Halifax, Nova Scotia (Part 1)

Halifax, Nova Scotia (Part 2)

In the exact middle of the peninsula of Nova Scotia a triangular piece of land juts out into the Atlantic. To this second peninsula is attached a third, and upon this narrow rocky strip, three miles long by a single wide, a century and a half ago was founded the “Crunstadt of Canada.” East and wrest of Halifax is the sea, but the sea subdued and serene: for on the one hand is the world-famed Halifax harbour, and on the other the river-like north-west arm. In the harbour a thousand ships may ride quietly at anchor: it is always accessible: as it touches the upper end of the town it narrows only to expand again into Bedford Basin—ten square miles of peaceful marine haven. On the eastern slope of the little isthmus, Halifax is built, the ground rising from the harbour’s edge, some two hundred and fifty feet, to where is reared the great stone citadel, a striking spectacle when viewed from the sea—to the ocean-borne traveller striking and significant.

“Into the mist my guardian prows put forth,
Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie,
The Warden of the Honour of the North,
Sleepless and veiled am I”

Halifax has been for a century and a half the chief naval and military headquarters of British North America, and for some time the sole garrison of regular troops in Canada. Its military spirit dates from its very birth.

There are greetings of every kind and degree in store for the traveller in parts civilised, uncivilised, barbarous, and savage; greetings at the portals of the city, effusive, boisterous, vociferous. There is one time-dishonoured greeting that I could dispense with more freely than all the rest, and it is that which awaits the incomer by rail to the capital of New Scotland. Conjure up in your fancy seventeen shaggy, wild-eyed men, in whose visages Celtic trails predominate, standing in a row, brandishing their outflung fists, bawling at the top of their voices, and only prevented from leaping upon the traveller and forthwith tearing him to pieces by a too-slender wooden barrier—and you have the spectacle which many a time and oft has confronted me at the Halifax railway terminus. For a moment, not understanding the pleasant local custom, with stunned faculties you stand regarding the line of raving madmen, unable to distinguish the diabolical dissyllable they are hurling at your head; and then a glimmering of the truth comes upon you, your hand-bag and umbrella-case fall from your limp grasp, they are caught up by one of the shrieking phalanx, by whom you are hustled into an open victoria and driven at breakneck speed to a hotel. It is pretended that the natives like this custom—that they have grown used to it—that as the local poet sings:

“’Tis sweet to hear the cabman’s honest bark,
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home.”

One Scot, thrillingly ingenious, declares that on arriving at Halifax he surrenders himself to a wonderful illusion, one that I dare hardly mention because of its audacity. He half-closes his eyes and imagines himself reinstated in his rightful chieftainship in the fastnesses of his Highland ancestors, and hears the clansmen shouting at him as they shouted at the returned Malcolm Dhu: “Am faic. thu sin? Am faic thu sin? Tha mi ’dol do Chualadh!” and other guttural acclamations, issued with such passionate frenzy and strength of lung as transport him back to the land of his fathers.

For otherwise is it with the newcomer by sea. The traveller steams into a smooth and spacious harbour, and suddenly his gaze falls upon the city bathed in sunlight, stretching up from the wharves to the citadel crowned by the glorious flag that (with a few slight alterations and additions) for a thousand years “hath braved the battle and the breeze.”

“I was dressing,” wrote Charles Dickens, describing his arrival at Halifax seventy years ago, “about half-past nine next day, when the noise above hurried me on deck. When I had left it over-night it was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now we were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven miles an hour; our colours flying gaily; our crew rigged out in their smartest clothes; our officers in uniform again; the sun shining as on a brilliant April day in England, the land stretched out on either side, streaked with light patches of snow; white wooden houses; people at their doors; telegraphs working; flags hoisted; wharfs appearing; ships; quays crowded with people; distant noises; shouts; men and boys running down steep places towards the pier; all more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces, got alongside and were made fast, after some shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us, along the gangway almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship, and leaped upon the firm, glad earth.

“I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it had been a curiosity of ugly dullness. But I carried away with me a most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came home, without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day.”

