Peter's, and returns by Grand Lake. Petit de Grat is the most important fishing village of the island group and was the first place to be permanently settled. Here and on the fish wharves of Arichat one may choose haddock, salmon, cod or mackerel, shad or halibut, hake, pollock, tuna, flounder, smelt, trout, clams, lobsters or sword-fish for the day's dinner. The "P'tit d'Grat" fleet consists of a hundred vessels, many of them operated by motors.
​Arichat is the seat of Richmond County, Cape Breton. Court convenes in the white edifice on the hill near old St. John's. Though a majority of the island's 5000 inhabitants are of French ancestry, there are also a number of Irish families in the shire-town. Friendliness pervades the atmosphere of My Lady Isle to a degree unusual even in friendly Cape Breton.
From Mulgrave, the Richmond sails twice a week for St. Peter's, passes through the short artificial canal which separates Richmond County into two parts, and proceeds across the Bras d'Or to Grand Narrows. The Weymouth follows the same course, sailing from Hawkesbury, C. B., once a week for Grandique, St. Peter's, East Bay, Grand Narrows and North Sydney.
The Cape Breton Railway diverges to the east from Point Tupper and has its terminus at St. Peter's (31 m.), a tidy town whose ancestral site on Point Jerome was o'ershadowed by an important fortification in the time of Monsieur Denys (1636). In the charming bay is the island where the Micmacs hold the July pow-pow referred to under "Festivals."
Mulgrave is a call-port for still another little coaster that passes out the west orifice of the tidal channel which divides the mainland from the ​islands of the north. The Kinhurn makes a bi-weekly circuit of towns on the Inverness shore as far as Cheticamp. The same coast is much more comfortably served by railway as far as Inverness, the starting-point being Point Tupper, C. B., on the opposite side of the Strait from Mulgrave. Intercolonial trains are transported by ferry, en route to Sydney via the Bras d'Or Lakes. (See fine print following "Inverness County.")
Inverness County.
Once across the majestic canal provided by nature as a passage from the ocean to the lower Gulf of St. Lawrence, one has entered a kingdom where Nature in all things reigns undisputed. Cape Breton has no sophisticated cities or pretentious resorts. Her appeal is the rational one of broad waters, granite steeps and unharmed forests. Her riches are dug from the earth and wrested from the sea. Her sons are brawny and upright, their simple lives unhurried.
An island sea surrounded by land sprawls like a great starfish in the heart of the tract. The mountainous Counties of Inverness and Victoria thrust northward like uplifted fingers; Cape Breton County makes a line on its upper border like the bent knuckles of digits turned down. Inverness, Victoria and part of Richmond County are divided by St. Peter's Canal and the Bras d'Or Lakes from the land that lies to the east, so that ​two islands in reality form the one known as the Island of Cape Breton.
Inverness County extends for its whole length of a hundred miles along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, facing Prince Edward Island. The railway, constructed within recent years, follows the north edge of the strait from Point Tupper to Hawkesbury, Hastings and Troy before emerging in sight of St. George's Bay and the Gulf. Thereafter for 20 miles the rails conform to the curve of the shore along the base of the Craignish Hills. Place-names grow increasingly Scottish—Craigmore, Campbell, Mackay Point. A short way beyond Judique, unrivalled for the stature and belligerency of its Highlanders, the train crosses the southern extremity of the coal seams which slope toward and under the sea from Cape Susan to Cheticamp. At Port Hood, the county seat, 34 miles from Point Tupper, coal has been mined on an extensive scale. Some of the veins lie so close to the surface that ordinary spading on beach or farm may unbare them. From this point, Whycocomagh, on an arm of the Bras d'Or, is about 20 miles across country by wagon-road. Mabou is a delicious little spot in a river vale overlooked by low hills. North from the harbour mouth is Mabou Cape, nearly a thousand feet high and a landmark for all this part of the coast.
