It is best viewed from French Lookout, a grassy promontory at the edge of the sharp from where those early refugees scanned the waters for any sign of the British. To the east, the golden cliffs of Cape door glisten in a late afternoon sun, no different from the days when Champlain visited them in search of copper while en route to found the first European settlement in Canada. At the very tip of the Cape, the igneous rock of the Cobequid Mountains gradually slides under the waters of the Bay. The western shoreline is also a legacy of continental rifting, a breaking apart that didn't quite succeed. The cliffs are largely unassailable although lower than on the south shore and with numerous pocket coves that provide passage to a gently sloping plateau.
Streams often arrive at the beach in a waterfall, a tempting cool shower during hot summer days.
Shoals and spires hug the coast and lead the adventurous through a tricky maze of winding channels where harbour seals share the ledges with olive-green seaweed. Exposed reefs, the colour of limestone, are actually blankets of barnacles waiting out another tidal cycle. High overhead, bald eagles play in the updrafts and at Green Point, a large Herring Gull colony guards the approaches to Eatonville, another deserted harbour. When the Europeans arrived in the Bay of Fundy, settlement spread rapidly and, by the end of the last century, every cove, inlet and river mouth that could be adapted for anchorage became the site of a mill or a shipyard. Eatonville was one such place.