CHAPTER XIII
CAPE BRETON
There are few pseudo-historical anecdotes which stand out more vividly in the pages of history than that which Smollett tells of the eccentric Duke of Newcastle crying out to a courtier, “Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! Shew it me on the map. So it is! Sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island!”
An island indeed is Cape Breton, and such an island—a mingling of hill, and dale, and lake, mountain, moor, and tarn—rock, and crag, and fell—once called L’Isle Royale, and under the flag of the lilies—now the most eastern and most northern division of Nova Scotia, and the most Scottish portion of New Scotland. This island is equal to about one-fifth part of the whole Province.
Sailing out into the unknown territories of a world which if as old as the old was new to them, the early adventurers sought to make their surroundings congenial by a nominal association with the countries, provinces, towns, and villages they had quitted, perhaps for ever. This, the despair of the geographer, is the very poetry of geography. It began with Columbus—nay, it began with Leif with his Markland and Vinland, and it continues down to the days of Peary, and Shackleton, and Scott. Is there not something pathetic in the fact of a great bleak headland, locked in an eternal Arctic frost, being named after some fair Devon hamlet or Essex village, where the daring sailor first saw the light or loved a lass? The Arctic and Antarctic seas are full of such names.