The city of Halifax is the stronghold of British power in North America, and is said to be, with the exception of Gibraltar, the best fortified outpost of the British empire. It is a fortress and naval station of magnificent development upon an unrivalled harbor. This is an arm of the sea, thrust for sixteen miles up into the land, and the Indians called it Chebucto, meaning the "chief haven." A thousand ships can be accommodated on its spacious anchorages. Its Northwest Arm, a narrow waterway opening on the western shore just inside the entrance, makes a long peninsula with water on either side, which in the centre rises into Citadel Hill, two hundred and fifty-six feet high. Upon its eastern slopes, running down to the harbor and spreading two or three miles along it, is the narrow and elongated town, having the Queen's Dockyard at the northern end. Covering the broad hilltop is the spacious granite Citadel of Fort George, its green slopes, covered with luxuriant grass, being now devoted to the peaceful usefulness of a cow-pasture. Along the harbor and across in the suburb of Dartmouth are the streets and buildings of the town, containing forty thousand people. To the southward is the modern green-covered Fort Charlotte on St. George's Island, commanding the entrance and looking not unlike a sugar-loaf hat, and both shores are lined with powerful batteries and forts that make the position impregnable. The Citadel was begun by the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father, when he commanded the British forces in Canada in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and it has since been enlarged and strengthened. At the entrance gate, grim memorials of the past, are mounted two old mortars, captured at the downfall of Louisbourg, on Cape Breton, in 1758.