Colonel Cornwallis, a son of the Baron of that name—­a man of firmness and discretion—­entered the harbour, on the 21st of June, old style, or 2nd July present style, and soon afterwards assumed his, duties as governor of the province.  The members of his first council were sworn in on board one of the transports in the harbour.  Between 2000 and 3000 persons were brought at this time to settle the town and country.  These people were chiefly made up of retired military and naval officers, soldiers and sailors, gentlemen, mechanics, farmers—­far too few—­and some Swiss, who were extremely industrious and useful.  On the whole, they were not the best colonists to build up a prosperous industrial community.  The government gave the settlers large inducements in the shape of free grants of land, and practically supported them for the first two or three years.  It was not until the Acadian population were removed, and their lands were available, that the foundation of the agricultural prosperity of the peninsula was really laid.  In the summer of 1753 a considerable number of Germans were placed in the present county of Lunenburg, where their descendants still prosper, and take a most active part in all the occupations of life.

With the disappearance of the French Acadian settlers Nova Scotia became a British colony in the full sense of the phrase.  The settlement of 1749 was supplemented in 1760, and subsequent years, by a valuable and large addition of people who were induced to leave Massachusetts and other colonies of New England and settle in townships of the present counties of Annapolis, King’s, Hants, Queen’s, Yarmouth, Cumberland, and Colchester, especially in the beautiful townships of Cornwallis and Horton, where the Acadian meadows were the richest.  A small number also settled at Maugerville and other places on the St. John River.

During the few years that had elapsed since the Acadians were driven from their lands, the sea had once more found its way through the ruined dykes, which had no longer the skilful attention of their old builders.  The new owners of the Acadian lands had none of the special knowledge that the French had acquired, and were unable for years to keep back the ever-encroaching tides.  Still there were some rich uplands and low-lying meadows, raised above the sea, which richly rewarded the industrious cultivator.  The historian, Haliburton, describes the melancholy scene that met the eyes of the new settlers when they reached, in 1760, the old homes of the Acadians at Mines.  They came across a few straggling families of Acadians who “had eaten no bread for years, and had subsisted on vegetables, fish, and the more hardy part of the cattle that had survived the severity of the first winter of their abandonment.”  They saw everywhere “ruins of the houses that had been burned by the Provincials, small gardens encircled by cherry-trees and currant-bushes, and clumps of apple-trees.”  In all parts of the country, where the new colonists established themselves, the Indians were unfriendly for years, and it was necessary to erect stockaded houses for the protection of the settlements.