The great corporation will probably build four big hotels in Nova Scotia—one at Yarmouth, one at Digby, one at Halifax, and one at Chester, a branch line from Windsor to Chester, only thirty miles, being contemplated to bring Chester into the Canadian Pacific Railway system.

It seems to be taken for granted that the railway authorities will make an organised effort to increase British immigration to this Province. They recognise that more population is needed, and they are going to do their part, so we are told, to bring in the people, and this with their publicity system ought not to be difficult.

One should not perhaps complain of the perpetual insistence upon lands in the making, of the “possibilities” of the virgin prairie, of the sun-kissed solitudes of the Golden West. But this is the Golden East, the long-settled, pleasant East, where the genius of history muses amidst moss-grown battlements and ancient tombstones. This is Canada—the first Canada—Acadia. Even Quebec yields precedence to Annapolis Royal, the “cradle” of the Canadian Dominion.

Rich indeed in historic and poetic association is Annapolis Royal. What romantic memories cluster about this little town, superbly set at the head of Annapolis Basin! Save Quebec no spot on the entire Continent has a more abiding interest. Three years before a white man’s hut had been built on the site of Quebec, a fort and village were to be found at Port Royal. On the waters of this basin was launched the first vessel built in North America; here, too, was the first mill fashioned. Also the problem of Canadian agriculture was here solved by the successful production of cereal and root crops.

Nor is this all. At old Port Royal was witnessed the first conversion to Christianity; here echoed the first notes of poetic song in Canada—the chanson composed by Lescarbot in honour of Champlain. And here flourished the first social club in the western hemisphere.

So we are carried back to the very beginnings of both French and British rule—to the days of De Monts, Champlain, and Poutrincourt. Founded in 1605, the vicissitudes of the fort and town (renamed in Queen Anne’s honour) have been numerous enough to fill a portly volume.[9]

Port Royal once bade fair then to become a great city and Acadia a populous province. I have already told about Champlain and the “Order of a Good Time,” about Membertou and the hopes of the early French settlers. In 1607 De Monts’ charter was revoked by the King, and his friends would support his scheme with no more money. The Indians at Port Royal watched the French depart with sadness, promising to look after the fort and its belongings until the white men should return.

Champlain had chosen another field—the lands far inland on the St. Lawrence; but Poutrincourt resolved, after first dealing a blow at his enemies in France, to return to take deep root in the fertile Acadian soil.

In the spring of 1613 the Jesuits who, in the meantime, had through the influence of Madame De Guercheville got rights in Acadia, despatched an expedition under a courtier named La Saussaye, who, landed at Port Royal, took on board two priests left there, and then sailed on and founded a new colony at Mount Desert, on the coast of Maine.

All Acadia, as well as Canada, was given back to the French by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and King Louis and his Court were now inclined to abandon their policy of indifference and resume the work of colonising. In the spring of 1632 a nephew of Richelieu’s, Captain de Razilly, arrived in Acadia with a shipload of colonists, including artisans, farmers, several Capuchin friars, and some gentry. Amongst the latter were Nicholas Denys, and an extraordinary person, Charles de Menou, Chevalier de Charnisay, whom I commend as a really superb stage villain.

Young De la Tour, who considered himself the rightful lord of Acadia under De Monts’ charter,[10] was naturally jealous of Razilly, thinking the King ought to have appointed him Governor, instead of giving him the mere lordship over a limited territory. Even upon Razilly’s death in the following year, De la Tour’s hopes were frustrated. Razilly had ceded all his rights to Charnisay, his Deputy-Governor, whose first act was to remove from La Hêve to Port Royal, where he built a new fort.

Now began the astonishing drama of Charnisay and De la Tour. The latter believed it to be Charnisay’s aim to dispossess him of those rights which he had acquired in Acadia by so much energy and sacrifice. The King tried to settle the dispute by fixing the limits of Charnisay’s government at the New England frontiers on the one hand, and at a line north from the Bay of Fundy on the other, westward of this line to be De la Tour’s province. Charnisay’s friends poisoned the King’s mind by alleging that De la Tour was a Huguenot in disguise, and orders were sent to his foe to arrest him and send him a prisoner to France. The young commander strengthened Fort la Tour and defied his enemy to do his worst.

