Morning journal and courier., 1888-09-15

at anchor, and has gradually ascending shores whose highest elevations are about four hundred feet. The city of Halifax lies along the west shore of this basin, its wharves and lower streets circling away to the southwest, where Northwest Arm, an- other important body of water, extends be- hind and above the city, and its terrace-like rise of streets and brown old structures, ter minating almost in the city's center in 6 lofty height. Above this rises the Citadel, upon whose somber redoubts are forever pa- cing the relocated British sentinels. From the sea, advancing upon the city; from Pleasant Point, looking up the noble basin; from Dartmouth, gazing across the city fa- cades and upon the fortressed islands, or from the citadel peering over the slate roofs and grim chimneys of Halifax to the shining sea and the far horizon beyond, is a specta- cle of unusual and reflective interest
 To one accustomed to the brightness and newness of architecture, to the virility and glowing in everyday activities, and the snap and flash of business life in American cities, the grimness, dullness and inaninity of Hali- fax challenge an involuntary tegty resent ment The city is both too rich and too poor for even comparatively equable condi- tions. Her rich are the lordly, isolated rich. Her poor are the squalid, sodden, hopeless poor. The former have no need to exercise enterprise or disposition to bestow in count- less possible ways for their own and their city's bettering wise benevolence. But shutting your eyes to this, and only contem- plating the whole as concrete series of pic- lures for passing inspection and interest, there is something like charm in her grim old buildings, her shaded, unkempt streets, and even in her ramshackle, storm-rattled tenements. There is not on our coast, not excepting old Salem, such queer and anti- quated structures. They seem a composite of half-city, half-country architecture of Normandy HnIlan6 and colonial time. Ponderous porches, little windows, spacious porch-boxes as among the old Penn- sylvania Dutch settlements, bunchy window roofs, cumbrous gables, dormer windows in- numerable, ''hipped" roofs, shingled house. sides and the tremendous chimneys of Mar blehead, suggest day and time of old, pro- iected with sturdy, lasting qualities into the new. If this be true Of the habitations, still quainter flavor is found down on upper and lower Water streets, on Bedford Row, and where the lanes and alleys converge and intersect and struggle along the wharves. All this region is like the huddled water front groupings at our own picturesque Gloucester; and more diminutive, but as dainty, bits can here be found for the artists' pencil as at ancient Nuremberg itself.
 No one can deny the restfulness of the old city. Nobody is in 8 hurry. You seldom see people about or at the windows of the great mansions. Beggars beg listlessly as in Cuba. One sleeps in street car as it creeps along, lulled by the sluggish somnolence of the driver and the dreamful tinkling of the lazily shaken bell. In the shops there is hush and quiet as at church. The very birds perch, adjust their feathers and chirp as if after some olden habit, and not from impelA ling life and instinct of song. Citizens promenade the streets-that is when any are to be seen-as if hesitant and in doubt over the object of their errand. The noon and
 ;-1E Ionpo if xuit da1axro1 port, and their echoes rumble over the city with delinquent echoings Along the wharves the waterside folk and all business affairs of shipping seem to rest as if under delayed orders. And away above all, up on the citadel heights, the measured pacings Of the sentinels have lifelessness that empha- sizes this sense of endless siesta, and harmo- nizes completely with the feeling of repose- full 6nality inyoluntarily possessing the loi- terer here Like some good old woman with a satisfactory ancestry behind her, with com fortable posterity and belongings about her, with ample annuities and bequests and codi- els to content her, Halifax sits by the sea in her plaids, delaines and lavenders, with be- nign eyes closed against the whole world that encircles her. Leaving her, while bounding along the radiant coast in our Man. cy Mary, could hardly endorse the violent sentiments of my sturdy skipper, whose spirit was raging from grog and argument
 
 he had been entertaining in our little "cud- dy" sfBlow her upi" he snorted with savage wrenchings of the tilIer. t'Thats what orter be did. She wouldn't know it neither. Long vii all her pizin airs 'n' frills m can non 'n' Jukes m lords O high degree, she's jess runnin' o'er her scruppers wi' the pes kiest hatin' O our kentry as lays enny place whar that ar onery criss-cross flag flies. I say blowin' ups too good for her!" But one not liable to overheating like good Captain Ballast will remember old Halifax with geni- al retrospeesion.
 Two nights and days eoasting brought us in sight of old Louisburg. I do not call to mind another so idyllic and dreamful a cruise. At this season of the there are fa- voring gales if ever. The entire coast of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island is odor- ous with spruce and pine. Steward, here and there, as if in shoals, are the schooners and huddling dories of the fishing fleets. Alongshore the whole way is @ continuous reach of beautiful and often sublime scene- ry. At long intervals in the curves of coves are little cabins of fishermen, and occasion ally a settlement where women of mighty frame and children of slight attire stand bare-legRed on the beaches, and peer with shaded eyes upon every passing craft, for it is the only token to them of world and of humans beyond the narrow confines of their own secluded habitations. About them the RHo6444k gulls whirl and gurgle and whistle. But the silences are something wonderfully impress sive. I have often thought the lonesomest places on earth were among the packed thou sands in cities. Ethlcally that may be. But one shudders at the contemplation of say 8 winters living here, with an hundred miles of impossible coast, or an hundred miles of as impossible wilderness, between little groups of sodden souls. After all there is a silence where humans are not which cannot even be broken by the mightiest thunderings of the sea.
 A wondrous interest lies in old Louisburg for what it is not, rather than for what it is. The splendid harbor has been looked upon as possible great future point of departure for Europe-bound steamships Every few years the hope is revived, and credulous specula- tors, chiefly Americans, invest millions in gi- gantie stock companies which shortly pass into financial shadow land. It can never be what has been hoped. All the millions of Boston and New York can never prevent the gigantic gorges of ice from forming here in the spring time. Sea faring men who know these things as facts instead of theories will tell you of tides and counter currents fight ing for mastery here and piling the drift ice from Newfoundland and Labrador in such tremendous heaps within these harbors that their settlements are walled in out of sight from the sea behind mountain-high gleaming
 
 in the old days attempted here more vi sionary accomplishment than to make this grim old harbor another New York. Her dream was to build here the greatest fortress on earth, and from it's mighty walls conn mand the new world. After the surrender of Newfoundland and Acadia to Great Bri- tain by the treaty of Utrecht the French in- habitants and forces massed here, and under M. de St. Ovide de Brouillan the great for tress was begun in 1714. Over thirty million livres were expended by France, and "all the energies and resources of her government fol | twenty years'' were devoted to it's compile \ tion. Historians state that this was the greatest fortress of the world in its time: \ The harbor was guarded by battery ei \ thirty twenty-eight~pounders on Goat Island and by the Royal battery of thirty heavy guns which raked the entrances. On the | landward side was deep moat and project- | ing bastions; and the great careening dock | was opposite The land and harbor sides of ' the town were defended by lines of ranparti ' and bastions, on which eighty guns were | mounted; and the West Gate was overlooked | by a battery of twenty nty-four-pounders. The | lofty Citadel was in the gorge of the king'l | bastion. In the center of the city was tht \ stately stone church, nunnery and hospital O