Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/279

Rh The journey by steamboat through the Great Bras d'Or from Baddeck to Sydney is accomplished in about seven hours, the distance being 55 miles. The channel of the Little Bras d'Or, on the opposite side of Boularderie Island, is wider and in some places much deeper than the one usually navigated, but has a more restricted outlet. Adjectives are misleading in this case as are adverbs of direction throughout Nova Scotia, where one hears of journeys "up to New York" and "down to Labrador." Labrador, it may here be observed, was the name originally applied to the Bras d'Or or Braddore Lakes. As we know, the French made free with all the names they came upon in the uncharted Canadas. The "Arm of Gold" is, however, so analogous to the configuration of this devious body of water that in this instance they obliterated an inappropriate name to confer one poetically descriptive.

The Big Arm is hemmed by the woods and farms of the long narrow island whose name is that of its first proprietor, a Frenchman. Back from the mainland shore the mountains of St. Ann lift to the north. A sole-shaped peninsula crowds the channel close as the sea is approached, then turns out to the toe at Cape Dauphin. The steamboat rounds the shattered Point of Aconi, essays the unsheltered waters of the Atlantic, sailing above vast fields of coal that here extend miles into the