station as a counterpoise; and the harbor of Chebucto, on the south coast of Acadia, was chosen as the site of it.  Thither in June, 1749, came a fleet of transports loaded with emigrants, tempted by offers of land and a home in the New World.  Some were mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, and laborers; others were sailors, soldiers, and subaltern officers thrown out of employment by the peace.  Including women and children, they counted in all about twenty-five hundred.  Alone of all the British colonies on the continent, this new settlement was the offspring, not of private enterprise, but of royal authority.  Yet is was free like the rest, with the same popular representation and local self-government.  Edward Cornwallis, uncle of Lord Cornwallis of the Revolutionary War, was made governor and commander-in-chief.  Wolfe calls him “a man of approved courage and fidelity”; and even the caustic Horace Walpole speaks of him as “a brave, sensible young man, of great temper and good nature.”

Before summer was over, the streets were laid out, and the building-lot of each settler was assigned to him; before winter closed, the whole were under shelter, the village was fenced with palisades and defended by redoubts of timber, and the battalions lately in garrison at Louisbourg manned the wooden ramparts.  Succeeding years brought more emigrants, and in 1752 the population was above four thousand.  Thus was born into the world the city of Halifax.  Along with the crumbling old fort and miserably disciplined garrison at Annapolis, besides six or seven small detached posts to watch the Indians and Acadians, it comprised the whole British force on the peninsula; for Canseau had been destroyed by the French.

The French had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Acadia, and were resolved, by diplomacy or force, to win it back again; but the building of Halifax showed that this was to be no easy task, and filled them at the same time with alarm for the safety of Louisbourg.  On one point, at least, they saw their policy clear.  The Acadians, though those of them who were not above thirty-five had been born under the British flag, must be kept French at heart, and taught that they were still French subjects.  In 1748 they numbered eighty-eight hundred and fifty communicants, or from twelve to thirteen thousand souls; but an emigration, of which the causes will soon appear, had reduced them in 1752 to but little more than nine thousand.[74] These were divided into six principal parishes, one of the largest being that of Annapolis.  Other centres of population were Grand Pre, on the basin of Mines; Beaubassin, at the head of Chignecto Bay; Pisiquid, now Windsor; and Cobequid, now Truro.  Their priests, who were missionaries controlled by the diocese of Quebec, acted also as their magistrates, ruling them for this world and the next.  Bring subject to a French superior, and being, moreover, wholly French at heart, they formed in this British province a wheel within a wheel, the inner movement always opposing the outer.