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, covered with 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-five
hundred 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 western portal 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, the group 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 intervals between 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 severely on
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.