“The town,” he goes on to say, “is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to the water-side, and are intersected by cross streets running parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly supplied; and provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was no sleighing; but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and by-places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decorations, might have ‘gone on’ without alteration as triumphal cars in a melodrama at Astley’s. The day was uncommonly fine; the air bracing and healthful; the whole aspect of the town cheerful, thriving, and industrious.”

Yet candour compels me to say that the impression made on the visitor by Halifax viewed at close quarters is not as favourable as it might be. One writer does not hesitate to call it “dingy and shabby”; and this effect is without doubt attributable first to the material employed in building the residential streets, and secondly to the utter neglect in the whole Province of which it is the capital, of architectural beauty. And herein Halifax shows not least its true British conservative character, not to say its London and English provincial city character. For given dull yellow brick as a material, I can show you miles upon miles of Halifax in Camden Town and Bayswater, in Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury. As the ballad in the “Arcadians” runs:

“When first I came to London town,
I thought it dingy, old, and brown.”

I can show you Halifaxes in Liverpool and Glasgow. Let no Londoner of the Georgian or Victorian age, whose architectural taste is represented by Gower Street and Smith Square, reproach the “Warden of the Honour of the North.” At the very beginning an attempt was made to copy London; and St. Paul’s Church, long the procathedral, was built in 1750 on the model of St. Peter’s, in Vere Street, Piccadilly. Other houses were constructed on that other Cockney model, which proceeds on the principle that a square wall, with a horizontal upper edge, pierced at mathematical intervals with oblong holes for windows, is a facade.

But an even more serious mistake—perhaps it was at first a necessity—the founders of Halifax made, in which their successors and descendants have persisted to the present day; a fundamental and essential mistake which no amount of shaping, and forming, and painting will ever correct or atone for—a mistake which, it is painful to have to record, it is difficult to bring Haligonians to recognise as such—they built then and build now their houses entirely of wood. Wooden houses may be cheap, wooden houses may be easy to build, wooden houses may be painted to look like stone or brick, but wooden houses are not for men, but children. People who live in glass houses, we are told, shouldn’t throw stones; and people who live in wooden can’t care for posterity, for it is certain that posterity won’t care for them. It is not as if stone were not cheap, or brick available—the Colonial showed from the first bis improvidence and his distrust in his future, by building of wood, and the result is what might be expected. Time has not dignified, but detracted.

“A modern wooden ruin,” Haliburton told his fellow-countrymen, “is of itself the least interesting and at the same time the most depressing object imaginable. The massive structures of antiquity, that are everywhere met with in Europe, exhibit the remains of great strength, and though injured and defaced by the slow and almost imperceptible agency of time, promise to continue thus mutdated for ages to come. They awaken the images of departed generations, and are sanctified by legend and by tale. But a wooden ruin shows rank and rapid decay, concentrates its interest on one family, or one man, and resembles a mangled corpse rather than the monument that covers it. It has no historical importance, no ancestral record. It awakens not the imagination. The poet finds no inspiration in it, and the antiquary no interest, It speaks only of death and decay, and recent calamity and vegetable decomposition. The very air about it is close, dank, and unwholesome. It has no grace, no strength, no beauty, but looks deformed, gross, and repulsive. Even the faded colour of a painted wooden house, the tarnished gilding of its decorations, the corroded iron of its fastenings and its crumbling materials, all indicate recent use and temporary habitation. It is but a short time since this mansion was tenanted by its royal master, and in that brief space how great has been the devastation of the elements! A few years more and all trace of it will have disappeared for ever. Its very site will soon become a matter of doubt. The forest is fast reclaiming its own, and the lawns and ornamented gardens annually sown with seeds scattered by the winds from the surrounding woods, are relapsing into a state of nature, and exhibiting in detached patches a young growth of such trees as are common to the country.”

“The capital of Nova Scotia,” wrote a traveller in 1856, “looks like a town of cards, nearly all the buildings being of wood. There are wooden houses, wooden churches, wooden wharves, wooden slates, and if there arc sidewalks these are of wood also. I was pleased at a distance with the appearance of two churches, one of thorn a Gothic edifice, but on nearer inspection found them to be of wood, and took refuge in the substantial masonry of the really handsome Province Building and Government House."

