The jaunt from Petite Riviere was possibly the most captivating of the entire trip. At first the roar of a heavy surf breaking within two to five hundred feet of the road commanded the undivided attention, and when the rush and clamor of the heavier breakers came the very air was jarred and the noise was appalling, the more so because nothing was visible beyond the dense fringe of spruce which bordered the road. So heavy were the reverberations among the trees that I was tempted two or three times to investigate, only to find that it was merely heavy surf and nothing more, but back among the trees there was at times a crash that almost made the heart stand still; it seemed as though the next instant the waters would be upon one. What it may be like when the wild old Atlantic is really worked up over some windy suspiration is beyond comprehension.
Finally the woods fell away and Crescent Beach came into view, a long curving sandbar thrown up by the sea with quiet water on one side and the surf pounding on the other. This introduces the traveler to West Dublin and Dublin Shore at the mouth of the Lahave River, a stretch of some five miles.
At first the waters are quiet, owing to the protection of Crescent Beach, the shore is a series of enchanting little coves and promontories with rocks and small craggy trees distractingly picturesque. Then the road dodges away from the shore for a half mile, only to come back to it again where cod flakes line the way and little storehouses, through whose open doors one can see men piling dried cod as the farmer might fill his shed with the winter’s supply of firewood.
Then the bank becomes a bluff and the road ascends thirty to forty feet above the water, while the waves, no longer restrained by Crescent Beach, dash themselves on the rocks below, a beautiful, rugged bit of coast. It is not possible to adequately describe this wonderful five miles. All the way houses are grouped or dotted along one side of the road; it is like a straggling village street; while on the other the shore stirs one’s heart with its beauty or its rugged features or its interesting evidences of the life of the fishing banks. It is seldom that the traveler finds so much that is interesting and attractive in one short stretch.
Fort Point is situated at the outlet of the Lahave River on its Western bank. I presume that it is included in the village of Dublin Shore, but, as these villages run one into the other in a most promiscuous fashion, it may come within the confines of Getsans Point. In 1755 an Acadian village stood here, nothing of which now remains but a few almost obliterated depressions that were once the cellars of the French homes.
Immediately back of the little lighthouse lies a pond in which, according to local tradition, the Acadians placed the church bell and silver service at the time of the expulsion. These are still believed to lie deep in the mud. This mud, I was told, is from ten to twenty feet deep. Some attempts have been made to probe it with long poles, but without results.
I found two men working in a field nearby, who were quite ready to act as guides, and they, with the lightkeeper, took me over the locality and helped find in the brush near the pond the foundations of the chapel and priest’s house and the well close by. These are such slight elevations and so overgrown that the stranger might easily not recognize his discovery when made.
The fort which gives name to the point stood on its south side, which is elevated fifteen feet above the water. The land here has been washed away within the memory of my guides, until the remains of the fort have entirely disappeared. A few thin, crudely made bricks were picked up on the beach, which may have been used to line a fireplace, but other than this no remnant of the fort is to be found.
In times past will-o’-the-wisp lights have been seen to come and go on the opposite shore of the river below Riverport, but what they portended or why they are not seen in these degenerate days, my new found friends did not know. It has occurred to me that possibly these may be the returned spirits of moose and bear endeavoring to wreak a last revenge on the intruding white man. If the legend which follows is true, this is at least a plausible explanation:—
The earliest French settlement here was in 1613. There is an Indian legend which relates that when these white men landed the bears and moose held a grand conclave around the headwaters of the Lahave River, some fifty miles in the interior, where they entered into an alliance against the paleface. It was determined that the moose should wage war against all cornfields planted by the intruders, while the bears attacked their cattle and sheep, but no person was to be eaten by them unless he bore a gun which made a great noise and carried confusion among the peaceable denizens of the wood.