II
LOUISBURG REVISITED
The annals of a celebrated fortress are sure to present some very curious and instructive phases of national policy and character. Of none of the fortresses of colonial America can this be said with greater truth than of Louisburg, once the key and stronghold of French power in Canada.
No historic survey can be called complete which does not include the scene itself. Nowhere does the reality of history come home to us with such force, or leave such deep, abiding impressions, as when we stand upon ground where some great action has been performed, or reach a spot hallowed by the golden memories of the past. It gives tone, color, consistency to the story as nothing else can, and, for the time being, we almost persuade ourselves that we, too, are actors in the great drama itself.
The Cape Breton Coast.
It is doubtless quite true that the first impressions one gets when coming into Louisburg from sea must be altogether disappointing. Indeed, speaking for myself, I had formed a vague notion, I know not how, that I was going to see another Quebec, or, at least, something quite like that antique stronghold, looming large in the distance, just as the history of the fortress itself looms up out of its epoch. On the contrary, we saw a low, tame coast, without either prominent landmark or seamark to denote the harbor, except to those who know every rock and tree upon it, lifting nowhere the castellated ruins that one’s eyes are strained to seek, and chiefly formidable now on account of the outlying shoals, sunken reefs, and intricate passages that render the navigation both difficult and dangerous to seamen.
Lighthouse Point.
On drawing in toward the harbor, we pass between a cluster of three small, rocky islets at the left hand, one of which is joined to that shore by a sunken reef; and a rocky point, of very moderate elevation, at the right, on which the harbor lighthouse stands, the ship channel being thus compressed to a width of half a mile between the innermost island and point.
The harbor is so spacious as to seem deserted, and so still as to seem oppressive.
Island Battery.
The island just indicated was, in the days of the Anglo-French struggles here, the key to this harbor, but the opposite point proved the master-key. Neither of the great war fleets that took part in the two sieges of Louisburg ventured to pass the formidable batteries of that island, commanding as they did the entrance at short range, and masking the city behind them, until their fire had first been silenced from the lighthouse point yonder. When that was done, Louisburg fell like the ripe pear in autumn.