from tears,' wrote one of the exiles; and the grandmother
of Sir Leonard Tilley used to tell her descendants, 'I
climbed to the top of Chipman's Hill and watched the
sails disappearing in the distance, and such a feeling
of loneliness came over me that, although I had not shed
a tear through all the war, I sat down on the damp moss
with my baby in my lap and cried.'

All summer and autumn the ships kept plying to and fro.
In June the 'summer fleet' brought about 2,500 colonists
to St John River, Annapolis, Port Roseway, and Fort
Cumberland. By August 23 John Parr, the governor of Nova
Scotia, wrote that 'upward of 12,000 souls have already
arrived from New York,' and that as many more were
expected. By the end of September he estimated that 18,000
had arrived, and stated that 10,000 more were still to
come. By the end of the year he computed the total
immigration to have amounted to 30,000. As late as January
15, 1784, the refugees were still arriving. On that date
Governor Parr wrote to Lord North announcing the arrival
of 'a considerable number of Refugee families, who must
be provided for in and about the town at extraordinary
expence, as at this season of the year I cannot send them
into the country.' 'I cannot,' he added, 'better describe
the wretched condition of these people than by inclosing
your lordship a list of those just arrived in the Clinton
transport, destitute of almost everything, chiefly women
and children, all still on board, as I have not yet been
able to find any sort of place for them, and the cold
setting in severe.' There is a tradition in Halifax that