St. Peter’s may also be reached from Point Tupper on the opposite side of the Strait of Canso, by taking the Cape Breton Railway, a journey of thirty-one miles. The tides run through the Strait of Canso at the rate of from four to six miles an hour, and they defy the tide-tables by rising superior to all rules by which men look for tides to be governed. Their course is determined to a large extent by the force and direction of the winds outside, and they may flow in one direction for days at a time. The tourist can tell whether the steamer is going with or against the tide by watching the spar buoys and noting the direction in which they point.

Arichat, situated on Isle Madame, with about seven hundred souls, was formerly the seat of the Bishop of Arichat, until the see was removed to Antigonish. It is built on high ground, and has a fine harbour. There is another good harbour at West Arichat. The situation of the island makes the climate delightfully cool in the warmest of weather. This place was one of the important stations of the Jersey fishing houses, and the Robins still have an establishment here. In the township are many Acadian French, some of the families having come here from Grand Pré at the time of the dispersion. Houses are easily procured at Arichat by those who wish to reside here during the summer, and several Americans have been regular visitors for years, making the village a centre from which to take various trips through the surrounding country.

So far I have spoken of the middle and the eastern Cape Breton. But there is, as the map will show you, another side, the western, where is situated the county of Inverness, whose coast-line stretches from St. George’s Bay northward to Cape Lawrence, All this region settled by Highlanders and French has been only recently opened up by the Inverness Railway, a line built to tap the great coal deposits in the vicinity of Port Hood, Mabou and Broad Cove. This line starts from the Intercolonial Railway at Point Tupper, and has opened up a fine piece of farming country, and provided a winter outlet for the large quantities of coal being produced at Port Hood and Inverness. The road follows the coast-line for the entire distance from Port Hastings to Inverness, and an exceedingly fine panorama of land and sea is disclosed to the view. A daily passenger service has been inaugurated, connection with the Intercolonial being made at Point Tupper.

A steamer runs from Mulgrave to Port Hood, a distance of twenty-six miles, on regular days of each week. Port Hood is near the entrance to the Bay, and from there the journey may be continued to Mabou, Inverness, Margaree Harbour, and Cheticamp. My solitary fellow passenger was a gentleman from Antigonish, whom I neither flatter nor depreciate when I say he was the most typical Highlander I have ever seen. Tall and spare, with florid skin and high cheek-bones, and hair and beard which a decade ago or so must have been violently red, the beard jutting out in true Highland aggressiveness, it was something of a surprise to me to find that he did not say “whateffer,” and an eternal disappointment that he spoke anything but Gaelic. But indeed he had the Highland brevity of speech, and glowered about him from under his bushy eyebrows much as such a man should properly glower when in kilts, and with a claymore in his hand.

“Who is that man?” I asked the conductor of the train.

“That—oh, that’s old MacTavish.”

“I knew it.”

“Then what did you ask for?”

“I mean, I knew he must be a MacTavish. I was afraid you would tell me he was a Mr. Tompkins of Boston. He seems preoccupied.”

“Occupied? Aye, he’s a busy man is Senator MacTavish.”

I could not restrain a start of surprise. In the old days, a couple of centuries ago, in the old and real Inverness country, this man would have been a chieftain of freebooters and cattle-lifters, and doubtless played his part as deftly, as daring, and as dourly as under the changed conditions of our modern civilisation he plays it now. Afterwards, I had some conversation with Mr. MacTavish, and not once I am glad to say did he abandon his character or fall away from the high opinion I had formed of him at sight. I only mention this trifling rencontre, because shortly after my return to England, I read a telegraphic despatch in the Times to the effect that “Senator X. Y. MacTavish has been appointed to”—well, to very high office.

The train has arrived at Port Hood, which is the county town of Inverness. There are not many of the amenities of life here, and one could not reasonably expect more, because the two thousand souls here are in the swirl and centre of the Port Hood coal boom. The property worked at present by the company is on the coast, sixteen square miles in extent, and there are two principal seams, some seven or eight feet thick, supposed to contain nearly 150,000,000 tons of coal, which are being mined at the rate of some 500 tons a day. Yet Port Hood is already looking up as a summer resort, and many denizens of towns and cities who wish to leave the beaten track have fixed upon this place and its picturesque environs as a capital centre for boating, fishing, and bathing.

