ON CAPE BEETOK 283 



easy to follow the contour of the fortifications until they come to the old burying grounds 

 near Rochefort and Black Points, where hundreds of New Euglanders and of French and 

 English soldiers found their last resting place in 1Y45 and 1V58. No tombstone or cairn 

 or cross has been raised ; the groiiud has never been blessed by priest ; the names of the 

 dead are all forgotten ; Frenchmen, Englishmen and Colonists, Catholics and Puritans, 

 now sleep in close vicinity to each other, regardless of the wars of creeds, beneath the 

 green sward which the sheep nibble with all the avidity of their kind.' 



The deep ditch near the king's bastion is still full of water, and the stumps of the 

 picket palisades which were raised in 1*745 between the Princess's and the Brouillon 

 bastions are visible in places. "We can see too in the water the remains of the bridge 

 which stretched across the shallow pond between the Maurepas and Grève batteries. 

 The places of the numerous stages for drying fish in old times on the harbour front can 

 still be traced with a little trouble on the shore at low tide. On the site of the town 

 there are piles of brick and stone which have been dug up by the present inhabitants 

 when they require materials for building. Many of the chimneys in the humble cabins 

 of the fishermen are built of brick from France or perhaps from New England. Cannon 

 balls and bomb-shells are frequently found at low tide on the shores, and more than once 

 old cannon have been dug up in the sand and mud. It is rarely however, that any relics 

 of interest or value are now discovered at Louisbourg. Delving in the debris of an old foun- 

 dation, probably that of the hospital, the writer once found some pieces of tarnished gold 

 lace which may have belonged to an ofiicer wounded in the last siege. But such a trea- 

 sure as was found at Loran — to give the place its now familiar name — has, never to my 

 knowledge, been turned up among the ashes of the old town. All articles of value were 

 taken away by the people, if indeed there were ever many in a place which relatively 

 few persons regarded as a permanent home. 



Those who have ever paid a visit, of late years, to the city of Cambridge, in Massa- 

 chusetts, and lingered for a while under the noble elms that shade its wide streets, and 

 cluster around the buildings of Harvard, may have noticed a small gilt cross above one 

 of the entrances to Grore Hall, where the great New England univer- 

 sity has housed its principal library. One must, at first, wonder 

 why this religious symbol, only found as a rule on Roman Catholic 

 buildings, or Anglican churches of an extreme type, should adorn 

 the doorway of a seat of learning, in once Puritan New England. 

 On inquiry we find it is a historic link which connects the old Bay 

 State with the distant and almost forgotten port on the windy eastern 

 coast of Cape Breton. Nearly a century and a half has passed since 

 this simple cross was taken from its place on a Louisbourg church, 

 probably by one of the soldiers of Pepperrell's expedition at the com- 

 mand of one of the Puritan clergymen who regarded it as a symbol 

 of idolatry. It was carried to New England and forgotten among 

 other relics until an enthusiastic and scholarly historian brought it to light and gave it 



' Mr. Faucher de Saint-Maurice, F. R. S. C, lias written a little book, with the title " Sept jours dans les Pro- 

 vinces Maritimes," (Quebec, 1888), of which thirty pages are devoted to a bright description of St. Peter's, the Bras 

 d'Or, Baddeck, Sydney, and Louisbourg. He mentions a fact not generally known, that the English had their 

 cemetery on Point Rochefort and the French theirs in the immediate vicinity, but nearer Black Point. It was in 

 this latter place the English Catholics were also buried. The graves of the New Englandera who died of disease 

 in 1745-0 took up most of the space at Point Rochefort. 



