Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 5

THE EDITOE IN CANADA.
III.
Cape Breton.
If I remember correctly I parted company with tlie reader in my last at
Port Mulgrave, on the Straits of Canso, on my way to Cape Breton, where
I arrived, after having crossed the Straits by a ferry only a little more
than a mile wide, on the 2 2d of September, thus satisfying a life-long
ambition ; for ever since I began to think, I looked forward to the day
when I should see this island, made interesting to me from child-
hood days in consequence of several relatives having emigrated there
when I was but a child. I felt as if I were a new man in a new world,
and a most beautiful and delightful world it was. I crossed pretty early
in the day, and a family of Grants from Glenmorriston having discovered
that I was there, insisted upon paying me every attention, and upon my
delivering a lecture on my return, which, in the end, I agreed to do.
After a pleasant day spent in the village of Hawkesbury, I hired a con-
veyance to carry me ovo' a neck of land 13 miles across from the Straits
of Canso to West Bay, on the Big Bras D'or Lake, from which I got to
my destination on Boulardrie Island, by the steamer Neptune, a handy
little boat, commanded by Captain Howard Beatty, a most agreeable
fellow, and a genuine Scot. Our countrymen are in this country at the
top of everything, and I was not surprised to find that the purser was
also a Scot and a Highlander, Arcliibald Macdonald, a native of Arisaig.
The sail on these magnificent lakes was njost delightful, the scenery re-
minding one very much of Loch-]S"es3 and its surroundings, with the
diiference that the Bras D'or Lake would not miss Loch-Ness out of it,
and that the Inverness-shire mountains are on a much grander scale than
those of Cape Breton. I never enjoyed anything so much as this sail,
though possibly that may be attributed in some degree to the fact that I
was just realising, and, as it were, drinking in the ambition and object of
forty years. On the right we leave the Little Bras D'or and Christmas
Isle, while on the left we caU at and pass Baddeck, a pretty village, the
capital of Victoria county, which carries on a considerable trade with
Newfoundland in cattle and dairy produce. In a few hours I land at
Eraser's Wharf, so called after the son of the late Eev. Mr Eraser, a
native of Dingwall, for many years minister on the Island of Boulardrie.
John A. Eraser, a first cousin of the Eev. Mr Baillie, minister of
Gairloch, was the first man I met on landing, and he at once volun-
teered to drive me to where my friends lived, about two and a-half
miles distant. I was soon among my friends, whom I found in much
better circumstances than I anticipated, and as theu' position is a fair
illustration of that of many others in Cape Breton, I may just as well
describe it. Their father, Alexander Grant, emigrated from Gairloch in
1841, having only a very few pounds in his possession. He had been in
the British navy for five years, in virtue of which he obtained a free grant
of 200 acres on his arrival in Cape Breton. He, at the same time, took up