282 J. G. BOUEINOT 



rouud this Tugged promoutory ruus through great rents blasted in the rcfcks, and uoars at 

 times the very verge of the precipices. At intervals are fishing stages and mouldering 

 warehouses recalling old times of large business activity. We pass by the little north- 

 east harbour which forms so safe a haven for the trading schooners and fishing boats 

 that are always moored here as in the old times. As we walk down the west side 

 towards the site of the French town we notice that the land ascends gently from the very 

 edge of the harbour and forms a pleasant site for the present village of Louisbourg, a 

 collection of thirty or more whitewashed or painted houses, a canning factory/ and two 

 or three churches." Some shops stand by the roadside or in the vicinity of the wharves, 

 where there are generally fish drying on Hakes. Some meadows, covered with a spare 

 crop of grass, or late vegetables, represent the agricultural enterprise that is possible on a 

 thin soil, which receives little encouragement in this changeable atmosphere of fog and 

 rain, in this country where the spring is a delusion and the summer too often a mockery 

 since it is so short, though in July and August there are days whose cool soft temperature 

 is most delicious. The old ruins of the grand, or royal battery, about midway on the 

 west side are quite visible and as we survey them, map in hand, it is easy enough with a 

 little patience and an effort of the imagination to trace the lines of the works. Here, 

 however, as elsewhere, we can pay our tribute to the thoroughness with which the 

 English sappers and miners, one hundred and thirty years since, obeyed their instructions 

 to destroy the old fortifications, and leave not one stone on another lest they might at one 

 time be found serviceable by an enemy. Just before coming to the barachois, so often 

 mentioned in the accounts of the two sieges, we see before us a large wooden chapel with 

 a prominent steeple — the most pretentious ecclesiastical building in the place — and the 

 cross that points to heaven is so much evidence that Rome claims her votaries in her old 

 domain, and that the hatchets of the Puritan iconoclasts of Pepperroll's time were of little 

 avail after all, but that her doctrines still flourish in the island of Cape Breton. We cross 

 the barachois by a rude bridge and follow the road along the beach for a quarter of a 

 mile, or so, and come to a collection of fish stages and wharves made of poles laid on logs, 

 and all redolent of the staple industry of Louisbourg. Then we turn up a hill, and soon 

 find ourselves on the grass-covered mounds of the old town. If we take a position on the 

 site of the king's bastion, the most prominent x)oiut of the ruins, we see to the southwest 

 the waters of the spacious bay of Gabarus. Immediately below us are the remains of the 

 casemates^ where the women and children found a refuge during the last siege. Looking 

 at the three that remain, it is easy to see that any number of persons must have been 

 huddled together in a A^ery pitiable fashion. Sheep now find shelter within these rudely 

 constructed retreats. All around them in summer time there are patches of red clover, 

 mingling its fragrance with the salt sea breeze, and reminding us how often this grass 

 grows rank and rich in old graveyards, as it were to show how nature survives the memo- 

 rials of man's ambition and pride. The low rugged country that stretches for a league and 

 more to Gabarus presents all the natural features of rock and swamp, with patches of the 

 alders and the stunted fir, that seem to flourish best on this poor bleak coast. It is quite 



> This modern enterprise was managed for some time — perhaps is still — by a man from Maine; so Pepper- 

 rell's state still claims a place aftei this prosaic fashion in tlie old port which he won for England. 



^ See illustration of the modern village of Louisbourg, from an excellent picture by a Sydney photographer, Mr. 

 Umlah. 



' See illustrations at end^of this work. 



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