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Rh assailed. In 1854, soldiers were finally withdrawn from the garrison, and the barracks, the officers' quarters, the powder magazine and block-house left to decay. The abandoned fortifications occupy a point of land twenty-eight acres in area. Near the entrance, in the centre of the town, is a bronze monument raised by the Dominion Government in 1904 to the memory of de Monts, who three hundred years before discovered this inland haven. One is free to roam about the old ramparts, to stroll beneath the sally-port, restored by the Government in 1897, and to enter the barracks which now contain a museum of pictures, weapons, implements and antiquated furniture. MacVicar's History of Annapolis Royal says Subercase constructed the magazine in the south bastion of the fort with stone brought from France in 1702. An oak block-house in fair state of preservation was ruthlessly demolished in 1881 by order of an unsentimental Ministry. It overlooked the moat and the road which turns off the main street of the town.

The view from "the cape," at the outermost point of the fortifications, includes the river, the widening basin, the old French marshes, and, further up Allain's Creek, the site of the mill erected by Poutrincourt in 1607 to grind the first corn grown in New France. Lescarbot made note that in many places near Port Royal there were fort belles cheutes pour faire des moulins de toutes sortes.