[bourinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA. 3 



of Nova Scotia in the beginning of the seventeenth century is perpetu- 

 ated in the name of Lake Rossignol, which is a survival of Port 

 Rossignol, now Liverpool, which received its first name from a fur-trader, 

 whose ship and cargo were seized at that place for an infringement of 

 the charter given to Sieur de Monts by Henry IV. of France in 1604. 

 The large and beautiful La Have river — more correctly La Hève — is also 

 a memorial of De Monts, and though Nova Scotia is a country of varied 

 natural beauty, nowhere except on the Bras d'Or, in Cape Breton, are 

 there such rare scenes of loveliness as on this grand river, so full of 

 recollections of the days of French occupation, since it was here that 

 Razilly and Denys first settled in the first half of the seventeenth century. 

 A Nova Scotian poetess' has in melodious verse paid a fitting tribute to 

 this picturesque stream : 



" And stranger tones have fallen where meet thy drooping trees, 

 And foreign songs have lingered all homesick on the breeze ; 

 Thy waves have caught the cadence, and seen the merry glance 

 Of the peasant sons and daughters from vine-clad La Belle France." 



Or let us leave the picturesque scenery of the La Hève, and seek rest 

 in the beautiful vales where the crj^stal waters of the Gaspereau, a much 

 smaller river, wend their devious way through low meadows of verdant 

 intervale, with their wealth of wild roses, apple orchards, stately elms, 

 aged willows, and glimpses of quaint bridges, dripping mill-wheels, and 

 white church spires — scenes well described in the verse of an old Acadian 

 student, Arthur Lockhart.^ 



Cape Breton abounds in many memorials of French discovery and 

 occupation,^ The Port of Louisbourg was named in honour of Louis 

 Quatorze ; the fine island of Boularderie, whose fertile slopes and cliffs 

 rise from the two entrances of the Bras d'Or Lake, recalls the memory of 

 a gallant French officer who was its first proprietor. The large bay of 

 G-abarus, where Boscawen's fleet landed the troops for the siege of Louis- 

 bourg in 1758, is a corruption of the name of Cabarrus, who was a 

 French trader of last century. The beautiful Bay of Mira— the " a" 



1 Mrs. Lawson (better known as Mary Jane Katzmann), one of the very few poets 

 born in Nova Scotia. She was the author also of an interesting " History of Dart- 

 mouth, Preston and Lawrencetown (Akins's Historical Essay) Edited by Harry Piers, 

 Halifax, N.S., 1893," with a portrait. Cape la Hève was the name given by De Monts 

 and his associates to the first land reached by them in 1604, and in honour of the 

 Cape near Havre in France, the port from which these early voyageurs sailed. See 

 DesBrisay's Lunenburg, p. 166. 



- See " The Masque of Minstrels and other Pieces, chiefly in verse," by B. U. 

 and A. J. Lockhart (Bangor, Me., 1887). The authors are Nova Scotians, educated 

 at Acadia College, in the land of Evangeline. The Gaspereau and Grand Pré are 

 naturally the theme of their graceful and patriotic verses. 



^See Bourinot's "Cape Breton and Its Memorials of the French Regime," in 

 Trans. Roy. Soc. Can., vol. ix., sec. 2 ; also in separate Ito form, Montreal, 1890. 



