Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/105

Rh lead upward to the apex of the hill commanded by Fort George. From this outlook one may survey the city, brinking the wooded shores of the North West Arm, falling away down dingy terraces of unkempt streets to that other fair encircling inlet, Bedford Basin. Across the harbour, where often-times Britain's war-hounds tug at their anchor chains, rises the town of Dartmouth, with a history quite its own.

When Colonel the Honourable Edward Cornwallis arrived with his fleet of settlers' transports and the sloop of war Sphinx in Chebucto Bay in the summer of 1749, the site of the future city which was even then designed as "a military key to the North American colonies" was bare of fort or habitation. Neither was there, according to a letter written by the Governor, "one yard of clear ground."

It was not long, however, before the members of this hardy expedition had constructed an encampment of tents and huts and driven upon Citadel Hill the pickets of a stockade as a protection against attacks by the French and their Micmac allies. Wharves were built immediately, one of them for "ships of 200 tons." Even in the first month twenty schooners are recorded as having entered the harbour in a single day.

The fortress was several times repaired before the incumbency of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, as the garrison commander. At his suggestion