ON CAPE BEETON. 277 



VIII. A Short Description of the Port and Euins of Louisbourg. 



I may appropriately close this sketch of an island, which in many ways merits the 

 title of Royale, by describing some of the present characteristics of the harbour which once 

 held the fortunes of France at the portals of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We must start 

 from Sydney, which is prettily situated on a peninsula well adapted for a fine city, and 

 is the headquarters of a large coal trade — one of those old places where, among the modern 

 improvements of towns nowadays, a few quaint one-storied houses, tumble down barracks, 

 and worm-eaten wharves, show it has had a history of its own. Sydney has one of the 

 safest and largest harbours of America, and has been from the earliest times in the history 

 of Cape Breton the constant resort of vessels engaged in the fisheries or in the commerce 

 of this continent. Its A'ery spaciousness, however, prevented it being chosen as the site 

 of the fortress which the French constructed in the first part of the eighteenth century. 

 Its broad entrance, its easiness of approach from difierent directions by land and sea, and 

 its freezing for some weeks in winter, were facts that left it out of the competition for the 

 capital of He Eoyale. During the French regime it had an uneventful history. A few 

 Frenchmen settled in its vicinity and engaged in fishing or farming in a small way, 

 but at no time until the fall of Louisbourg, in 1758, did it engage the particular attention 

 of the French government. St. Peter's, St. Anne, Inganiche and various places in Lab- 

 rador were the places prefeiTed by the French and the Acadians. One of the most note- 

 worthy events in its early history w^as the fact that it was in this spacious haven that 

 the Canadian Le Moyne d'Iberville, famous as the founder of Louisiana, and for his 

 exploits on land and sea, obtained the aid of a large band of Micmacs, and then sailed for 

 the Bay of Fundy and the coast of Maine, where he won a signal victory over a small 

 fleet of English cruisers, and destroyed the fort of Pemaquid. one of the frontier defences 

 of the New England settlements. Here, too, Admiral Sir Hovendeu Walker anchored his 

 fleet during the September of 1711 after the great loss he sustained while on the way to 

 Quebec. It was here he came to the determination to sail to England without strikin"- a 

 blow for her honour and gain in America. No memorial of this unfortunate expedition 

 remains on the shores of Spanish Bay. The following facsimile of the inscription 

 which he affixed on a board among the forests, that in those times overhung the banks, 

 would never have been known to us in these days had not he himself boastingly told us 

 in the memoirs of that ill-fated voyage that he has left behind, that he had in this way 

 asserted the claim of England to Cape Breton.' Having distinguished himself by this dis- 



' "Being inform'd by several Officers who had Ijeon there, that a Cross was erected on tlie Shoar with the 

 names of the French Sea Officers who had been here, which I look'd upon as a Claim of Eight they pretend to for 

 the King, their Master, the Island having been always in the times of Peace, used in Common, both by the English 

 & French, for lading Coals, which are extraordinary good here, & taken out of the Clifts with Iron Crows only. & 

 no other Labour ; I tlionght it not amiss therefore to leave something of that Kind (o declare the Queen's Right to 

 this Place ; Having a Board made by the CarpenUr, li painted, I sent him ashoar to fix it upon a tree in some 

 eminent place where it most easily be seen." Ex. from Walker's " Journal," p. 150. 



