e streets. Green mounds and
embankments of earth enclose the whole space, and beneath the highest of
them yawn arches and caverns of ancient masonry. This grassy solitude
was once the "Dunkirk of America;" the vaulted caverns where the sheep
find shelter from the ram were casemates where terrified women sought
refuge from storms of shot and shell, and the shapeless green mounds
were citadel, bastion, rampart, and glacis. Here stood Louisbourg; and
not all the efforts of its conquerors, nor all the havoc of succeeding
times, have availed to efface it. Men in hundreds toiled for months with
lever, spade, and gunpowder in the work of destruction, and for more
than a century it has served as a stone quarry; but the remains of its
vast defences still tell their tale of human valor and human woe.

Stand on the mounds that were once the King's Bastion. The glistening
sea spreads eastward three thousand miles, and its waves meet their
first rebuff against this iron coast. Lighthouse Point is white with
foam; jets of spray spout from the rocks of Goat Island; mist curls in
clouds from the seething surf that lashes the crags of Black Point, and
the sea boils like a caldron among the reefs by the harbor's mouth; but
on the calm water within, the small fishing vessels rest tranquil at
their moorings. Beyond lies a hamlet of fishermen by the edge of the
water, and a few scattered dwellings dot the rough hills, bristled with
stunted firs, that gird the quiet basin; while close at hand, within the
precinct of the vanished fortress, stand two small farmhouses. All else
is a solitude of ocean, rock, marsh, and forest.[576]

[Footnote 576: Louisbourg is described as I saw it ten days before
writing the above, after an easterly gale.]

At the beginning of June, 1758, the place wore another aspect. Since the
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle vast sums had been spent in repairing and
strengthening it; and Louisbourg was the strongest fortress in French or
British America. Nevertheless it had its weaknesses. The original plan
of the works had not been fully carried out; and owing, it is said, to
the bad quality of the mortar, the masonry of the ramparts was in so
poor a condition that it had been replaced in some parts with fascines.
The circuit of the fortifications was more than a mile and a half, and
the town contained about four thousand inhabitants. The best buildings
in it were the convent, the hospital, the King's storehouses, and the
chapel