The road creeps at the foot of the South Highlands through the picturesque gorge of Glendyer ​to Strathlorne on Loch Ban, which is an inlet of Lake Ainslie, a sheet of fresh water reaching 12 miles to the southeast. Four miles beyond is the coal mining town of Inverness, which came into being about a dozen years ago, and is important to the traveller as a touring centre.
The Inverness colliery was first developed by a resident of Danvers, Massachusetts, and later taken over by McKenzie and Mann, promoters of the Canadian Northern Railway. The mine now ships about 300,000 tons a year of soft coal, much of which is mined beneath the Gulf. The miners are principally Scotchmen whose forefathers came to Cape Breton about a hundred years ago. There is also a contingent of Belgians v/ho are segregated in a smudgy quarter of their own. Until the railroad penetrated this untamed and precipitous coast, the Scotch farmers who planted their potato patches and tended their sheep were even more isolated than the mountain crofters of many parts of Scotland. Customs observed in the old country a century ago, and perhaps discarded there, still obtain in this primitive region. Here automobiles are still rare enough to inspire curiosity, if not actual fear in the rural districts which lie back from the shore. So many families have the same patronymic that confusion would arise but for the ingenious expedient of allying with the baptismal name of an individual the names or sobriquets of his father and grandfather. Thus, James, son of ​James and grandson of Joseph McIsaac would be given the appellation, James Jim Joe. Mary Ann Angus (father's name) Big John (grandfather) is the way Mary Campbell might be addressed. Similarly, Jessie Red Alex Neil Findlay and Alice Big Dave are known to the townsfolk, and John Alex Roary, Roary being the contraction of the ever popular Roderick.
Frequently a whole family labours and sacrifices "at the fishing," or in the mine or with the crops that one child may be educated. Not a few notable professional men have come from these plain communities. The ambition of the young girls is to go to Boston, where they are in demand as domestics. When they return in the summer with new and stylish wardrobes, they are known locally as "Boston swells." The men are of enormous physique. The Argyll Highlanders, a body of militia from Inverness County, have an average height of nearly six feet,—and 98 per cent, of them speak Gaelic.
AN ACADIAN DOORYARD, CHETCAMP
​and sups in beamed rooms whose carpets are handwoven and whose wall-hangings are bagpipes and embroidered mottoes. Near the Dunbar farm, 9 miles from Inverness, are the ruins of an old carding mill and a water wheel. The gate-posts leading to the house are the jaw-bones of a whale, the doorstep is an antiquated quern. At the foot of the hill is Lake Ainslie with a pebbled beach for bathing, and sea, lake and brook trout lurking in near-by pools. Baddeck on the Little Bras d'Or is a drive of 25 miles from this side of the lake.
The stranger who comes to Inverness will find himself comfortably quartered at the Imperial Hotel, kept by two ladies from Antigonish. The windows give an uninterrupted outlook upon the waters of the gulf, often illuminated by the pageantry of sunset. The houses of the superintendents of railway and mine stand in a clearing opposite the hotel. The rest of the town is as dingy as coal mining towns seemingly must be, no matter what their location.
To the north of Inverness stretches a supremely beautiful country where rivers flow among lofty hills to meet scarp and headland that jut perilously above the gulf. A well-travelled road unites Inverness with Margaree Harbour and Cheticamp. The entire distance of 40 miles may be made over the cliff road. But the pleasantest way is to drive by way of Margaree Forks up the far-sung valley of the Northeast Branch. If previously advised ​by letter or telephone Callie McLeod at "Northeast" will provide lodgings overnight, or for as long as may be agreed. "Red" McLeod, the father, was known the country over for his hospitality. Even now, doorkeys are never turned at night in the McLeod homestead lest a wayfarer in need of shelter should happen by after the family had retired to bed.
"Northeast" is 23 miles from Inverness and 28 miles from Baddeck. Aside from the splendour of its valley scenery, this branch of the Margaree has renown among fishermen as the best salmon stream in Nova Scotia. There is good trout-fishing within two minutes of the highway. Caribou are hunted 14 miles from the junction of the Baddeck and Valley roads. Partridge are abundant in season. A team to Inverness or Baddeck can be hired here for $6 (one to three persons), and a "single team" for $2 a day. It is difficult to conceive a vacation place more satisfying to every sense.
