to Strathlorne on Loch Ban, which is an inlet of Lake Ainslie, a sheet of fresh water reaching 12 miles to the southeast. Four miles beyond is the coal mining town of Inverness, which came into being about a dozen years ago, and is important to the traveller as a touring centre.
The Inverness colliery was first developed by a resident of Danvers, Massachusetts, and later taken over by McKenzie and Mann, promoters of the Canadian Northern Railway. The mine now ships about 300,000 tons a year of soft coal, much of which is mined beneath the Gulf. The miners are principally Scotchmen whose forefathers came to Cape Breton about a hundred years ago. There is also a contingent of Belgians v/ho are segregated in a smudgy quarter of their own. Until the railroad penetrated this untamed and precipitous coast, the Scotch farmers who planted their potato patches and tended their sheep were even more isolated than the mountain crofters of many parts of Scotland. Customs observed in the old country a century ago, and perhaps discarded there, still obtain in this primitive region. Here automobiles are still rare enough to inspire curiosity, if not actual fear in the rural districts which lie back from the shore. So many families have the same patronymic that confusion would arise but for the ingenious expedient of allying with the baptismal name of an individual the names or sobriquets of his father and grandfather. Thus, James, son of
