Today three generations of Bell's Washington descendants disport themselves each summer on the waters that Bell used for his experiments with hydrofoils, and roam the fields where he flew enormous kites. All are curiously linked to Washington, D.C., home of Alexander Graham Bell, who bought up the farms on Beinn Bhreagh (Gaelic for 'beautiful mountain') at the end of the last century, shortly before becoming president of the National Geographic Society, and spent the rest of his summers here.
The house and sailboats, White Mist and Elsie, belong to another era. Moored offshore are two elegant wooden yawls, motionless in the motionless morning air. Slate-colored water stretches away toward the rocky headlands and pine-furred mountains of the Cape Breton coast. It sits alone on the point of Beinn Bhreagh peninsula, 2,000 acres of privately owned woods and freshly mown meadows. At last the house emerges from the fog: a Victorian dream of stolid nonconformity, with spires and broad terraces.
