SABLE ISLAND—(CONTINUED).—MACDONALD. 111 
The next survey was that of 1808 of the Island proper, ordered 
by General Sir George Prevost, then Governor of this Province, 
who moved by the terrible circumstances attending the loss of 
the troop ship “Princess Amelia,” made every effort to induce 
the British Government to erect or aid in the erection of a light 
house on the Island. 
Lieut. Burton of the Fusiliers, then stationed at Halifax, was 
dispatched to report on the feasibility of erecting a light, and to 
inquire into the wants of the Island. 
From this report we learn the Island was 30 miles in length 
and 2 miles in breadth, with hills from 150 to 200 feet, beginning at 
west end and attaining their greatest elevation at Mount Knight, 
its eastern extremity. 
Just a few words here with regard to the correctness of this 
first chart. Itmay be thought by some that little dependence 
should be placed on 4 chart compiled at a time when so little was 
known of the coast. But we have only to remember that this Is- 
land was well known to the French as early as 1598, and that forty 
years previous to this chart being compiled the walled City of 
Louisburg was at the zenith of its prosperity, with its magnificent 
fortresses which were 30 years in building at a cost of five millions 
five hundred thousand dollars, the station of a powerful French 
fleet which for armament and numbers has never been seen in 
North American waters since, and a city whose commerce was 
of no little importance. 
Then, as now, in early springtime the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
current brought down its fields of ice blockading the south shores 
of Cape Breton. To avoid which those’cruisers and merchantinen 
bound for the harbour of Louisburg were compelled to run south 
and westward, making an off shore approach which would throw 
them in the immediate vicinity of the Island. Also on two 
occasions a British besieging squadron lay before that city and 
cruised off its shores, the strength of which can be estimated 
when we learn that on one of those occasions 140 sail, of which 36 
were frigates and ships of the line, left Halifax for Louisburg in a 
single day. 
All this seems to warrant the conclusion that the knowledge 