Dark, craggy ranges wall a gorge with level floor down which the river glides between low pastures, here called intervales. As the stream nears the sea the mountains descend in height. Farmhouses appear on the cloud-shadowed slopes and church spires gleam on the banks. Northeast Post Office is two hours distant from Margaree Harbour. At the gulf -edge the hills become high buttresses over whose crest the road goes on to ​Cheticamp. The Margaree is the dividing-line between the Scotch and the Acadian elements which inhabit this coast. Not twenty Scotch families live north of the boundary. The French land-holders spread their salmon nets and set their traps for lobster within sight of their own door-yards.
At Friar's Head there is a French church and a glebe house where dwell the Abbé Broussard and his sister, shepherd and shepherdess of a scattered flock. If the traveller has perhaps bought wild berries of a gamin in the road and a loaf of bread made by the postmaster's wife, here at the priest's, farm he will find milk to drink with them. Doubtless a glass of port will be offered and the horses watered by Achille, the nephew, before the stranger is permitted to continue on the road to Cheticamp.
Grand Étang is the only village of importance between the Margaree mouth and Eastern Harbour, in the district of Cheticamp. Here a fork of Northeast Margaree emerges through a funnel gullied in the mountains. In windy seasons the gales that blow up and down stream make the crossing of the bridge that spans it so hazardous that no one but the postman makes the attempt, and he only after ballasting his cart well with rock.
Cheticamp, 18 miles from Margaree Harbour, has the largest population of any Acadian community in Nova Scotia. In 1783, fourteen families took up land here and engaged in the fisheries, a station having been established by the Jersey firm of ​Robin & Co. nearly twenty years before on Cheticamp Island, across the bay from the present village. Approaching the settlement we pass the priest's house, then the splendid church with a seating capacity of 4000 which is Cheticamp's main pride. Other houses, the little cabins where the fishermen live while on shore during the summer and well-painted stores line the harbour-front until Mrs. Lawrence's cottage is reached. Here we are received by a cheery, rheumatic old lady in whom we discover the Mrs. Wiggs of Cheticamp. Her bright panes survey the strait through which half a hundred fishing-boats pass in the dawn, and return at night with their fares of turbot, fat herring, cod and mackerel.
Sail- and motor-boats make the trip of 8 miles along the edge of the coast to lofty Cap Rouge and continue 20 miles to Pleasant Bay, noted for its sword-fish. The Kinburn's Thursday sailing is extended to this point. Vessels with steady keels and sturdy sides go on to Cape St. Lawrence and, rounding the northern shore of Cape Breton Island, come to St. Lawrence Bay in Victoria County and to Cape North. A little way south of this awe-inspiring reach is Aspy Bay, to which steamers run from Sydney.
The road to Cap Rouge is narrow and declivitous and only the rash will attempt it with a double team. Cheticamp Island is usually visited by motor-boat, but a road leads to it past the house ​of the wedding-party described in Chapter Second as a typical Acadian festivity, and over a sandbar where the wheels meet the surf. The island, five miles long and a mile wide, rises in the centre to a wooded ridge. At the southern point is the original Robin staff-house, patterned after a Jersey Island mansion. Fireplaces are flanked by alcoves and cupboards, the ceilings are of wood, the side-boards are built into the wall. On the cliff are the drying flakes which belong now, as do all the 1800 acres of the island, to the nephews of Father Fiset, a French Canadian priest who ministered half his life to Cheticamp and who built the Cheticamp church, for which much of the labour and all of the stone were given by people of the district.
The new Robin store and the attractive house lately placed at the disposal of manager and bachelor clerks is in the centre of the village. Visitors will find the young men from Jersey always polite, and well versed in neighbourhood trips.
The salmon pools of the Little River are 8 miles distant by horse and on foot. A 6-mile drive into the country ends at the plaster-works where forty to fifty tons of gypsum are ground in a day. The only railway north of Inverness is the short track owned by the operating company.
