There are places in the world where the genius loci or spirit of the place is powerfully present to the point where your perception is deeply affected and your spirit, perhaps, is taken over by the landscape. Cumberland Basin, where the seventy-foot tidal excesses of the ninety-mile-long Bay of Fundy exhaust themselves, is such a place. Beaubassin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaubassin The French, who came up from Port Royal in the 1670s called it Beaubassin. As they come and go the Bay of Fundy tides create a roundish basin, with steep sloping sides composed entirely of deep greasy organic silt. Establishing landing places is almost impossible. Here is the southern face of the…

In 1605 France established its first permanent settlement in the New World. For well over half a century it had done nothing to exploit the new lands found by Jacques Cartier because of a drawn-out war of religion caused by the Protestant Reformation. Early in the Seventeenth Century with stability established in the country France was ready to turn to the New World. The greatest explorer of the time was Samuel de Champlain who crossed the Atlantic many times, established settlements in Nova Scotia and Quebec, and wrote profusely about his adventures. As Geographer to the King, he also produced several maps of the New France, in at least one…