f; the wild ocean beating against the doors of the
harbor; the churning, whirling, whistling danger on either side, lighted
up by the glare of the beacon! past we go, and, with a sweep, the
"Balaklava" evades the "Nag's Head," and rounding too, drops sail and
anchor beside the walls of Louisburgh.

Then the thick fog, which had been pursuing us, came, and enveloped all in
obscurity.

"It is lucky," said Captain Capstan, "that it didn't come ten minutes
sooner."

CHAPTER V.

Louisburgh--The Great French Fortress--Incidents of the Old French
War--Relics of the Siege--Description of the Town--The two Expeditions--A
Yankee _ruse de guerre_--The Rev. Samuel Moody's Grace--Wolfe's
Landing--The Fisherman's Hutch--The Lost Coaster--The Fisheries--Picton
tries his hand at a fish-pugh.

Nearly a century has elapsed since the fall of Louisburgh. The great
American fortress of Louis XV. surrendered to Amherst, Wolfe, and Boscawen
in 1758. A broken sea-wall of cut stone; a vast amphitheatre, inclosed
within a succession of green mounds; a glacis; and some miles of
surrounding ditch, yet remain--the relics of a structure for which the
treasury of France paid Thirty Millions of Livres!

We enter where had been the great gate, and walk up what had been the
great avenue. The vision follows undulating billows of green turf that
indicate the buried walls of a once powerful military town. Fifteen
thousand people were gathered in and about these walls; six thousand
troops were locked within this fortress, when the key turned in the
stupendous gate.

A hundred years since, the very air of the spot where we now stand,
vibrated with the chime of the church-bells and the roll of the stately
organ, or wafted to devout multitudes the savor of holy incense. Here were
congregated the soldiers, merchants, artisans of old France; on these high
walls paced the solemn sentry; in these streets the nun stole past in her
modest hood; or the romantic damsel pressed her cheek to the latticed
window, as the young officer rode by and, martial music filled the avenues
with its inspiring strains; in yonder bay floated the great war-ships of
Louis; and around the shores of this harbor could be counted battery after
battery, with scores of guns bristling from the embrasures.

The building of this stronghold was a labor of twenty-five years. The
stone walls rose to the height of thirty-six feet. In those broken arches,
studded with stalactites, t