Small farms cover all this region whose proprietors bear the names of the original families—Chiasson, Godet, Le Blanc, Au Coin, Desveaux, ​Maillet, Boudrot. Marcelin Desveaux' grandfather was the first child born in the District. He and his wife Denatile live in a cot near the highroad. The living-room is low, well-scrubbed, and carpeted with red-scrolled and gorgeously bouqueted hooked rugs. A cabinet in the corner guards a shelf of china treasures. Old chests hold home-spun cloth, blankets and woven bedspreads. In the winter, bustling Madame Desveaux and her married daughter spin, weave, hook and knit from dawn to candle-light. Summer evenings they sit through the long dusk within the doorway while the old habitants,—their golden wedding is not far off,—puff at their pipes and watch their darkly handsome son-in-law chisel tombstones in the yard, and letter them with white paint. This is André Poirier's profession only when there are no fox or mink to be trapped. One of the sons of sober Marcelin and robust Denatile was lost at Gloucester when a big vessel cut down his schooner, and they have daughters married in Bangor. In their patois chatter one gets a word now and then, as they receive the visit of the young man from Robin's and his stranger-guests. At the moment of departure a flowered vase is abstracted from the cabinet and the best mat thrust hastily into paper. One has no need to understand words then to perceive that this, in the Cheticamp way, is to say "Good-bye."
The return from Eastern Harbour, Cheticamp, may be ​made by steamer to Margaree Harbour, and to Port Hood and Mulgrave. As already indicated, the valley road from Margaree Harbour to Northeast P. O. keeps on to Baddeck (Eastern Harbour—Margaree Harbour, 18 m.—Northeast, 13 m.—Baddeck, 28 m.). Other points on the Bras d'Or Lakes are within driving distance of Inverness, Mabou and Port Hood.
If the distance between Inverness and Point Tupper be completed by rail, tourists to the Lakes will have a further choice of routes. The Richmond, leaving Mulgrave Wednesdays and Saturdays for St. Peter's and Grand Narrows, and the Weymouth from Hawkesbury on Thursdays to St. Peter's and Grand Narrows may be exchanged at the latter place for the local week-day steamer to Baddeck. The Richmond makes side-trips to Marble Mountain and East Bay on other days. The Weymouth continues from Grand Narrows to the Sydneys. The Marion, which has traversed the Little Bras d'Or for a generation, runs on a tri-weekly schedule between Whycocomagh, Baddeck and Sydney. Passengers arriving at Mulgrave, Point Tupper or Hawkesbury (see Note 3, this chapter) may thus reach Sydney by an all-water route, most of which is through the usually placid Bras d'Or Lakes and their tributaries. If direct connection is made, the trip, Mulgrave or Hawkesbury—St. Peter's—Baddeck—Sydney will consume two days and a night, unless, travelling by the Richmond, one has to lie over Sunday in St. Peter's.
The rail route to the Lakes and Sydney begins at Point Tupper and proceeds north via River Denys and Orangedale. (Pt. Tupper—Sydney, 91 m. Pt. Tupper—Orangedale, 29 m.).
Orangedale is the station for Whycocomagh, at the head of St. Patrick's Channel, 8 miles distant by road. Teams are hired at the depôt. Whycocomagh is connected with Baddeck by road and steamboat.
The Bras d'Or Lakes.
The most southerly shore of the mediterranean ​sea that takes its waters from the Atlantic and covers an area of four hundred and fifty square miles in the centre of Cape Breton, is removed but fifteen miles from the Gut of Canso. East Bay, diagonally opposite West Bay, extends to within the same distance of Sydney. The way to the ocean is northward through Little Bras d'Or, and out a narrow channel past Boularderie Island.
Between Orangedale and lona the car windows afford recurring glimpses of surrounding heights and the broad body of the Lake which in places attains a width of 20 miles. There must have been a time when the gap which divides lona from Grand Narrows was closed against the incursion of the sea. Barra Strait has a width of but half a mile. Through it, as through the man-made canal at St. Peter's, the ocean is admitted to the Great Bras d'Or.
