Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/259

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NORTHERN NOVA SCOTIA
211

islands of the north. The Kinhurn makes a bi-weekly circuit of towns on the Inverness shore as far as Cheticamp. The same coast is much more comfortably served by railway as far as Inverness, the starting-point being Point Tupper, C. B., on the opposite side of the Strait from Mulgrave. Intercolonial trains are transported by ferry, en route to Sydney via the Bras d'Or Lakes. (See fine print following "Inverness County.")

Inverness County.

Once across the majestic canal provided by nature as a passage from the ocean to the lower Gulf of St. Lawrence, one has entered a kingdom where Nature in all things reigns undisputed. Cape Breton has no sophisticated cities or pretentious resorts. Her appeal is the rational one of broad waters, granite steeps and unharmed forests. Her riches are dug from the earth and wrested from the sea. Her sons are brawny and upright, their simple lives unhurried.

An island sea surrounded by land sprawls like a great starfish in the heart of the tract. The mountainous Counties of Inverness and Victoria thrust northward like uplifted fingers; Cape Breton County makes a line on its upper border like the bent knuckles of digits turned down. Inverness, Victoria and part of Richmond County are divided by St. Peter's Canal and the Bras d'Or Lakes from the land that lies to the east, so that