Coal is the great factor of Cape Breton, and it would make a Londoner’s mouth water to see how cheap and accessible it is. There are places where, as has been said, a man can, without leaving his farm, go down to the seashore and dig his winter’s coal as easily as he digs his potatoes. Coal in abundance is frequently struck in digging for fence posts, and around Port Hood in Inverness county you are sure to strike it if your spade goes deep enough.

There are a couple of islands off Port Hood, one of which had a great interest for me. It is called Smith’s Island; that this is no arbitrary title will be gathered from the fact that of the fifteen families on Smith’s Island, thirteen are Smiths. But then, of course, Smith is almost as much Highland as MacGregor. These thirteen families of Smith have divided the 500 acres of the island into farms, producing four or five tons of hay to the acre, root crops, and maize. Each family goes in for sheep-rearing, and there are fifty or sixty cows besides. But this does not exhaust the resources of the Smiths; they are fishermen, and make use of the fish offal as manure, which practically accounts for the land’s fertility, and there is a flourishing business in lobster canning. The fish caught is not dried exclusively, as was formerly the case, but a proportion of it is shipped fresh in government bait freezers and refrigerator cars, a system which is happily coming into vogue throughout Maritime Canada. Now I feel sure that if a similar colony of Browns, Jones, and Robinsons would emigrate and settle on Outer or any of the other islands about the coast, a like prosperity awaits them.

From Port Hood the railway goes on northward to Mabou, and to still further coal-fields. Beautifully situated is Mabou on a stream a few miles from Mabou harbour, and there is an abundance of trout fishing hereabouts. Past Mabou the line skirts Lake Ainslee, the largest freshwater lake in Cape Breton.

Inverness, now the chief town of Western Cape Breton Island, is only about a decade old. In 1900 the population was less than 100. In 1911 it had nearly 3000 souls.

The locality was formerly known as “Broad Cove Mines,” or “Loch Leven,” and it was originally the “Shean.” “Shean” means, I was told, the “home of the fairies.” It nestles under the towering heights of lofty Cape Mabou, close to the waters of the gulf.

The inhabitants of Inverness are already infected with the spirit of enterprise, and have a gude conceit of themsel’. Take the following description by a local writer:—“Looking down upon this site, the town of Inverness, much like a picture on the bottom of a piece of eighteenth century crockery ware, you behold by night the electrically bejewelled homeplace of about 4000 souls; by day you note that the erstwhile fir-thatched roof of the home of the fairies is covered over with workshop and cottage, bank-head and power-house, halls, schools, and churches, the homeplace of the modern fairy and his co-workers in other avocations—the homeplace of the hard-working, thrifty, fearless and frugal coal-miner and his family.”

Is not that wonderful? And yet there are people—even Canadians—who say Nova Scotia is not going ahead fast enough!

From Cheticamp, where is an old establishment of the Jersey fishing firms, the coast becomes higher, barer, and more rugged, and more dangerous to mariners, until Cape Lawrence is reached. Of this coast it was said long ago: “The north-west storms of November and December hurry many a vessel on to this long straight lee-shore, where the wretched crews, even if they effect a landing, wander in ignorance of the course to be taken, until their limbs are frozen, and they are obliged to resign themselves to their fate. In some instances they have succeeded in reaching the settlements to the southward, though eventually with the loss of hands and feet. Often, however, the only record of their distress is the discovery of their bones, whitening on the shore.” I am glad to say these tragedies are very infrequent nowadays, owing to a greater knowledge of the coast and the interior, and also to the existence of settlements hereabouts. The northern extremity of the island is only eight miles wide, that being the distance between Cape St. Lawrence and Cape North, the intervening shore forming a crescent, the land southwards sloping down to the water, and sheltered by the two capes. It is said to be of good quality, and, indeed, agriculture and grazing are not neglected there.