The rail journey from Iona to Sydney (46 m.) continues by way of Grand Narrows, a hamlet well situated as a centre for trips up and down the lakes, to East Bay, Marble Mountain, et cetera. A railway bridge more than a third of a mile long links the shores of the strait. The road keeps close to the bank of the beautiful Little Bras d'Or, the views being best beyond Barachois. At a distance of a mile or two are the tree-lined shores of Boularderie Island, which has an extreme length of nearly 30 miles. At George's River the rails leave the lake, and from North Sydney Junction follow a circuitous course to Sydney, metropolis of Cape Breton.
The steamer which plies between lona and Baddeck calls at Grand Narrows, the place where ​passengers from the Richmond and Weymouth are transferred, and later crosses Barra Strait in time to meet the express trains from Sydney, Point Tupper and Halifax. The voyage of 12 miles is a delightful prologue to the divertissement of shores "bold enough to be striking, rounded enough to be winsome," staged by the Master Artist about Baddeck.
The little steamer holds its course well on the Victoria County side of the border-line which runs through the Lake and bisects the Island. The Boisdale Hills rise in the east in the County of Cape Breton. Baddeck remains so enticingly hidden as to recall the cunning with which it beckoned its most distinguished celebrant and advertiser, the late Mr. Warner. He approached "Scotch Baddeck" by road from Whycocomagh. From the steamer-deck we view it first through the entry that has for its left portal the light-house point and for its right, green-clad Beinn-Bhreagh, the Beautiful Mountain chosen by Alexander Graham Bell as his summer estate. The Gaelic village is only a stratum of plain wooden houses laid between hill and rimpled bay, but the atmosphere peculiar to this lake o' the ocean veils it with glamorous blue. The water in the foreground makes a mirror for gliding sail-boats and for the over-hanging boughs of craig and islet. Launches, ​lumber barges, schooners, yachts share with our steamer the water-passage which opens to new bays on the west and to the long channels on the north and east which bound Boularderie Island. A row of summer villas graces an outlying bank of the harbour. The town itself is without distinction. One shambling street contains stores and hotels interspersed with houses and white churches. On side hills there are more churches and commonplace dwellings with flower-gardens. Only as the nucleus of radiating excursions can we grant Baddeck's pretensions as a summer resort: for its environment and for one other reason, its faultless summer climate. Wherefore, the liveliness of the New Bras d'Or, a hotel now more in favour than the Telegraph which Warner praised, and the air of affluence about the shops affected by holiday traffic. "With such weather perpetual and such scenery always present, sin," thought Warner, "would soon become an impossibility."
The Bras d'Or banks and hillocks were settled by Highlanders who came between the years 1802 and 1828. It is their descendants who fill the kirk on Sundays, attired in the traditional black and serious to the point of oppression. If the service be full Gaelic, not only the sermon but the singing is delivered in the throaty unmelodious tongue of the Scottish hills. Behind the intrenchment of the pulpit sit the choir and a precentor. The tune is started without the aid of worldly instrument.
​Up and down a minor cadence five male voices quaver with an effect more Hindoo than Anglo-Saxon. Throats grow drier as the measures wear on. The singing is as long as the psalm has verses. Pauses occur only when induced by extreme need of breath. Stoical attention on the part of the audience is indicated by the rigorous poise of sunburned necks and out-thrust beards and chins. Like characters from MacLaren, the assemblage sits enthralled by the chant of vocable bagpipes which sum for them the harmony of harps and the angels.
