CHAPTER IV
HALIFAX AND THE HALIGONIANS
In the exact middle of the peninsula of Nova Scotia a triangular piece of land juts out into the Atlantic. To this second peninsula is attached a third, and upon this narrow rocky strip, three miles long by a single wide, a century and a half ago was founded the “Cronstadt of Canada.” East and west of Halifax is the sea, but the sea subdued and serene: for on the one hand is the world-famed Halifax harbour, and on the other the river-like north-west arm. In the harbour a thousand ships may ride quietly at anchor: it is always accessible: as it touches the upper end of the town it narrows only to expand again into Bedford Basin—ten square miles of peaceful marine haven. On the eastern slope of the little isthmus, Halifax is built, the ground rising from the harbour’s edge, some two hundred and fifty feet, to where is reared the great stone citadel, a striking spectacle when viewed from the sea—to the ocean-borne traveller striking and significant.
Halifax has been for a century and a half the chief naval and military headquarters of British North America, and for some time the sole garrison of regular troops in Canada. Its military spirit dates from its very birth.
There are greetings of every kind and degree in store for the traveller in parts civilised, uncivilised, barbarous, and savage; greetings at the portals of the city, effusive, boisterous, vociferous. There is one time-dishonoured greeting that I could dispense with more freely than all the rest, and it is that which awaits the incomer by rail to the capital of New Scotland. Conjure up in your fancy seventeen shaggy, wild-eyed men, in whose visages Celtic traits predominate, standing in a row, brandishing their outflung fists, bawling at the top of their voices, and only prevented from leaping upon the traveller and forthwith tearing him to pieces by a too-slender wooden barrier—and you have the spectacle which many a time and oft has confronted me at the Halifax railway terminus. For a moment, not understanding the pleasant local custom, with stunned faculties you stand regarding the line of raving madmen, unable to distinguish the diabolical dissyllable they are hurling at your head; and then a glimmering of the truth comes upon you, your hand-bag and umbrella-case fall from your limp grasp, they are caught up by one of the shrieking phalanx, by whom you are hustled into an open victoria and driven at breakneck speed to a hotel. It is pretended that the natives like this custom—that they have grown used to it—that as the local poet sings: