Nova Scotia Archives

Au cœur de l'Acadie

Archives concernant la Déportation et le Grand dérangement, 1714-1768

NOVA SCOTIA DOCUMENTS.

the widest place about half a mile broad, this entry leads into a larger Basin where a vast number of ships may safely anchor. Three leagues from the entry, and up the British river lies Goat Island; the ship channel between that and the main lies on the larboard side going up, it is narrow, but has water enough for the biggest ship, the other side of the Isle is full of shoals, and has a very narrow and difficult channel. Two leagues above Goat Island is the Port, seated on a rising sandy ground on the South side of the River on a point formed by the British River and another small one called Jenny river. The lower Town lies along the first and is commanded by the Fort, the upper Town stretches in scattering houses a mile and half South East from the Fort on the rising ground betwixt the two rivers. From this rising ground to the banks of each river, and on the other side of the less one, lies large plats of meadow which formerly were damn'd in, and produced good grain and sweet grass, but the dykes being broke down, are over flowed at every spring tide from Goat Island to five leagues above the Fort. On both sides of the British River are a great many fine farms Inhabited by about two hundred families. The tide flows that extent, but the river is not navigable above two leagues above the Fort, by any other than small boats. The Bank of this River is very pleasant and fruitful and produces wheat, rye and other grain, pulse, garden roots, herbs and the best cabbages of any place, here abounds also cattle and fowls of all kinds and if the several good tracts of land along this river were well improved they would suffice for a much greater number of Inhabitants than there is already.

The chief employment of the French Inhabitants now is farming and the time they have to spare they employ in hunting, and catching of Sable Martins. Their young men who have not much work at farming beget themselves to Fishing in the summer. The Fort is almost a regular square, has four Bastions, and on the side fronting the Point, which is formed by the junction of the two Rivers, it has a ravelin and a battery of large guns on the counterscarpe of the ravelin, which last with the battery, have been entirely neglected since the English had possession of this place and are entirely ruined. The works are raised with a sandy earth and were faced with sods, which being cut out of a sandy soil (the whole neck betwixt the two rivers being nothing else) soon mouldered away, and some part of the works needed repairing almost every spring. The French constantly repaired it after the