Baddeck was not always given to psalm-tunes. Once Indians had their wigwams here, but they are relegated now to a reservation 12 miles on the road to Hogomah. The antiquated steam craft that goes back and forth three times a week from Sydney to the lower end of the channel takes aboard an occasional family of the wistful, slovenly Miggamack at informal stopping-places. According to an early missionary, the Souriquois, as they were called by the French, believed themselves to have been born "where they were," and that the Great or Super Being "having made them and their land as a master-piece, formed the rest carelessly." The Acadian Indians inhabit Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and upper New Brunswick, the seven "districts" of the Micmac Kingdom being Cape Breton, the seat of the chief, Pictou, Memramcook, Restigouche, Eskegawaage, ​Shubenacadie and Annapolis. By the census of 1911 there were 3900 Micmacs, of which about half were in Nova Scotia. Once they were fierce and war-like; the only appeal made upon our imagination by the race of the present is their lore of the woods and their store of nature myths. Among the farms of the Bras d'Or, where every house holds its McNeil or MacPherson, the tribal designation of the Micmacs seems peculiarly apt.
The trip of £5 miles from Baddeck to Whycocomagh through the hill-skirted Channel of St. Pattrick involves a night's stay at "The Head of the Bay," since the boat does not return to Baddeck and Sydney until the next morning. But ensconced in the home-like hotel which does the honours at Whycocomagh one may let several boat-days pass before being willing to relinquish the extraordinary beauties of this region. Under varying skies the highlands and the lake assume new depths, new shadows, new violets and tints of green. Across the water is an Indian church with an intricate oriental-looking tower, nearer by is a severe Gaelic one. The long sweep of field and pasture that carries to the crest of the hills is dappled with grain patches and nestling roofs above which drift the wraiths of the evening mist. The view from Salt Mountain reaches from Lake Ainslie and the Craignish Hills to Bras d'Or bays. The peak of Skye Mountain scans a still wider field of scenes that recall Old Scotland.
​A circle of 90 miles is made in driving from Baddeck to the Margaree Valley, Lake Ainslie and Whycocomagh, Baddeck being reached again on the third or fourth day. The drive from Baddeck to Whycocomagh direct may be taken as a day's outing, and discloses throughout its length of 25 miles characteristic highland scenery. The Baddeck River Valley is 8 miles from the New Bras d'Or, whose proprietor will give information about further expeditions for tourists and fishermen.
At Englishtown, St. Ann's Bay, was born the "Nova Scotia Giant," Angus MacAskill, who toured the world with Tom Thumb. One of his shoes is preserved at the Whycocomagh hotel. His height was 7 feet, 9 inches, his chest measurement 80 inches, and his weight 425 pounds. His grave makes "a new promontory" on the gnarled coast of St. Ann's. The author of Baddeck has written no more humorous page than the one devoted to this Cape Breton phenomenon. The presence of tunny-fish has of late years ​attracted noted sportsmen to Bay St. Ann, where they are taken with hook and line. Three centuries and more ago French fishermen were settled here.
The wagon-road from Sydney via Big Bras d'Or village emerges at Englishtown. At this place teams are ferried a mile across St. Ann Harbour. The bold highway along the Atlantic continues to the cliffs and water-falls of Indian Brook. Twenty miles to the north, beyond Wreck Cove and Skir Dhu, rises the ruddy mountain cape called "Smoky" for the perennial wreath of fog about its thousand-foot crest. The great headland whose beauty is a tradition in Cape Breton, forms the southern bulwark of Lower Ingonish Bay, whose shores, like those of the North Bay, are sundered by precipices and bulwarked by magnificent escarpments that attain a height of 1000 to 1400 feet. At Ingonish, about 70 miles from Baddeck and from Sydney, there is a comfortable hotel. This town so gloriously environed was for long a prosperous fishing-station.
The road leaves the coast, traversing a desolate plateau all the way to Aspy Bay. The over-night stop is made at Neil's Harbour, a rugged village, 20 miles from Ingonish, and facing the sea at the end of a short by-road. Achepé is the Indian and Aspé the French name of the bay into whose blue depths crept the first trans-Atlantic cable. Here came also John Cabot, if the records read truly, and for him Sugar Loaf, highest summit of the bewildering Aspy range, is sometimes called. Pleasant lodgings await one at "Zwicker's," and a feast of mountain views. Bay St. Lawrence, behind Cape North, Land's End of Nova Scotia, is a drive of an hour or two northwest of Dingwall. Here the grandeur of the coast scenery rises to its zenith. Awful tales of wrecks and blasting storms are told about the fireplace of the hospice. Ten miles off this terrifying coast is the Island of St. Paul, whose reefs are littered with broken hulks. Due west are the Magdalen Islands.
