VI
THE OLD PROVINCE OF NOVA SCOTIA
I NOW propose to give some account of the nine provinces in succession, with regard to their extent, physical features, climate, natural resources, and the conditions and pursuits of the people. I shall also endeavour to give information as to the prospects in each province for immigrants from the British Isles. Of course, in the space at my disposal, I can touch but slightly on any of these points. I will begin with Nova Scotia, the province that lies nearest to England, though curiously enough it is little-known by English people compared to many of the more westerly regions. Except in winter, when the Canadian mail steamers cannot go to Quebec, and so land their mails and their cabin passengers at Halifax, Nova Scotia seems somewhat off the line of tourist and immigrant travel, which passes up the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the north of the little group of Canada’s three “Maritime Provinces.”
It is possible for anyone to live long in another part of Canada without getting much idea of the history, resources or characteristics of the “Provinces down by the Sea,” but it adds immensely to one’s interest and pride in the Dominion when one realizes that Quebec and Ontario—wealthy and important as they unquestionably are—are now only a part of Canada, and that for a comprehensive understanding of the country as a whole, there is needed at least some knowledge of the prairie provinces, and British Columbia to the west, and of the little old less restless Lower Provinces to the east.
The story of Nova Scotia is full of interest from the days early in the seventeenth century, when the first little company of French colonizers tried so gallantly to found Port Royal, down to the present time. The long struggle of the French and English for the possession of the land, the frightful deeds of their Indian allies, the coming of the Loyalists and other pioneers, the gallant fight for British liberty and “responsible government,” all furnish incidents not less worthy of the poet’s song than that pitiful deportation of the Acadians, which inspired Longfellow’s pathetic but rather misleading poem of “Evangeline.”
I can spare little space for history, but before I go on to tell what I can of Nova Scotia—and for seven years quaint old Halifax was my home—I should like to say that whatever else this smallest, save one, of the Dominion’s nine provinces fails to produce, she has been singularly successful in the producing of men. Upon the roll of her “notables” are the names of Haliburton—“the father of American humour”—Inglis, who defended Lucknow; Cunard, founder of the line of great Transatlantic steamships; Sir Provo Wallis, Admiral of the Fleet; Dawson, of geologic and educational fame; whilst other well-known names of men still at work might be added to the list.
The very name—Nova Scotia—forces comparison with old Scotland, but the former is not quite three-quarters the size of the latter, nor has it much more than one-tenth of the population. It is also far south of its namesake; in fact, there is almost eight degrees between the latitudes of the north of Nova Scotia and the south of Scotland, but the Arctic currents in the West Atlantic have their influence on the climate, making the Nova Scotian winter cold, and the spring late, though the extremes of heat and cold are not so severe as farther inland. During a recent year at Halifax, for instance, only once did the mercury fall to “zero,” and only once in the hottest month, July, did it travel up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the Atlantic coasts there is a good deal of rain, fog and “Scotch mist,” but summer and autumn are often delightful seasons of bright, clear, not too hot, weather. In the inland and western parts of the province the climate is drier and not quite so variable.
Like her namesake, Nova Scotia turns towards the ocean a deeply indented, forbidding coast; but the interior lacks “Old Scotia’s” grand mountains, though it has a backbone of sterile hills running through the province, beside the Cobequid Mountains, in Cumberland County, and many a high rugged cliff in Cape Breton Island. This new Scotland has also its stretches of wild moorland and its lakes, set amongst dark spruce firs. But between “the barrens” of the Atlantic Coast, there is here and there a fertile valley; and on the Bay of Fundy side, but sheltered from its cold mists and winds by the long ridge of the North Mountain, stretches the far-famed Annapolis valley, where in spring the whole landscape seems one vast white orchard, save for the pretty little houses, half hidden amongst the bloom.
That side, too, is the region of the salt marshes, formed by the action of those phenomenally high tides of the Bay of Fundy, which were amongst the few remarkable features of Canada thought worthy of mention in the “Geographies” put into the hands of British children a generation ago. In course of ages these mighty tides have left vast level deposits of marine mud—the salt marshes—liable to invasion of the waves at spring tides, but easily turned by a little labour into pastures and hay meadows and grain fields of almost inexhaustible fertility. All that is necessary is to build dykes or embankments of tree trunks and clay to keep back the highest tides; and this work was begun long ago by some of the early French immigrants, who had been accustomed to reclaiming land from the sea in their own country. If, at any time, the fields should show signs of exhaustion, the fertilizing waters may again be let in for a short season; indeed, farmers living near undyked marshes are accustomed to haul loads of the precious sea-mud to their upland fields. Of something the same character as the dyked lands are the “intervales” along the rivers, which are said to be “invariably rich and productive.”