CHAPTER II. 



HE harbour of Halifax is said to be, 

 perhaps, the safest and best in the world, 

 and it certainly seems to deserve this 

 eulogy, nature having rendered it impreg- 

 nable to the elements, and man having 

 done the same as regards his fellow-man. 

 It is five or six miles in length, and is 

 connected at the north end, by a narrow 

 arm, with Bedford Basin, a great forest-lined sheet of 

 water six miles long by four in width, and capable, 

 according to the guide books, of containing all the 

 navies of the world. 



Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, differs not from 

 the ordinary run of civilised cities, there being the 

 usual proportion of substantially-built brick or stone 

 houses sheltering the rich, and the usual proportion of 

 wooden cabins sheltering the poor. It stretches for 

 some three miles along the western slope of the harbour, 

 and is terminated in the south by the entrance to the 

 North- West Arm, which circles round for some three 

 miles in the rear of the town. This picturesque inlet is 

 about a quarter of a mile in breadth, with abruptly 

 sloping sides, thickly wooded for the most part — except 

 on the town side, where some of the " well-to-do " have 

 pitched their habitations, and converted its less abrupt 

 shores into pastures and gardens. From the head of 

 the Arm a low valley continues the circuit round to an 

 angle at the south-west end of Bedford Basin, at a spot 