“At least,” retorted a Nova Scotian upon a Yankee critic, “we don’t go in for wooden nutmegs.”

“You’re not smart enough,” was the retort, “your very beads are of wood.”

“I fear,” remarked a distinguished Episcopal visitor on being shown the city, “your people are not orthodox. They make an idol of wood.”

“My Lord,” was Sir Robert Weatherbeys witty rejoinder, “we attach little importance to material things. For remember,

The heathen in their blindness,
Bow down to wood and stone.”

On Citadel Hill, the crowning height of Halifax, are to be seen obsolete fortifications, begun by the Duke of Kent, and as time went on altered and improved to keep pace with the rapid advances of scientific warfare. In and around Halifax there is now a thoroughly modern system of fortifications; and improvements and additions to these works are continually being made. The prominent points on the shores and the neighbouring islands are completely equipped with modern quick-firing and disappearing guns, and other forms of defence are not neglected.

The annual naval and military manoeuvres, of which Halifax used to be the scene, were a great source of interest, and attracted throngs of tourists. One saw the North Atlantic Squadron anchored peacefully in the harbour. Suddenly there rang out the shrill boatswain’s whistle, and there ensued a vision of crews swarming up the rigging, the loosening of sails, the hoisting of anchors, and then, in a few moments, the stately fleet steamed majestically down past the city and out to sea. For “war” had been, declared, and the fleet which thus went out to meet the enemy, will itself be the “enemy” on its return, and a fierce bombardment be expected unless the pretence that it is blown to fragments by submarines and torpedoes be successful. Meanwhile, the military authorities at the citadel were on the qui vive. The militia was called out, the garrison were at their guns or at the look-out, the submarine and torpedo engineers were busy laying surface mines and inspecting sunken mines and booms. The tension continued through that day and the ensuing night, until at daybreak the booming of cannon on the York Redoubt announces the approach of the enemy and the beginning of the attack. In all this and the attendant military review's and sham-fights the whole of Halifax participated, and the glory of the manoeuvres ended in a ball at Government House.

A change has come over the Imperial aspect of me Province since the Dominion Government took over the naval and military defences of Halifax from the Mother Country. I found Halifax, with its citadel crowned slopes, its wooden houses, its tree-lined avenues bathed in glowing summer sunshine, but Haligonian society with no sunshine in its heart. “Where are the tars of yester-year?” the belles of Halifax seemed to be saying. “Where are the gallant captains, commanders, lieutenants, sub-lieutenants, and middies with whom we waltzed, and flirted, and played tennis, and acted and boated within the North-west arm?” I was prepared for this, but not for a similar complaint with regard to the British Army. For on parade, at church, at the Halifax club, were not the regulation uniforms denoting the British officer as much in evidence as ever? “Oh, those!” was the supercilious rejoinder of one fair damsel, lying bark in a canoe on the shores of Bedford Basin; “they don't count. They're Canadians.”

To me these officers in their spick-and-span khaki, touched with scarlet, were indistinguishable from the Simon-pure insular breed. But trust a fair Haligonian to know the difference. I was reminded of the saying of a recent Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, who did not seem very effusive in his welcome of one who wore his Majesty’s uniform, just arrived at Government House. “I’m sorry the fellow was offended; but nobody interests me who reaches Nova Scotia by land."

And, indeed, it is only recently that many Nova Scotians have taken kindly to the term Canadian as applied to themselves, resembling in this respect the British Columbians of the pre-Confederation and ultra-conservative school.

It certainly has made a difference, perhaps only temporary, to the tone of Halifax society this substitution of a Canadian for the old Imperial establishment. Nor is the idea of a Canadian Navy taken seriously. One had only to mention the Niobe and the Rainbow to excite a smile.

The officers may turn out to be good fellows, but they will need all their tact, good looks, and gallantry to overcome the prejudice the fair Haligonians feel towards them as delegates from Ottawa instead of from the British Admiralty. As for the military, I heard many complaints as to how their men had received their appointments at Ottawa, but none as to how they do their work. And what is better still, they have earned the respect of the British "Tommies,” who still form 90 per cent, of the garrison, better paid and better fed than they were under the Imperial regime. And yet such pay and feeding hardly serves to attract the native-born, very few of whom are ready to enlist, so that the garrison is conspicuously undermanned.

