previous chapters, there was in the Acadian provinces, afterwards divided into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, a British population of only some 14,000 souls, mostly confined to the peninsula.  In the valley of the St. Lawrence there was a French population of probably 100,000 persons, dwelling chiefly on the banks of the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal.  The total British population of the province of Quebec did not exceed 2000, residing for the most part in the towns of Quebec and Montreal.  No English people were found west of Lake St. Louis; and what is now the populous province of Ontario was a mere wilderness, except where loyal refugees had gathered about the English fort at Niagara, or a few French settlers had made homes for themselves on the banks of the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair.  The migration of between 30,000 and 40,000 Loyalists to the maritime provinces and the valley of the St. Lawrence was the saving of British interests in the great region which England still happily retained in North America.

The refugees who arrived in Halifax in 1783 were so numerous that hundreds had to be placed in the churches or in cabooses taken from the transports and ranged along the streets.  At Guysborough, in Nova Scotia—­so named after Sir Guy Carleton—­the first village, which was hastily built by the settlers, was destroyed by a bush fire, and many persons only saved their lives by rushing into the sea.  At Shelburne, on the first arrival of the exiles, there were seen “lines of women sitting on the rocky shore and weeping at their altered condition.”  Towns and villages, however, were soon built for the accommodation of the people.  At Shelburne, or Port Roseway—­anglicised from the French Razoir—­a town of fourteen thousand people, with wide streets, fine houses, some of them containing furniture and mantel-pieces brought from New York, arose in two or three years.  The name of New Jerusalem had been given to the same locality some years before, but it seemed a mockery to the Loyalists when they found that the place they had chosen for their new home was quite unsuited for settlement.  A beautiful harbour lay in front, and a rocky country unfit for farmers in the rear of their ambitious town, which at one time was the most populous in British North America.  In the course of a few years the place was almost deserted, and sank for a time into insignificance.  A pretty town now nestles by the side of the beautiful and spacious harbour which attracted the first too hopeful settlers; and its residents point out to the tourist the sites of the buildings of last century, one or two of which still stand, and can show many documents and relics of those early days.