Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/200

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
158
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

port, ten miles distant. Ferrying the three miles across the Grand Passage we arrive on Brier Island, an irrelated fragment which receives the winds and breakers of both bays, and the Atlantic to boot. Westport, the chief settlement, depends upon the sea for its livelihood in common with all the villages on the spit that bars St. Mary's from the Bay of Fundy, and affords a thoroughly unconventional environment for vacationists to whom rest, good air and a banquet of sea food spells summer enjoyment. The people of this remote shore from Rossway to Westport are silent, kind and uncurious, like folk the world over who have "kinship with the sea."

Little steamers connect Tiverton, Freeport and Westport with Yarmouth, but those who have in mind a pilgrimage through the Acadia of to-day will return to Weymouth, and go south later by rail.

In the autumn of 1604 the Acadie cast anchor in the bay which de Monts named for the Virgin. The commander "noted that there was no shelter for large vessels, but that numerous little bays and innumerable coves offered a haven to ships of light draught." He admired the forests which covered all the country, and the soil which he esteemed easily adaptable to cultivation.

The first Acadians to find asylum on these shores were fugitives from Annapolis who had escaped