NEW SCOTLAND’S CHARACTERISTICS
One finds it difficult, briefly by means of analogy, to
describe this peninsula of New Scotland. Yet it may not
unfairly be compared to Old Scotland. Many of the
features of the land are the same, nor is the climate unlike.
But when we come to the human element we have no difficulty
at all. Mixed as the population is, the Scots predominate.
The late Lieutenant-Governor was a Fraser.
The present holder of the office is a Macgregor, the Premier
is a Murray, the Mayor of Halifax is a Chisholm. The
Frasers, Macdonalds, M’Gillivrays, Wallaces, and M’Inneses
furnish forth the bench, the bar, journalism, and the learned
professions; and it is perhaps needless to tell you that
the Scot here, as elsewhere in Canada, more than holds his
own—“and maybe that of ither folk”—in the commercial
world.
But this is not saying enough about New Scotland
considered as a transatlantic habitation and hunting-ground
of the Old Scot. Here are still Gaelic communities where
the Sassenach tongue is not heard. On the eve of the
American Revolution a tide of emigration had set in from
the old Scotland to the new, the first to arrive being a
shipload of Highlanders in 1773. For many years, despite
the terrible conditions of an ocean passage in those days,
the tide flowed on. Emigrants, in the old days, were
forced to spend weeks or even months on the voyage,
pent like cattle in ships frequently infected by small-pox
and scurvy.
Some 25,000 Scottish peasants settled on Cape Breton
Island alone, while numbers landed on the shores of
Northumberland Strait, in the counties now known as
Pictou and Antigonish. Their hardships were not over
when they landed; but with indomitable pluck they persevered
until they had carved homes for themselves out of
the forest.
From one end of the peninsula to the other the cemeteries
are filled with the tombs of the Frasers and the Macdonalds,
the Macleans and the M’Nabs. At Shelburne,
that “dead city” of the Loyalists, I copied out a lengthy
inscription on a granite stone to a Loyalist heroine:
THE WIFE OF JOHN MACLEAN
WHO DIED 28TH MARCH, 1791, AGED 32 YEARS
She left her native country, Scotland, and numerous friends and
companions, to follow the fortunes of her husband during the war
with America in 1780. And when New York became no longer
an asylum to loyalty, she joined him again on the rugged shore
of Nova Scotia as an affectionate and faithful wife, a cheerful
and social friend, humane and charitable, and pious as became
a good Christian.
Another elsewhere oddly records that: “Here lies
Angus M’Donald and his five sons, who lived ever on the
side of the King, and died on this side of the Ocean.”
No; New Scotland is no misnomer; and the Patron
Saint of the Province is—and may it long continue so to be—St.
Andrew.
Although the Scots thus prevail, the other inhabitants
of the Province are an eighteenth century mixture of the
Old and New Worlds—of three great European races.
Cape Breton and the eastern part of the peninsula is Scotch,
the extreme west is French-Acadian, there is a settlement
of Germans in the middle, and the rest of the population,
save for a small sprinkling of aboriginal Micmacs, is English—the
fruit of the Loyalist immigration from America.
Nova Scotia, which is connected with the North
American Continent by a narrow isthmus, lies roughly
within the same degrees north latitude as the territory
between the Pyrenees and Lake Geneva. It is 360 miles
long, with an average breadth of 65 miles, and covers an
area of 20,900 square miles, _i.e._ over two-thirds that of
Scotland. No part of the entire peninsula is more than
thirty miles from the sea. The surface of the country is
very undulating, though not mountainous, the highest
ridge not being 1200 feet in height. Yet the Province
boasts several of these ridges or chains of hills, to which it
gives the name of mountains, generally running parallel
to its length. Its picturesqueness is chiefly attributable to
its numerous and beautiful lakes, its harbours dotted with
islands, its rivers and streams, and a pleasing variety of
highland and valley. Looked at from the Atlantic side,
the country seems barren and rocky.
