SECTION Il. 1883. (ROZ 1] TRANS. Roy. Soc. CANADA. 
Some old Forts by the Sea. 
By J. G. BoURINOT. 
(Read May 25, 1883.) 
The tourist will find many memorials of the French régime throughout the pro- 
vinces which were once comprised within the ill-defined and extensive limits of Acadia 
and are now known as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These memorials must be 
sought among a few communities speaking a language sadly degenerated from the Nor- 
man and Breton French of their ancestors, in a few grass-covered mounds, or in the names 
of many of the bays, rivers, and headlands of the Acadian country. Port Latour, on the 
western coast of Nova Scotia, recalls the time when the high-spirited, courageous French- 
man, the rival of the treacherous D’Aulnay, was labouring to establish himself on the 
peninsula. The Gaspereau was the name given to a rapid stream which winds its way 
through the very garden of Nova Scotia, by the ancestors of that hapless people whom a 
relentless destiny and the mandate of an inexorable government snatched from their old 
homes in “the sweet Acadian land.” The island of Cape Breton, which once bore the 
proud name of “Tle Royale,” still wears the more homely and also more ancient name 
which was given to its most prominent cape by some of those hardy Breton sailors who, 
from the very earliest times, ventured into the waters of the northern continent. Louis- 
burg still reminds us of the existence of a powerful fortified town, intended to overawe 
the English in America and guard the approaches to the Laurentian gulf and river. The 
Boularderie Island is a memento of a French Marquis, of whom we should never have 
heard were it not for the fact that his name still clings to this pretty green island which 
he once claimed as his seigneurie. The Bras d’Or yet attests the propriety of its title of 
“the Golden Arm,” as we pass through its lovely inlets and expansive lakes, surrounded 
by wooded heights and smiling farms. 
The French had at best only a very precarious foothold in Acadia. At a few isolated 
points they raised some rudely constructed forts, around which, in the course of time, a 
number of settlers built huts and cultivated small farms. The rivalry between England 
and France commenced on the continent as soon as the British colonies had made some 
progress, and prevented the French ever establishing flourishing settlements all over 
Acadia. At no time was the French government particularly enamoured of a country 
which seemed to promise but a scanty harvest of profit to its proprietors ; for the history 
of Acadia shows that the kings of France and their ministers left its destinies for years in 
the hands of mere adventurers and traders. In the course of time they began to have some 
conception of the importance of Acadia as a base of operations against the aggressive New 
Englanders, and were forced at last, in self-defence, to build Louisburg on the eastern 
coast of Ile Royale. But then it was too late to retrieve the ground they had lost by their 
indifference during the early history of the country. Had the statesmen of France been 