But Halifax is a charming place to live in for all that. It has so long been a naval port and a garrison town, that the family ties between its people and those of England continue to be very numerous. Commercial relations between the two countries have grown to such an extent that the natives have now all that is admirable in English business circles and polite society. A visitor, if given the entree of the best society, must perforce carry away the most kindly recollections of his visit. Whatever his nationality, few places will make more strenuous efforts to give him the greatest enjoyment. And the attractions for the visitor are many, both in and around the town. A favourite drive is along the Point Pleasant Road and up the North-wrest Arm. A most attractive place is this North-west Arm, and the drive, especially when continued past Melville Island and as far as the Dingle, is a most enjoyable one.

Attending divine service on the day following my arrival, I tried to listen to the reverend gentleman expatiating in a patriarchal, and, I thought, somewhat ungallant way on the duties of women. My eye roved over the interior of the sacred edifice, which is, in many ways, the most interesting in Canada. One of the very first undertakings of the infant colony a century and a half ago was to provide themselves with a place of worship, and in the original plan of the town one square was reserved for a site. They applied to the British Government, who referred it to Lord Halifax, who attended service at St. Peter’s, Vere Street, Piccadilly. His lordship sought out the architect of St. Peter’s, got the plans, and sent them out to Nova Scotia. There the frame and other materials were imported from Boston, and in less than a year the colonists were attending service within an exact replica of the London church, which they named St. Paul’s. For many years it was used by successive bishops as a cathedral, including both the Inglises, father and grandfather of Sir John Inglis of Lucknow. Richer than any other church in Canada is St. Paul’s in mural tablets, and as our eye sweeps the four walls it encounters many historic names. One of these is that of Governor John Parr, the friend and comrade of Wolfe.

I wish I could speak in praise of Halifax’s new cathedral, to which reference will be found elsewhere in these pages. I wish I could plead that as I saw it, merely in process of construction, it would be impossible to render judgment upon it. For to me the whole principle upon which such structures are built is a wrong one. Even the architects have been impelled to issue a kind of manifesto, in which the following interesting statement occurs :—

“Perhaps the greatest disadvantage we of the western world are compelled to undergo in our buildings, in the vast majority of cases at any rate, is the sordid meanness or cheap tawdriness of the surroundings. This condition is so marked in certain portions of America as to quite dishearten the conscientious architect at the. very inception of his task. Many noble buildings there are such as would become beautiful situations abroad that here seem contemptible, at odds with their environment.”

It is true they hasten to disclaim such surroundings for Halifax, but go on to say—

“Amid such surroundings any attempt at such glittering splendours as are gathered in, say, the Basilica of Saint Mark at Venice, or such sombre glories of carving and metal as are everywhere present in the cathedral of the debonair city of Seville, would be wholly out of place. Even the unruffled sunlit calm of the English cathedrals may hardly be attempted, much less attained. The city is a northern one, the land one of long winters and deep snows, and over all blows the keen air of the salt sea, that singles out each unprotected bit of masonry, every weak cranny of construction, for attack. Only the hardest and must enduring of materials can undergo such a searching test as the old builders of the town well knew, and much that gives charm to similar buildings of the old world must be frankly dispensed with; the parapets for one, that in every period of the Gothic style as built abroad, heavy and castellated in early work, pieced and lace-like in later times, are almost an integral feature, for these would form pockets for great piles of drifted snow lhat melting in the spring would surely creep up and into the slates and woodwork of the roof And the heavy floors of irregular flags that so charm the traveller abroad, must perforce be abandoned, for these should rest upon solid earth, and only in a land where the forces of frost are but puny can this be done, while the same force it is that forbids the employment well, of other architectural details that involve care, labour, and expense. I have never heard a more ingenious and disingenuous defence of flimsiness, the whole truth being that Halifax would have liked a first-rate cathedral, but did not like to spend the requisite sum upon it. If these architects had gone to Russia and Northern Germany, not to mention Old Scotland, I dare say they would find that a cold climate is not altogether antagonistic to sound and even elaborate masonry and even to permanence. The whole point ’s contained in their conclusion, in which it is confessed:

“The cost of the mediaeval cathedrals was lightly met by the people of the past, but the funds which would be incurred in erecting even such a lifeless and soulless replica as we are only capable of to-day, would be far beyond the capacity of any diocese to gather together.”