The seaward coast of the Province has been likened to a
granite wall, indented by innumerable bays, fiords, and
inlets. Wide and sandy beaches sweep gradually towards the
firm soil, from headland to headland; quaint and quiet
fishing villages and hamlets underlie the rocks, sentinelled
by countless islands along the coast. At every point, too,
history and legend are here to throw a mantle over the
scene—to mingle its rays with those of the sun and moon.
Here are tales of French and English adventure, of Indian
raid, storm, wreck, of buccaneers and buried treasure, all
the way from Cape North to Cape Sable. But if the
Atlantic shore is seemingly sterile and iron-bound, bearing
in this respect a striking resemblance to the east coast of
Old Scotland, it is far otherwise with the interior. The
peach and the grape ripen in the open air, and the growth
of maize and root crops might well excite the envy of a
farmer in Perthshire or Elgin. Even in those districts
where the scorched and leafless stems of giant pines rear
their arms upward as if in appeal to Heaven, if the traveller
will leave the railway and penetrate to the land beneath,
he will see a vegetation almost rank, of raspberry, wild
rhododendron, alder and crimson sumach, telling of the
fertility of the soil. Where the surface is not fertile, the
riches are beneath, in the form of coal, iron, gypsum, and
other minerals: but there are few parts of the Province
where grass suitable for sheep and cattle raising does not
abound.
Then when we get on the North, or “Fundy Side,”
of the peninsula, we meet the broad alluvial plains, intersected
by tortuous rivers or indented by wide and crooked
basins, floored with red mud which the ebb-tide reveals,
as though each were a ruddy gash in the bosom of Mother
Earth. This is the land of the monstrous Fundy tides,
whose high-mounting, foaming “bore,” or tidal wave,
sweeps irresistibly shoreward, making the smallest creeks to
fill like turbulent rivers, but met and baffled along the low-lying
shore by the “dykes” which were first reared by the
Norman peasants three centuries ago, reclaiming the rich
marsh land from the salt tide, and only here and there
permitting the fertilising ocean to trickle in at certain
seasons to reinvigorate the soil. Here is situated, too,
that “hundred miles of apple-blossoms,” otherwise known as
the Annapolis Valley, sheltered between the North and South
Mountains, and also the famous marshes of Tantramar.
At the other and eastern end of this peninsula stands
Cape Breton Island, a province in itself, cut off by the
Strait of Causo, one of the most picturesque of regions,
itself reversing, as has been said, the definition of an
island, inasmuch as it is land surrounding a body of water.
That golden arm of the sea—the Bras d’Or lakes—nearly
divides the land into two halves—both rich in the natural
diversifications of hill and dale, crag and fell, forest and
moor, and many streams and islets.
Everywhere are the shores indented, often to the
extent of several miles, with harbours, rivers, coves, and
bays, usually connecting with the interior waters. The
loftiest cliffs, about 500 feet high, lie on the coast
between Mahone and Margaret’s Bay, and is generally the
first land descried by voyagers from Europe or the West
Indies. From the summit of Ardoise Hill, between Halifax
and Windsor, which is 700 feet high, one may command
a prospect of Windsor, Falmouth, Newport, Wolfeville, and
the basin of Minas country. Further on to the west are the
Horton Mountains, running nearly north and south, and
twenty miles beyond begins another chain of hills, traversing
east and west, the North Mountain and the South Mountain,
the former of which is washed by the Bay of Fundy.
Between these two ridges lie the fertile Annapolis and
Cornwallis valleys.
[Illustration: HALIFAX—BOATING ON THE NORTH-WEST ARM.]
