ON the Nova Scotian side of the Bay of Fundy, immediately opposite the City of St. John, New Brunswick, there is a narrow inlet of the sea, walled by perpendicular and densely wooded hills. A few scattered cottages, belonging to fishermen, speck the deep green of the forest, as the traveller passes up this narrow channel, known by the uneuphonious name of Digby Gut. Digby is a small picturesque village, immediately inside the channel, which here opens out into a wide basin, large enough to float mighty navies, and beyond description beautiful. In the spring of 1604, a French Protestant, M. de Monts, first discovered this harbour of safety, and one of his comrades, Potrincourt by name, was so enchanted by its beauties, that he applied to the French monarch for a grant of the surrounding district. At the end of the basin, furthest from the entrance and at the mouth of a river, now called the Cornwallis river, he built a Fort and a village, to which he gave the name of Port Royal. The history of this little village has been one of marvellous interest; and until the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was written in letters of blood. Since it finally became the property of England, its existence has been a peaceful one; and now, alas, the mouldering ramparts, the tumbling, grass-grown walls of the old fort, and the windowless, stairless barrack, proclaim in unmistakable language the advent of a new colonial epoch, and the retreat of British troops before that new enemy—expense. The train required for its defence, after its final capture, was one of the arguments used in favour of creating a permanent force of Artillery in England; and for more than a century this village of Port Royal, or Annapolis, has been entwined in the history of the Royal Artillery. If all historical researches were pursued in such beautiful localities, the historian would be the veriest sybarite of literature. By the tumbling fortifications now stands one of the loveliest villages on the face of this world. The river, at whose mouth it is built, wanders through a valley, which, in summer, is like a dream of beauty. Rich _intervalle_ land on either bank, covered with heavy crops of every kind; fields and gardens studded with apple-trees, planted by the old French inhabitants; grapes in heavy clusters growing and ripening in the open air, and clean, white churches and cottages studding the landscape for miles; all unite in forming a picture, like the Utopia which haunts the dreamer's mind. The garden of Canada—an Artilleryman may well rejoice that so lovely a spot had a share in the birth of the corps to which he belongs.