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232 Sydney with Port Morien, Louisbourg, and Gabarus, continuing to Arichat, Mulgrave and Hawkesbury.

Louisbourg, 24 miles from Sydney as the bird flies, is 42 miles by railway. The road with its branches serves the important mining communities on the coast. At Glace Bay (15 m.) was despatched in 1902 the first wireless message across the ocean. From the station at Mira (29 m.), Scatari Island appears to the left, separated from the mainland by Mainadieu Passage. Cormandière Rocks lying off its extremity are the most easterly bit of land belonging to the Maritime Provinces. Five miles south of Mira Bay, a direct line drawn to the coast would touch Cape Breton, so designated by Biscay fishermen who came hither from France in the Middle Ages. New Louisbourg, at the end of the railway, is the prosaic and grimy child of a city whose muniments once bounded the hopes of New France.

The Grand Battery of the Fortress of Louisbourg faced the sea from the southerly hill-side of a harbour three miles long whose arms were reefs and promontories. When in 1713 Louis Fifteenth became undisputed master of the Royal Isle, he commanded that a mighty defence be raised at the outpost of his possessions. In 1720 his behests were fulfilled by the construction, at untold cost of labour and gold, of citadel, casemate, parapet, merlon, arch, portcullis, glacis, moat, field-work,