To the great inequality of the surface of the soil is
due the prevalence of so many lakes, the largest in the
peninsula being Rossignol, twenty miles from Liverpool up
the Mersey River. There used to be a great uncertainty concerning
the dimensions of this inland lake—which Haliburton
thought was thirty miles long; but it is now known to be
twelve miles in length by eight broad. The difficulty
seems to have arisen by confusing it with adjoining lakes,
of which there are numerous others in the vicinity. About
Yarmouth, at the southern extremity of the Province,
there are no fewer than eighty; while, as to Cape Breton
Island, the whole interior of the southern half is one vast
lake. A chain of lakes almost crosses the Province between
Halifax and Cobequid Bay, suggesting many years ago a
junction by canal. A company was formed and work
begun, but nothing came of it. Another such chain nearly
unites the source of the Gaspereaux in King’s Country with
that of Gold River in Lunenburg. Many of these thousand
and one lakes which bejewel the entire interior of New
Scotland are of great beauty, containing timbered islands,
whose foliage, together with that of the surrounding hills,
is most variegated and attractive, especially in autumn,
when the scarlet of the maple, the yellow of the birch,
and gradations of green of the oak, elm, and pine, present
a truly gorgeous spectacle. Even in winter, when the
ground is covered with snow, the presence of enormous
numbers of evergreens is an agreeable feature of the landscape
in most parts of the Province. There are, however,
others, which are either stony and barren, or boggy, or
where the forest has been the prey of fire. In the latter
parts, the “burnt lands,” the tall dead trees remain upright,
black and forbidding, the picture of desolation. But in
these cases, although it is a long time, owing to the fire
having destroyed the soil and the seeds within it, before
a new growth appears, yet this is easily afforested or converted
into good arable land. The arable lands, in spite
of all that has been done to foster agriculture, still remain
only a fraction of the total cultivable part of New Scotland,
and these are chiefly confined as yet to the vicinity of
the rivers, harbours, and coasts, and the oldest townships.
In these, however, the aspect is luxuriant, extensive,
and various, reminding one here of the Scottish lowlands,
there of Kent or Devonshire, in respect of cultivation
and picturesqueness. Even the hedgerows, unknown in
America, occasionally greet the eye.
New Scotland is divided into counties, which are themselves
parcelled into districts and townships. The Scottish
origin and element, I am bound to say, do not come out
very strong in the names of these counties, such as Halifax,
Sydney, Cumberland, Hants, King’s, Lunenburg, Liverpool,
Shelburne, &c., albeit there are some Scottish names in
the districts and townships.
When all is said of the products of New Scotland, of
her coal, her iron, her fish, and her fruit, it still remains
that her chief and most notable product is that which is
Old Scotland’s proudest boast—her men. Is it that a
seafaring folk are always superior to those who are bred
far inland? Is it that there is a wider outlook, a sense of
vicissitude and adventure for the people who are in touch
with that vast, restless flood, itself touching far-off climes
and changing zones? Who if they do not sail a ship
themselves or battle with storm and breaker, mix with the
men who do, who know what it is to grapple with a wreck,
what the cry of the widows and orphans of a lost crew
is like? Surely this must breed a stronger soul: or is it,
as a Manitoban hinted to me when acknowledging the
intellectual superiority of the Nova Scotians, that to a fish
diet must be ascribed that which for a century has been
so manifest in the history of British North America?
Proud is New Scotland of the men who have sprung
from her loins. This cherishing of the memory of their
worthy forerunners is perhaps the most marked characteristic
of Nova Scotians to-day, the one in which this people
differs in spirit from their neighbours.
The term “Blue-nose,” long a current one applied to
the Nova Scotians, brings me to the New York and New
England irruption into the Province at the period of the
American Revolution. As is now widely conceded, the best
blood of the American Colonies—the oldest, the wealthiest,
and the best educated—were United Empire Loyalists.
Amongst the “True Blues,” the pioneers of Shelburne,
was Gideon White, of Salem, descended from the first
white child, Peregrine White, born in New England.
To-day, Gideon’s grandson, an able lawyer of charming
manners, lives in Shelburne, and courteously showed me
many of the interesting family papers he still possesses.
