day before we visited them, the most powerful swimmer not being able to gain the shore. The noise from them can be distinctly heard at the distance of some miles, and the harbour, a mile below them, is covered with floating froth a foot in thickness. A few years since an engineer officer proposed undermining or blasting the rocks, which vary from 50 to 100 feet in height, and thus opening a passage for the free admission of the tide; but the project was opposed by the landholders some miles above the town, who represented that the river would thus be drained and rendered too shallow for navigation. Leaving St. John's in a steamer on the 24th, with the sea as smooth as a lake, but the vessel rolling heavily, we passed out of the beautiful harbour by Partridge Island (the quarantine station at the entrance, which, being high and rocky, is an excellent breakwater and shelter to the harbour in easterly gales), and steered for the Nova Scotian coast, forty miles distant. The lofty heights in rear of the city, the various Martello towers and lighthouses on Partridge Island and the headlands, the batteries and barracks rising upon a gentle acclivity from the harbour, with the ruins of old Fort Howe frowning from a rocky precipice over the city, which is built upon several eminences, form a picturesque scene when viewed from the Bay of Fundy. In five hours we entered the strait of Annapolis (or Digby, as it is frequently called), which is about a third of a mile in width, with high lands from 500 to 600 feet in height upon either shore. A violent tide rushing through it into the bay of Fundy renders it next to an impossibility for a vessel to beat against a head wind into the Basin of Digby, one of the finest summer harbours on the American continent, and in which the whole British navy might ride with safety. Were batteries thrown up at the entrance of the strait, the passage would be rendered utterly impracticable at any time. In winter, however, it is rendered unsafe from the vast quantities of ice which drift down from the Annapolis River. Several wigwams were erected upon the sandy beach by the Indians, who, with their rifles, assemble throughout the summer for the purpose of shooting porpoises in the basin; and, by afterwards disposing of the oil which they extract, they manage to make a tolerable livelihood. We saw several paddling about in their canoes, who appeared very expert, and were informed it was no uncommon thing for them to kill at a single shot. The basin is also celebrated for its chickens (a species of herring); but of late years their number has considerably decreased, owing to the numerous wears, which destroyed the young fish. The small town of Digby, which owed its origin to the fisheries, is prettily situated on a light gravelly soil at the water's edge, about three miles from the entrance of the strait. After passing an hour or two there, we pursued our course up the basin, which for its whole extent is divided from the Bay of Fundy by only a narrow chain of hills, between whose base and the margin of the basin there is a strip of about a mile in breadth of well-populated and cultivated land. Near the head of the basin, at the influx of the Moose River, are the remains of an iron foundry which was commenced in 1825, by the Annapolis Mining Company, with a capital of one hundred shares of 100l. each, and afterwards increased to double the amount, but failed through improper management, and is now mortgaged for a trifling There was a fine field open for their undertaking, nearly all the minerals throughout the country being reserved by the Crown, and granted for sixty years by the sum. |