The ballad of The Nine Sisters has just been sung—its words set to new music, the harmony of which swept across the continent, catching the listening ear of all who love unity and concord. It is a ballad that tells of the toil of men's hands, of the smile of benevolent climates, of the opulent sunshine, that have all assisted in perfecting a fruit unequalled throughout the world, and of which these nine sister provinces of Canada will sing for many a moon to come.
Since Confederation the Atlantic has never been so near the Pacific as in the recent display of the gold and scarlet products of Canadian orchards. It has been a vast national chorus, the principals, a group of nine beautiful maiden provinces, singing to the world while they bound themselves together with frail, but undying garlands of apple blossoms.
And from the old-time historic land that
“Borders the mournful and misty Atlantic”
comes one of the most fragrant strands in all that perfumed garland. Up to the “Sunset Gateway of the Dominion” has drifted a breath from the far-off Annapolis Valley, which teems with olden romance, as well as with luxuriant orchards, the valley where history and poetry yet wander together, their shadowy fingers linked in an inseparable clasp that even modern enterprise, competition, barter and commerce can never quite divorce.
It has been my privilege to travel through “Acadia” in apple blossom time, to lean back in the car of a lazy train and inhale the fragrance that drifts through the windows from a thousand orchards, to watch the lift and fall of tides on the Basin of Minas, and to trace with half-closed eyes the far blue outlines of Blomidon, to imagine I can detect a trace of the people of “Evangeline” amongst the girls who gather at the village railway stations. Then later in the season when the apple harvest days bring a fuller fragrance, when ripening fruit circles on every side, when the huge carts drawn by ponderous oxen, disgorge their world-renowned freight to await shipment overseas—it has again been my privilege to traverse Acadia and to breath its atmosphere of old France which in spite of intervening centuries still lingers in a land that knows not the changes of our keen-blooded youthful west.
The Annapolis Valley, home of gnarled orchards and famous fruits, is old, old, old. It has the very stillness of age. The young slips of trees set out yearly in symmetrical rows seem like impertinent youth in a country where the air of yesterday is all pervading. Time passes the valley by; the years do not alter it; it sleeps in winter, wakes in spring, and rests at all times. The monstrosity of cities has never touched even its margin; it is primitive, melancholy, indescribably placid, faultlessly beautiful and strangely aloof from every other portion of Canada. Even on the prairies of Saskatchewan, or in the fastnesses of the Rockies have I never been conscious of such profound silence as that which enwraps the Land of Evangeline. The orchards may be bursting into blossom, on the teeming trees lavishing their yield of fruits—conditions do not disturb Acadia, for she dreams and dreams of past glories, never seeming to realize the present glory of her fruit-giving part in the world of this century.
But the stillest place in all the valley is in and above the village of Grand Pre, immortalized by Longfellow in his exquisite poem. Here is yet the ancient French well, and the row of gnarled old willows, brought from France as seedlings. “Evangeline's Well” it is called, and without doubt it speaks silently of days long gone. Every reader of history knows that with all the beauty of the poem Longfellow was both historically and geographically wrong, but that does not lessen the fascination of the Land of Evangeline, and one almost desires to forget historical facts and to remember only the little Acadian heroine of whom he writes so aptly:
“She was a woman now, with the heart and the hopes of a woman.
Sunshine of Ste Eulalie was she called, for that was the sunshine
Which as the farmers believed would load their orchards with apples.”
These very orchards were set out with seedlings brought like the willows from France, and many of them planted on the lands reclaimed from the sea by miles and miles of dykes. These dykes were first built by the French, which in that vicinity numbered some four hundred. (The Acadians all told numbered about ten thousand.) The reclaimed lands were most rich and productive and it is probable that the Annapolis Valley owes its wealth of apple output today to the shrewdness of the early French pioneers and their indefatigable dyke-building. The expulsion of these early French, or the Acadians as they were called, occurred in 1755. They had occupied the province for one hundred and fifty years, during which time England and France were striving for supremacy in the new world. But as early as 1504 French fishermen visited these shores, and the vicinity of Grand Pre itself was frequently the retreat of pirate ships, or an occasional privateer or corsair. Then followed in 1604 De Montes, a nobleman of the French Court of Henry IV. He came for colonization purposes, bringing Champlain with him. This was really the beginning of French history in the valley, which was then called La Cadie, or L'Acadia, and then was also founded Fort Royal (now Annapolis) in 1605.