So much for the great cathedral of Halifax!

Our fellow-citizens in the densely-settled heart of the Empire, you are just beginning to realise the century-old ideals of those in the outer marches. You are just beginning to see the significance of Canadian loyalty— regarded as loyalty to the race, “Because,” as Mr. Kipling once wrote to a friend of mine, a Newfoundlander, “the Empire is Us—We ourselves: and for the white man to explain that he is loyal is almost as unnecessary as for a respectable woman to volunteer the fact that she is chaste.”

As the solidarity of the British race—we ourselves— increases, we can take a greater interest in Colonial origins— we can be entertained by seeing how each colony reached the same political goal—self-government—by a different path.

As Annapolis Royal is the cradle of Canada, so Halifax may be called the cradle of Colonial self-government. Urged by this sentiment, Sir Sandford Fleming, the late engineer-in-chief of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a most notable Imperialist, not long since conceived a truly original and interesting idea. Imperial ideas are not yet so common that significance may be disregarded by any Briton. At his beautiful house on the North-west Arm — that salt-water inlet once called the Sandwich River— the keen-eyed, gentle-voiced octogenarian explained to me his scheme, which has already touched the imagination of the Colonies.

“Whatever,” said he, “may be the latitude and longitude of each community enjoying the freedom, the justice, the protection, the privileges, and advantages that spring from the British system, they must be mutually interested in this.” Helped by the Canadian Club of Halifax, he undertook to erect a memorial tower within the precincts of the city, for the purpose of commemorating the origin here of representative government, and all the benefits which have sprung from it. A few months ago the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia laid the foundation stone of this memorial tower on an ideal site in a pleasant park of one hundred acres, given by Sir Sandford, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the day upon which the first Provincial Assembly was opened at Halifax. Every autonomous portion of the Empire will contribute a commemorative tablet, and the interior of this lofty granite campanile will be a museum bearing upon Colonial history.

I found Nova Scotia very much interested in the question of technical education. Here, as elsewhere, people do not always grasp the details and possibilities of their own trades and the old gibe at the fishermen, “How many fins has a cod”? leaving him perplexed and gasping, has its application to other callings as well.

The Nova Scoria Technical College, which was established by the Provincial Legislature in 1906, is a college of applied science and engineering, and the boast is made for it that it “stands at the head of the first complete system of technical education to be established by any Province or State on the continent.”

The college offers thorough courses in civil, electrical, mechanical, and mining engineering. There is a full free scholarship of a value of seventy-five dollars offered for each county in the province, except Halifax and Cape Breton counties, which have two each. The opportunity is now placed within the reach of every boy in the province who has the ambition and talent to acquire a thorough high class training as an engineer. I paid a visit to the college, which is perhaps the finest building in Halifax, and had an interesting chat with the Principal, Mr. Sexton, who is young, ardent, and competent.

“The college,” he told me, “aims to serve the industrial life of the province in every possible way. Nova Scotians will be trained to develop the great natural resources of the province, and to captain the Nova Scotian industries of the future, industrial research will be carried on in the laboratories of the college to solve the problems of the mines and manufactures, and all assistance will be granted towards our industries on a thoroughly scientific basis.”

The college is closely affiliated with Acadia, Dalhousie, King’s, Mt. Allison, and St. Francis Xavier colleges. Students in engineering secure there their preliminary two years’ general training in science, mathematics, language, &c., and pursue their last two years of specialised professional work at the Technical College.

The arrangement of dividing the work between the affiliated colleges and the Technical College prevents unnecessary duplication of equipment and expense, obviates educational waste, and is another tribute to the genius of Nova Scotia in education.

