The eastern boundary of Nova Scotia is the Canso Strait, separating it
from Cape Breton Island. At Canso, its southern entrance, various
Atlantic cables are landed, while others go off southward to New
York. This strait is a picturesque waterway, fifteen miles long and
about a mile wide, a highway of commerce for the shipping desirous of
avoiding the long passage around Cape Breton, and it is called by its
admirers "The Golden Gate of the St. Lawrence Gulf." The geologists
describe it as a narrow transverse valley excavated by the powerful
currents of the drift period. As it leads directly from the Atlantic
Ocean into the Gulf, more vessels are said to pass it than any other
strait excepting Gibraltar. It has several villages upon the shores,
mainly with Scottish inhabitants, the chief being Port Hawkesbury,
Port Mulgrave and Port Hastings, the latter a point for gypsum export.
Cape Breton Island is about one hundred miles long and eighty miles
wide, its greatest natural feature being the famous "Arm of Gold,"
thus named in admiration by the early French explorers. Nearly
one-half the surface of the island is occupied by the lakes and swamps
of this "Bras d'Or," an extensive and almost tideless inland sea of
salt water, ramifying with deep bays and long arms through the centre,
having two large openings into the sea at its northeastern end, and
almost communicating with the Atlantic on its southwestern corner.
This "Arm of Gold" has fine scenery, and presents within the rocky
confines of the island a large lake, the Great Bras d'Or, where the
mariner gets almost out of sight of land. To the southward of Cape
Breton Island is Arichat, or the Isle Madame, having the Lennox
Passage between, this Isle being inhabited by a colony of French
Acadian fishermen. Originally this region was colonized by the Count
de Fronsac, Sieur Denys, the first French Governor of Cape Breton, in
whose honor they always called the Canso Strait the Passage Fronsac,
though since then its present title was adopted, being derived from
the Micmac name of Camsoke, meaning "facing the frowning cliffs." Each
little French settlement here, as on the St. Lawrence, has the white
cottages clustering around the church with the tall spire, and the
curé's house not far away, usually the most elaborate in the
settlement. From the Lennox Passage a short canal has been cut through
the rocks into the southwestern extremity of the Bras d'Or, thus
actually dividing Cape Breton into two islands.
The village of "St. Peter at the Gate" is passed, and the lake entered
at St. Peter's Inlet, a beautiful waterway filled with islands making
narrow winding channels. Several of these islands are a Government
reservation for a remnant of the Micmacs, and they have a small white
church upon Chapel Island, where they gather from all parts of Cape
Breton for their annual festival on St. Anne's Day. Beyond, the Great
Bras d'Or broadens, an inland sea, the opposite shore almost out of
vision, for the lake is eighteen miles across and fully fifty miles
long. The banks come together at the Grand Narrows, making the
contracted Strait of Barra, and then they expand again into another
lake, neither so long nor so wide, the Little Bras d'Or to the
northeastward, but still nearly fifty miles long, including its
northeastern prolongation of St. Andrew Channel. This in turn opens by
a wider strait into yet another lake to the northward, upon the
farther shore of which is Baddeck. To the westward this lake spreads
into St. Patrick's Channel, and to the northeastward there are thrust
out in parallel lines the two "Arms of Gold" connecting with the sea.
An island over thirty miles long and varying in width separates these
two curious arms. These strangely-fashioned lakes present varied
scenery; the shores in some places are low meadows, in others
gently-swelling hills, and elsewhere they rise into forest-clad
mountains. In the pellucid waters swim jelly-fish of exquisite tints.
The atmosphere blends the outlines and colors so well that it smoothes
the roughness of the wilder regions, and casts a softness over the
scene which adds to its charms. Beyond the bordering mountains, to the
northward, is a dreary and almost uninhabited table-land stretching to
the Atlantic Ocean, where the long projection of remote Cape North
stands in silent grandeur within seventy-five miles of Newfoundland.
Upon the verge of the northern Bras d'Or Lake, in a charming
situation, is the little town of Baddeck, its houses scattered over
the sloping hillsides and the church spires rising among the trees. A
pretty island stands out in front as a protective breakwater, for
storms often sweep wildly across the broad waters. This is the chief
settlement of the lake district, the Highland Scottish inhabitants
having twisted its present name out of the original French title of
Bedique, there being a population of about one thousand. At the
eastern extremity of Cape Breton Island, on an inlet from the
Atlantic, and near the terminating arms of the Bras d'Or, is the
coal-shipping port of Sydney, with a population of twenty-five
hundred, though excepting coal-piers and colliers there is not much
there to see. This is the port for the Sydney coal-fields, covering
nearly three hundred square miles of the island, and the
mine-galleries being prolonged in various places under the ocean.
These were the first coal deposits worked in America, the French
having got coal out of them in the seventeenth century. They are now
all controlled by the wealthy Dominion Coal Company of Boston. Sydney,
C. B., is a seaport known from its coaling facilities throughout the
world, and while prosaic enough now, it saw stirring scenes in the
Colonial times. The early name for its admirable harbor was Spanish
Bay, because Spanish fishermen gathered there. It was a favorite
anchorage for both French and English fleets in their preparations, as
the tide of battle turned, for attacking New England or Acadia in the
long struggle for supremacy. In 1696 the French assembled in Spanish
Bay for a foray upon Pemaquid. In 1711 Admiral Hovenden Walker,
returning from his unsuccessful expedition against Quebec, his ships
having been dispersed by a storm, collected in this capacious
roadstead the most formidable fleet it had seen, forty-two vessels.
The doughty British Admiral felt so good about it that he set up on
shore a large signboard made by his carpenters, whereon was inscribed
a pompous proclamation claiming possession of the whole country in
honor of his sovereign Queen Anne. The French soon came along,
however, and smashed his signboard, built their fortress of
Louisbourg, and there was a half-century of warfare before the
proclamation was made good and England had undisputed possession. The
settlement on Spanish Bay was not named after Lord Sydney and made the
Cape Breton capital until 1784, when exiled loyalists came from the
United States to inhabit it.