Shelburne is now a small village, but its spacious, grass-grown
streets, its Governor’s mansion, its thickly strewn
churchyard, tell the tale of its past glory. But although
the “True Blues” left Shelburne, they scattered themselves
through the Province, and there are hundreds of
families who trace their ancestry back to the Pilgrim Fathers.
“You can see they’re ‘True Blue,’” said a Yankee derisively.
“Now they’ve gone to live in such a cold country as Nova
Scotia they carry their colours in the middle of their faces!”
And so the epithet “Blue-nose” stuck, although it is
difficult to say why the nasal appendages of Nova Scotians
should be of a more azure tint than those which are blown
by the pocket-handkerchiefs of the New England folk—since
the climate is about the same—if anything, less
rigorous in the peninsula.
“Blue-nose,” as I have already hinted, has long been a
synonym for sloth amongst the Yankees; but now we hear
of Blue-nose booms, Blue-nose “boosters,” and Blue-nose
hustlers. The “Flying Blue-nose” express, which runs
from the Boston docks at Digby to Halifax, might easily
give points to many American express trains, besides itself
furnishing proof that the term “Blue-nose” is as acceptable
to the New Scotlanders as Yankee (_i.e._ Anglais) is to the
New Englanders, through whose less fertile homesteads the
“Flying Yankee” rushes.
Before me as I write is a placard redolent of the new
spirit, which is mingling with, yet not destroying the
old:—
“BOOST” NOVA SCOTIA!
Do YOU believe that Nova Scotia, acre for acre, is
the equal of any other Province of Canada?
Do YOU believe that Nova Scotians, man for man, are
the equal in intelligence, industry, and ability, of any of
the other inhabitants of this planet?
If so, lend a hand and “boost” Nova Scotia!
“Every town, every county,” remarks a Nova Scotia
writer, “cherishes traditions of its old families, its first
settlers; of the pious missionary, the minister who gave
half his scanty income to redeem the slave; the adventurous
sea-captain, whose life reads like one of Smollett’s
novels; the man who settled half a county; the evangelist
who stirred the souls of men; the founder of the first
academy; the man who first resisted the insolence of office;
the loyalist who lost all for his flag.”
The Nova Scotians have, more than any other people,
been helped to this self-continence, this habit of reverence,
by their comparative isolation, by the fact that so many
of her sons went out and so few newcomers entered, by
there being no destructive spirit of unrest abroad, no
substitution of cheaper ideals. No Province in Canada, I
had almost written no nation in Canada—for is not this
the day of small and separate nationalities?—where
memories of the past are sweeter—where yesterday has a
magic that to-day can never impart. Far be it from me
to deride this sentiment; but as my eye glances down the
columns of the Nova Scotian newspapers, I find here and
there an insistence upon men and events that belong to
yesterday, indeed, rather than to the day before yesterday;
which must strike the folk of an older civilisation as very
odd. Thus in an Amherst paper I find the following:—
OLD BAGATELLE BOARD
_A Relic of the Early Eighties found in the Academy Garret_
When the old Academy on Acadia Street was being torn down some
years ago, a rude bagatelle board was found away up among the
rafters. The finders were mystified, and there was only one of the
“Old Boys” in town who could throw light on its existence, although
since that time the maker of the board has taken up his residence
in Amherst. We refer to Will Casey who taught the class in electricity
in our technical school so successfully last winter. Even in boyhood
he was a mechanical genius, and the bagatelle board was not his
first piece of manual work. Will brought the board to school one
morning long before the arrival of the teachers. A ladder was put
up to the manhole in the ceiling, the board taken up and the ladder
after it. There were four boys late for school that morning. More
than one game was played up among the dust and cobwebs. “Len”
Wheaton, now a well-known engineer, became an expert; “Hae”
Gaetz, son of Rev. Joseph Gaetz, would occasionally take a hand
in the game, and a long-limbed chap from Doherty Creek, who now
adorns a New York pulpit, was, if we mistake not, once admitted
into the sacred precincts of the old garret. There were others too,
all scattered abroad, but we would like to see them home this year to
talk over some of the episodes of our school life in the early eighties.