​The journey by steamboat through the Great Bras d'Or from Baddeck to Sydney is accomplished in about seven hours, the distance being 55 miles. The channel of the Little Bras d'Or, on the opposite side of Boularderie Island, is wider and in some places much deeper than the one usually navigated, but has a more restricted outlet. Adjectives are misleading in this case as are adverbs of direction throughout Nova Scotia, where one hears of journeys "up to New York" and "down to Labrador." Labrador, it may here be observed, was the name originally applied to the Bras d'Or or Braddore Lakes. As we know, the French made free with all the names they came upon in the uncharted Canadas. The "Arm of Gold" is, however, so analogous to the configuration of this devious body of water that in this instance they obliterated an inappropriate name to confer one poetically descriptive.
The Big Arm is hemmed by the woods and farms of the long narrow island whose name is that of its first proprietor, a Frenchman. Back from the mainland shore the mountains of St. Ann lift to the north. A sole-shaped peninsula crowds the channel close as the sea is approached, then turns out to the toe at Cape Dauphin. The steamboat rounds the shattered Point of Aconi, essays the unsheltered waters of the Atlantic, sailing above vast fields of coal that here extend miles into the ​sea, and drops down shore to the capacious harbour of Sydney.
The first call is at North Sydney on the North West Arm of the harbour. The steamer then crosses 5 miles to Sydney, situated on the high bank of South Arm.
North Sydney—Sydney by rail, 17 miles via the Junction. A steam ferry-boat traverses the harbour.
The Sydneys and Louisbourg.
North Sydney is a squalid port through which the traveller will flee as hurriedly as time-tables permit—to Newfoundland, St. Pierre—Miquelon, Louisbourg, Arichat, Bay St. Ann, Ingonish, Aspy Bay or Bay St. Lawrence by steamer (see foregoing paragraphs in fine print); or south by rail over the Intercolonial's line. The ill-favoured streets of the town are excused by the presence within 3 miles of Sydney Mines, the great bituminous coal plant of the Nova Scotia Steel Company. The Sydney Coal Field has an area of available coal estimated at 300 square miles with a capacity of 14,000,000,000 tons. Besides numerous small ones, there are ten seams three to twelve feet in thickness. The shipment of coal from this harbour began nearly two centuries ago. In 1839, 70,000 tons were produced by Sydney Mines, which then had a working force of "500 men, three steam engines and ninety horses." The present yield is ​over half a million tons a year. The total annual production of all the beds worked from Sydney peninsula is now about 4,000,000 tons. The Dominion Coal Company alone employs 5,400 persons. This syndicate, formed in 1899 with a capital of $20,000,000, has transformed from an indolent village to a thriving and attractive centre of trade the old provincial capital of Sydney. The mines at Glace Bay on the northeast coast may be conveniently visited by tram car. Iron and steel are manufactured from ore obtained on Bell Island, Conception Bay, Newfoundland.
Sydney has a present population of about 20,000. Its situation on a superb harbour, which has been a refuge for navigators since the earliest history of Cape Breton, not only conduces to trade but creates a delightful summer environment. A favourite drive follows the northern shore to Low Point (13 m.) and may be continued to Lingan and Glace Bay. Other roads take a southerly direction to Sydney River and East Bay, and to Mira River (12 m.) whose outlet is in the markedly beautiful bay of the same name which rounds inland just north of Louisbourg. Mira River and Bay are both frequented by fishermen, the former for its salmon and trout and the latter for its July tuna fishing. The river is navigable for 30 miles and is toured by steamboat from Louisbourg.
The S.S. Weymouth connects Sydney and North ​Sydney with Port Morien, Louisbourg, and Gabarus, continuing to Arichat, Mulgrave and Hawkesbury.