Not until the spring of 1643 was the crafty Charnisay ready to wreak vengeance on the “traitor,” as he called De la Tour. With the ships and 500 men Richelieu had sent him, Charnisay led the assault. La Tour proved too strong, and to starve La Tour into capitulation was begun a close siege by sea and land. A long-expected ship, with provisions, merchandise, and gunpowder for Fort la Tour, was sighted off the coast, and De la Tour and his wife managed in an open boat to gain the decks.

They sailed for Boston, where, although they dared not give him direct assistance, the Puritan elders of that new town had no objection to striking a bargain, and at a good price permitted their visitor to hire four stout ships and seventy men. Sailing back with this force, De la Tour was able to make his enemy flee before him. The siege of his own fort being raised, he followed the foiled Charnisay to Port Royal, captured a shipload of rich furs, and would have taken Charnisay himself and his settlement, had it not been that the scruples of his Boston allies led to the making of a false peace. There could be no real peace between De la Tour and Charnisay. After many adventures Marie De la Tour was left in charge of their fort. Charnisay, constantly on the watch, fell upon her, but her defence was so vigorous that but for the action of a traitor he would never have taken it and her. He placed a common halter round this brave woman’s neck and forced her to witness the cold-blooded murder of her garrison. She pined away and died three weeks later at Port Royal. Her husband became for years a wanderer on the face of the earth, until he learnt of the drowning of Charnisay, when he returned and married the widow of his life-long foe. This is only half the drama: but the rest can be read in the history books.

Recently the good folk of Annapolis were very busy over preparations for the celebration of the bi-centenary of the Church of England in Canada. A shoal of bishops was imminent—amongst them the distinguished prelate who signs himself “Arthur F. Londin.” One prospective hostess desired my opinion on the propriety of ensconcing three bishops in one room—so full to overflowing would the old town be, and so limited the accommodation. Here was a problem in episcopal—nay, in doctrinal accommodation, not without bearing upon High, Low, and Broad bishops and their respective powers of bodily as well as spiritual adjustment, a problem I could only hint at and evade.

All this Anglican jubilation was to signalise the fact that a couple of centuries ago, with the English conquest, came the chaplain of the garrison to minister to the English newcomers. Here the worthy cleric, a certain Rev. John Harrison, of whom little is known, set up his altar and celebrated Holy Communion in English for the first time in the Province and in all the land destined later to become the Canadian Dominion. Not that these are the first anniversary fêtes the town has witnessed. In 1905 Annapolis Royal recalled its tercentenary, when a monument to De Monts was erected on a commanding site within the grounds of the dismantled fortress. Few vestiges now remain of the old masonry, but the site is in charge of Government, and is maintained in excellent condition as a public park.

Digby has grown into a flourishing summer resort from a fishing town which was famed far and near as the home of the “Digby chicken,” an article almost as famous as Yarmouth bloater or Bombay duck. Some seventy years ago Haliburton wrote in words often quoted:

“Digby is a charming little town. It is the Brighton of Nova Scotia, the resort of the valetudinarians of New Brunswick, who take refuge here from the unrelenting fogs, hopeless sterility, and calcareous waters of St. John. About as pretty a place this for business, said the Clockmaker, as I know of in this country. Digby is the only safe harbour from Blowmidown to Briar Island. Then there is that everlasting long river runnin away up from the wharfes here almost across to Minas Basin, bordered with dikes and interval, and backed up by good upland. A nice, dry, pleasant place for a town, with good water, good air, and the best herrin fishery in America, but it wants one thing to make it go ahead.” “And, pray, what is that?” said I, “for it appears to me to have every natural advantage that can be desired.” “It wants to be made a free port,” said he. “They ought to send a delegate to England about it; but the fact is they don’t understand diplomacy here nor the English either. They haven’t got no talents that way.”

Steamers now run between Boston and Digby, as well as between Digby and St. John.