All this might have appeared in a Maidstone or Peebles
paper, only it would there be descriptive of something
which happened in 1830, not in 1880, Here anything
that happened a century ago is antiquity indeed, while an
occurrence of two or three centuries since is like something
before Noah’s Ark, _i.e._ the _Mayflower_.
There are some people who never experience a sense of the
insignificance of time—of what is called the ages. We all
know men of ninety—some of us know centenarians. Twenty
such lives and we are back at the beginning of the Christian
era—even five such lives as Lord Strathcona’s, and Columbus
had not discovered the New World. But those who do
not experience this sense of the real modernity of antiquity,
turn their eyes back upon a world of awfulness and mystery,
as well as of poetry and beauty. The shortest journey of
the memory or the imagination backward is bordered by
shadows and by dreams. Men and scenes are not the men
and scenes we know, but something quite other and heroic.
And the best of it is, it may _be_ so. We can by no means
reconcile our knowledge of the world to-day with what has
come down to us of that world dead and buried even these
hundred years. That is where our poetical faith comes in—our
refusal to measure the people and customs of long
ago by the psychological yard-stick of this our time. We
refuse to see in Champlain, Lescarbot, and Poutrincourt,
only the seventeenth century equivalent of Mr. Nansen,
Dr. Grenfell, and Commander Peary, people who, in spite
of their heroic achievements, are surely prosaic folk.
Something of the glamour of the past is already falling
upon the figure of Joseph Howe—Nova Scotia’s great hero.
Nova Scotians speak of Howe as Americans speak of Abraham
Lincoln. Throughout the Province, in the towns, the
villages, and the countryside, you will find plenty of old
men who remember “Joe” Howe in the flesh, who exchanged
greetings with the “patriot, poet, and orator,”
who, maybe, held his horse, or fetched him a draught, not,
I fear, often from the village pump, but from the village
inn, and who, and whose descendants, bear him the same
measure of affection which in Ontario is accorded to
Sir “John A”—Canada’s first Premier, the gifted, wayward,
prescient Macdonald. At Truro, two old cronies stood
beside the “Joe Howe” falls—a picturesque cataract in
the woods of the public park. “Fluent, eh, Tom?” “Oh,
aye, Andrew, fluent.” “Copious, eh, Tom?” “Oh, aye,
copious.” “And noisy, eh?” “True, noisy.” “But
eternal, Tom?” “Yes, by G——, eternal. Nothing can
stop Joe Howe, and nothing can stop these falls. They’ll
go on—both of ’em, shining as long as Nova Scotia—as
long as the world lasts.”
Of other famous names than Howe’s there is Haliburton’s,
of whom I will speak elsewhere in these pages. De Mille,
although a native of that former part of the Province
known as New Brunswick, wrote here all his novels. There
are Sir John Inglis of Lucknow, and General Fenwick
Williams of Kars. Samuel Cunard, the first to bridge
the Atlantic with a line of steamers, and the founder of the
Cunard fleet, was a Halifax merchant. From one single
county—Pictou—came five of Canada’s college presidents—Dawson
of McGill, Grant and Gordon to Queen’s, and
Ross and Forrest to Dalhousie—whereas no other single
county probably ever gave so many as two. From Nova
Scotia came Sir Charles Tupper and Sir John S. D.
Thompson, Prime Ministers of Canada. The present
Prime Minister of Canada, Right Honourable Robert Laird
Borden, is a Nova Scotian, and represents the constituency
of Halifax in the Federal Parliament, and this same province
is the birthplace of Mr. William Stevens Fielding, the
eminent member of Finance in the cabinet of Sir Wilfrid
Laurier.