For various connections out of Halifax see under "Steamers from the United States" and "Provincial Railways and Steamers," Chapter I.
Almost due east of Halifax, but lying nearer to Whitehead in northern Guysboro County because of the peculiar trend of the Nova Scotia coast, is Sable Island whose shoals have since the Middle Centuries been associated with wreck and devastation. Three centuries ago the island is said to have been 200 miles long with cliffs 800 feet high. The sand hills are now about 100 feet high at the apex of the narrow crescent which appears to be gradually dropping into the sea. Of the hideous shoals which stretch west from the Banks, that off Sable Island is the largest. The heaviest storms of the North Atlantic centre at the head of the Gulf Stream, which is in conjunction here with the Arctic Current. The greater number of wrecks, and they have been legion, occur from errors of reckoning, due to terrific currents which bear to the west.
The Cabots are believed to have touched here, then came French colonists and convicts under de Léry in 1518 and the Marquis de la Roche, Viceroy of Canada and Acadia, in 1598. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's historian says "the Portugals did put upon the Island meat and swine to breed." The herds of wild ponies which roam this crest of a submarine sand-bank are thought to be descended from stock left here in the 16th century by the Portuguese.
It was off this perilous bank in 1583 that gallant Sir Humphrey went down on the Golden Hind, declaiming fearlessly, "Heaven is as near by sea as by land!"
In 1799 the Francis carrying the suite, horses and household effects of the Duke of Kent was wrecked in these waters.
The island is about 20 miles long and is distant from Whitehead 85 miles. Only Government employés live upon it. The colony consists of about thirty light-house attendants, crews of the life-saving patrol, and wireless telegraphers. The superintendent's house is on the dunes close to the shore. A constant watch is kept for disabled ships,
