[RAyMoNp] PRE-LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS OF NOVA SCOTIA 45 
for a third township, south of Horton on the north side of the Avon 
river, promising to settle there by the end of October fifty families, 
and as many more by the Ist of September following; the township to 
have military protection and the same advantages of transportation 
and supplies as Horton and Cornwallis, and to be called the township 
of Falmouth. 
The wide spreading fertile marsh lands at the head of the Bay of 
Fundy had proved a lure to the early French settlers. Many of those 
who were the first to establish themselves on the shores of the Basin 
of Minas came from the low marshes of the province of Saintonge, on 
the west coast of France, and were accustomed to dike-building and 
the construction of aboideaux. To this day, it may be said, no class 
of workmen are as expert dike builders as the Acadian French. The 
broad fertile meadows of Grand Pré, Canard and Piziquid, left un- 
occupied after the expulsion of the Acadians, looked very inviting to 
the New Englanders, and well they might, for it has been estimated 
that their descendants now derive from them an income aggregating not 
less than one million dollars per annum.* 
Dr. Eaton writes:—‘“ Of the fertility of the soil of Horton and 
Cornwallis too much cannot be said. Besides the present fifty thousand 
acres of beautiful dyked land which these townships contain, a rich 
alluvial country in successive epochs reclaimed from the sea, there 
are perhaps seventy thousand acres of tilled upland where grains and 
root crops grow luxuriantly, and where apple, pear and plum orchards 
come to magnificent fruitage.”’ 
The Bay of Fundy is far-famed by reason of its tidal phenomena.” 
To tidal action is due the existence of the alluvial tracts on the shores 
of Minas Basin and other places at the head of the Bay, which are 
1 History of Kings County, N.S., by Dr. A. W. H. Eaton, p. 15. 
2 The late Frank Herbert Eaton, D.C.L., in an article in the Popular Science 
Monthly for June, 1893, gives a graphic description of the tides of the Bay of Fundy 
from which this footnote is chiefly gleaned. The vast volume of tidal water moving 
slowly shoreward in the North Atlantic, is borne upon the continental coast until it 
is gathered into the sickle shaped bay between Cape Sable and Cape Cod. The 
water sweeping around the curved coast line of Maine reaches the comparatively 
narrow strait between Briar Island and Grand Manan. Compressed within these 
closer limits it flows with increasing velocity into the Bay of Fundy. As the Bay 
narrows and grows more shoal the tide runs more violently, rising in St. John Harbor 
to a height of 24 feet. At Cape D'Or the current divides, the northern portion 
filling Shepody and Chignecto basins, while the southern rushes through the narrow 
entrance to the Basin of Minas. As it passes Capes Split and Blomidon the swirling 
eddying, foaming tide attains a velocity of ten miles or more an hour. Thus twice 
a day the low and unprotected marsh-lands which former tides have made along 
the Minas, Shepody, Chignecto and Annapolis shores are covered by the tidal flood, 
while in the rivers the mingled salt and fresh water fills the channels for many miles 