Just here it may be permissible to diverge to the curious fact that many of the Micmac Indian words end with the termal “cadie”—which the tribe will explain as meaning “abounding in.”
Old Fort Royal is still in a state of excellent preservation, though grass grown and ancient not a detail of its construction is obliterated. The old French powder magazine is yet intact, its walls, seven and a half feet thick, have defied the centuries, and stand as monuments to old-world workmanship. The very stones used for the corner abutments and the arch of the interior were brought from France in 1642.
When England finally gained supremacy in the new world, Halifax was founded under Governor Edward Cornwallis in 1749, and the oath of allegiance was demanded from the Acadians, or refusing this they were given to understand that they were to forfeit their lands and possessions throughout the province.
They refused allegiance and for years were a thorn in the flesh of England. Left to their peaceful lives of farming and fruit-growing, they were yet malcontents, and finally broke into open conspiracy and rebellion. After years of storm it was finally Governor Charles Lawrence who banished them from British domains in 1755, after which Acadia settled into the peace that still obtains in her fruitful valleys.
It was upon this expulsion of the Acadians that Longfellow founded his “Evangeline,” which when published in 1847 brought out a storm of disapproval from critics familiar with the real history of Nova Scotia. That the famous poet attributed undue severity and inhumanity to the King of England and to the colonial governors was without doubt; furthermore, that he endowed the Acadians with a meekness and humility that was greatly exaggerated was also without doubt; but notwithstanding all this he still lives in our hearts as the sweetest of all American singers; and when one suddenly and unexpectedly comes upon the marble bust of him in Westminster Abbey, one's eyes grow strangely moist, and the heart that loves beautiful things longs just a little tensely for the valley that he has immortalized and made the whole English-speaking world desire to see. How frequently in the poem does he write of these Nova Scotia orchards:
“Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzing dancers,
Under the orchard trees, and down the path to the meadow.”
“Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard,
Bending with golden fruit was spread the feast of betrothal.”
The entire romance exhales apple blossoms, just as the valley does today. The little town of Kentville is particularly redolent of them, it is fairly encompassed by orchards, which are so productive that scores of trees must have their branches supported as the apples ripen, so heavy is the yield. This can readily be seen from the illustration of a single blossoming tree in the immense orchard owned by Mr. Eaton of Kentville, an orchard that one might almost say has its roots in the Cornwallis River, a silent little stream that waters many farm lands, many fruit gardens. The last time I saw the gentle Cornwallis it was sleeping between shores of snow. Its fringing cedars were heavy with frost and ice, but it was late winter and I knew that within a few weeks its serene surface would be mirroring a thousand blossoms of rose and pink and pearl, which in the autumn would turn to great globes of crimson and gold. If, as some would have us believe, Governor Cornwallis was an autocrat, the little river that bears his name holds nothing of his nature.
The average valley man does not know what work means—his trees work for him. Nature has so endowed those particular counties that there is small battle to do against invading pests, small labor of pruning or picking. Labor is cheap in the Maritimes, and no one ever hastens unduly: every one has leisure even in the busiest fruit season to “pass the time of day” with you and to ask you where you came from and whither going. It was in Kentville that I encountered a typical “Blue Nose” who obligingly stopped his ox-cart to allow me to be “snap-shotted” on its load of apples. He remarked that “this is what we Scotians call an oxmobile.” I commended the name. Then he asked where I lived. I quoted Longfellow to him, saying “My body is in Segovia, my soul is in Madrid.”
“Eh?” he ejaculated.
“I live in Ontario, but my heart is in British Columbia,” I explained.
“That's a bad way, better stay here,” he said.
“What have you got here to keep me?” I enquired.