Louisbourg, 24 miles from Sydney as the bird flies, is 42 miles by railway. The road with its branches serves the important mining communities on the coast. At Glace Bay (15 m.) was despatched in 1902 the first wireless message across the ocean. From the station at Mira (29 m.), Scatari Island appears to the left, separated from the mainland by Mainadieu Passage. Cormandière Rocks lying off its extremity are the most easterly bit of land belonging to the Maritime Provinces. Five miles south of Mira Bay, a direct line drawn to the coast would touch Cape Breton, so designated by Biscay fishermen who came hither from France in the Middle Ages. New Louisbourg, at the end of the railway, is the prosaic and grimy child of a city whose muniments once bounded the hopes of New France.
The Grand Battery of the Fortress of Louisbourg faced the sea from the southerly hill-side of a harbour three miles long whose arms were reefs and promontories. When in 1713 Louis Fifteenth became undisputed master of the Royal Isle, he commanded that a mighty defence be raised at the outpost of his possessions. In 1720 his behests were fulfilled by the construction, at untold cost of labour and gold, of citadel, casemate, parapet, merlon, arch, portcullis, glacis, moat, field-work, ​dyke and palisade that the glory of France might be upheld on the new continent. A hundred guns were mounted in the embrasures of the main battlement, and seventy more upon the outworks of Lighthouse Point and Battery Island. Six hundred picked regulars filled the caserns, and there was a large body of armed citizens. Louisbourg, the insouciant, boasted that so impregnable were her bulwarks that, if need be, wives and mothers of the town could keep the garrison gates.
The fortifications were scarcely completed when war was again declared between France and England. The New Englanders had for a long time chafed against the rising power of their neighbours on the north and in 1745, after a siege lasting many weeks, forced the surrender of "the best equipped fortress in North America" under conditions which have not yet ceased to astonish the world. Colonel Pepperell, a former merchant who had attained high position in the Massachusetts militia, commanded the land attack from Gabarus Bay, on the south. Admiral Warren was at the head of the fleet.
The outline of the New Englanders' camps is still traceable above Kennington Cove. Remnants of the French stockade and breast-works, and a wall pierced by four crumbling arches are to be seen by driving south a short way from New Louisbourg. On the spot where Pepperell accepted from Governor Duchambon the keys of the ​citadel, the American Society of Colonial Wars erected a commemorative column in the one hundred and fiftieth year after the surrender.
New England's spectacular achievement was annulled by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1749) by the signing of which Britain ignominiously disregarded the valour of her colonies and bartered Cape Breton for the island of Madras. But in another ten years hostilities were again renewed between the rival contestants for the realm of Canada. Out of the harbour of Halifax sailed Wolfe and Amherst in the spring of 1758. Louisbourg was again besieged from the land and from the harbour, and for the second time capitulated before the superior strategy of her assailants. Following Wolfe's victory, English troops were drilled on the fields of Louisbourg for the struggle which was crowned by the defeat of Montcalm. Walls, breast-works, bastions, all were demolished after 1760. For months, labourers worked with pick and powder to level the ramparts of the City of Louis. Cellars and chimneys of the fishing hamlet which grew up in later years were made of stone brought originally from France to build the fortifications. A circuit of the bastion sites,—King's, Queen's, Dauphin's, Princess',—comprises a drive or walk of about two miles. A plan is now being agitated to restore some of the old forts and town buildings, and to raise memorials in the cemeteries to those who died for Britain and for France.
* ↑ The Cumberland Coal Field has an estimated area of 300 square miles.
* ↑ Isle Madame may be reached from Grand Anse on the Cape Breton Railway, Point Tupper—St. Peter's. Also by S.S. Weymouth from Sydney and North Sydney via Louisbourg.
* ↑ Point Tupper, C. B., is across a narrow inlet from Hawkesbury, C. B., at which point the Plant Line steamers call on the way between Boston, Halifax and Charlottetown.
* ↑ Baddeck and That Sort of Thing first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly as a serial in 1874.