INGONISH, BY LAND AND SEA. 41 



might be fed and put to bed, if by chance the 

 sea or their own feet cast them upon these dis- 

 tant sands, makes it certain that they will not 

 come to banish Eden by their presence. 



Between the sand beach and the road there 

 rises a massive wall of rounded stones, varying 

 in size from a goose egg to a human skull. Can 

 waves alone have raised such a dike ? The same 

 question came to me as I studied a similar wall 

 running along the seaward side of the bar which 

 well nigh makes St. Anne's Bay a lake, and 

 Torquil McLean's ferry a superfluity instead of 

 a somewhat malodorous joy. Perhaps the fact 

 that often, in winter, the ice comes stealing 

 across from Newfoundland and the seas that lie 

 beyond it, and packs itself against St. Anne's 

 bar and all the north coast of Cape Breton, may 

 explain these walls. The thrust of the ice could 

 scour the shallows for miles, and bear along 

 loose stones to the first beach whose sloping face 

 would receive them. The density of the ar- 

 rangement of these stones, and the abruptness 

 of the front which they present to the sea, point 

 to ice action rather than to that of waves alone. 

 The wall is so high that those walking or driv- 

 ing along the road cannot see the beach, while 

 those bathing cannot see the country inland. 

 Shut in between shingle and sea, we walked the 

 length of the sand, and then climbed to the top 

 of the bluffs of Middle Head. 