“Poetry and pippins,” he replied laconically.
But it was this same “oxmobilist” who told me of the Micmac romances and legends of the valley, of the ancient God of the Micmac tribe, the great spirit whom they call Glooscap, who had his happy hunting grounds in the heights of Blomidon, across the Basin of Minas, but who abandoned this paradise upon the first coming of the pale faces. Indian romance has the same pathetic trend in every tribe from ocean to ocean. Their Gods and Great Spirits have always disappeared at the sound of the first footfall from the white invaders.
“Glooscap” of Indian tradition, De Montes of the gallant court of France, Cornwallis who represented his British sovereign, Evangeline, born of Longfellow's exquisitely gentle mind and imagination—what a constellation of history and romance, superstition and poetry surrounded the growth of the peerless Gravensteins of which the Annapolis Valley boasts. Was it some subtle touch of the bygone days of Acadia that only last week made those fruity perfumes so hauntingly alluring? Who knows!*
Over 300 years have rolled by since that memorable day in the summer of 1604, when a little vessel sailed proudly up what is now the Annapolis river, bearing De Montes, who, with all the ceremony befitting such an occasion, laid foot on the land of the new world, and unfurling the Golden Lilies of proud France, claimed the vast unknown acres of a new continent as a heritage for the crown of a mighty nation, writes Daniel Owen in The Canadian Century. The Annapolis Royal of today is not the Port Royal of three centuries ago, yet there is an interest that attaches to it, sufficient to warrant a brief portrayal of its present charm and beauty.
Annapolis Royal lies at the western extremity of the Garden of Nova Scotia—the far famed Land of Evangeline. On either side rise the mountains, blue and misty, covered with a mass of evergreens that proves them to be as densely wooded as they were in the days gone by, when early Canadian history was in the making, and the stealthy Indian lay hidden in the recesses, waiting for an opportunity to fall upon the settlement beneath. Flowing past the town and on through the valley is the Annapolis river, with its tidal waters that are ever on the ebb and flow.
The streets of the quaint town are large and in order; the residences of considerable size and stateliness and the grounds that surround them—spacious lawns and old-fashion gardens—would be a credit to the fairest city in all Canada.
But it is not the town proper that affords the greatest interest; rather, it is old Fort Anne, which stands, overlooking the harbor, in all the grandeur of the years that have passed and the glory of the scenes it has witnessed.
Apparently the breastworks, like the other fortifications, are in a perfect state of preservation, and many of the buildings yet stand. To the West of the main square is the dungeon, where imprisonment must have been worse than death. At the South corner stands the old powder magazine, the walls of which are over six feet thick.
Looking through from the Sally Port that gives admittance to the Western moat and the outer breastworks, is to be seen the officers' quarters, still standing in all its picturesque stateliness. The building itself is fairly large. In the basement and below ground, with only a flicker of light, are rooms that were used when an enemy was attacking or during the dark, cold days of the Nova Scotia winter.
After exploring the officers' quarters, the tourist will be conduced over the fortifications and onto the trench that was dug in one night by Captain Nickelson and his men, and where they took refuge on the following day. To the right is the road by which the victorious British entered, and it was by this same road that the French marched for the last time from the garrison of Port Royal, with their drums beating and their banners flying in the wind—for, as everyone knows, Nickelson allowed his brave foes to leave with all the honors of war.
On either side of “Nickelson's Trench,” is the silent city, where rests all that remains of many a hero who laid down his life in the course of duty to flag and country. Besides them, rest members of many families whose names are famous in the history of the province.
Gazing from the ramparts of the fort far down the beautiful river, one cannot but think of the events of the years ago; events that echo and re-echo in the history of our land. Of the fierce battles and the bitter strife that accompanied the several occupations of the town, and of the long, bleak winters, when provisions were all but gone, and the long expected relief from France had not arrived, and all seemed lost and hopeless, and with the poet, one can but wonder:
“Annapolis, do thy floods yet feel,
Faint memories of Champlain's keel;
Thy pulses yet the deeds repeat,
Of Poutrincourt and d'Iberville?”