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THE TOURISTS MARITIME PROVINCES

The Basin was Glooscap's own Beaver Pond. At Blomidon the god of the Micmacs contended with a rival giant; they hurled rocks down which formed Five Islands across the Basin. It was Glooscap's might that shaped Blomidon, which he "strewed with gems." The Indians call the promontory Glooscap's week or home. He was a preternatural being in the body of an Indian who watched over the welfare of the aboriginals.

Formerly, water covered the Annapolis and Cornwallis Valleys but Glooscap cut a passage at Cape Split and at Digby Gate, and thus drained the pond and left the bottom dry. The outlet of the Beaver Pond was at Cape Split, the broken tip of a peninsula shaped like a crane's bill which thrusts its narrow ridge of rock into Minas Channel.

Glooscap, after many noble exploits, became offended at the intrusion of white men. When he determined to depart from the Land of the Miggamaks he called up a whale to carry him off to a far-away shore. The Indians expect his return in due time, and look for the end of their troubles when he comes back. It was he who taught them how to hunt and fish, how to cultivate the ground. He was sober, wise and good and his people mourn his long absence.

The Legends of Glooscap were collected by Reverend Silas Rand, a Baptist minister who for half his life-time lived as a missionary among the Nova Scotia Indians. He was born in the village