Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/325

Rh the onslaught of Fundy as it charges the bar of the Petitcodiac. A rampart of reddish cliffs two miles long and 40 to 80 feet high, rasped and distorted by the friction of the currents, twisted, arched, modelled by the diablerie of the waves, presents a gallery of rock forms unequalled in their wanton, oft-times sublime caprice. Along the base of the wall are caverns supported by columns wherein one fears to discover crones mumbling sorceries and brewing strange draughts. The Sphinx and The Little Giant are detached shapes cunningly etched by wind and water. A pillar 50 feet high is poised on a slender pediment as true in balance as though a master craftsman had installed it. Fundy was the craftsman. Fundy's handiwork created the magic of the Hopewell Rocks.

Two miles across the neck of Shepody from Hopewell Cape is the shore of the long peninsula that divides the brown waters of this bay from Cumberland Basin. Here at the mouth of the Petitcodiac are created the conditions immediately responsible for the breaking of the bore below Moncton. The tide of the Atlantic having been quickened and heightened by a progressively narrowing coast line all the way from Cape Sable, the maximum impetuosity is reached in the cramped channel of Chignecto Bay which in turn compresses to Shepody Bay, whose torrent is vented in the Indians' Pet-koat-kwee-ak, "the