The motto of the Technical College not only indicates its fundamental aspiration, but is an interesting tribute to the new Gaelic spirit.

“Science for the common weal.”
“Ealin air son math coitcheann sluaidh.”

Under the Technical College is a whole system of secondary technical schools in practically every industrial centre in Nova Scotia.

There are technical schools for coal miners, technical schools for stationary engineers, technical schools for artisans, technical schools for fishermen, and a Royal Commission on technical education was touring the entire Province at the time of my visit.

When it was first built, the Halifax dry dock was the largest in North America, and is to-day one of the largest commercial docks. It received at the outset a substantial subsidy from the city of Halifax, and was also allowed exemption from taxes for a period of fifteen years. But despite this help, the dock gave little employment, the number of vessels repaired being comparatively small. The Dominion Government at last realising the importance of such docks as this, granted a bonus to dry docks in various parts of Canada, the docks being, for the purposes of the Act, divided into two classes. The largest docks—constituting the first class—get a bonus of 32 per cent, for thirty-five years. But Halifax does not benefit under this Act, for its dock is only 585 feet long, instead of the 650 feet that is required. The boats in the Canadian trade are fast becoming of greater length.

Canada was only in her infancy when the Halifax dock was built, and the large increase in commerce is shown by the pay roll of the Dry Dock Company, which last year paid out eighty thousand dollars in wages. But the capacity of the dock will not now meet the requirements, and it is felt that an extension to 800 feet will be necessary to take the whole trade of the Atlantic coast. To do this, an immense coffer dam would have to be built in order to extend the dock seawards, involving an expenditure of about a million dollars and a closure of fourteen months, with men working night and day.

But if Halifax is to retain importance it should have a dock which can take and repair the largest ship that sails in the Canadian trade. And this will be the more necessary if Halifax is to be the headquarters for the fast boats of the C.P.R., the Allan Line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the Canadian Northern Railway.

On the whole a comfortable, tranquil, pleasant, city is Halifax, somewhat qualified, I am inclined to add, by Grafton Street, a unique thoroughfare where bedizened women, negroes, Indians, Chinese, Acadians, and Irish congregate in a sort of extra-barrackian squalor. Such a spectacle is familiar in garrison towns in the tropics, but here in Canada its incongruity is almost disconcerting.

Apropos of negroes, one sees a great many of these in and about Halifax, and in other parts of the Province.

They came hither, of course, in large numbers from the American Southern States in the ante-bellum slavery days. Nova Scotia was then the favourite asylum of coloured refugees, and their descendants I do not think have degenerated. On the whole they form a dirty, good-humoured, retrograde feature of the population. Eighty years ago Great Britain awarded, on account of their ancestors, the refugees, a donation to America of one million sterling, as compensation to the American planters whose slaves were carried off in order to enjoy the comforts of political freedom and physical starvation under the British flag in Nova Scotia, an award long and properly ridiculed by its beneficiaries, the Americans.

I suppose I need hardly mention that the Nova Scotian negroes are fully as “religious” as their American brethren.

It was in 1796 that between five and six hundred Maroons were brought here from Jamaica. In that island they had been wild and desperate rebels. Descendants of the original African slaves, they had escaped and made their home in the glens and caves of the mountains, sallying down to rob and plunder the white settlements and deriding all attempts at capture. At length a number of Cuban dogs were requisitioned to hunt down these outlaw Maroons, who, panic-stricken at this, surrendered, and were ordered to be carried to Nova Scotia. At Halifax they were lodged in tents on the outskirts of the town, but were later transferred to Preston, where the Jamaican Government granted them a sum of money towards their support. The experience of a few winters showed how utterly helpless they were, and the bulk of them were ordered off to Sierra Leone.

Years ago I talked with an aged Sierra Leone darkey, who, though unable to read or write, and had relapsed into many of the savage ways of his ancestors, yet asked after Halifax with affection. “Me member him well,” he said, “me born there. Me go back some day.” That was twenty years ago, and my sable Haligonian has probably long been gathered to his fathers. Albeit, not all the Maroons left for Africa. Some remained, and their descendants occasionally muster in great force about the city, especially on market days, and they may also be seen brooding about the wharves.