settlements at Halifax, at Shelburne, at Fort Cumberland,
at Annapolis and Digby; at Port Mouton, and at other
places. In what is now New Brunswick there was a settlement
at Passamaquoddy Bay, and there were other settlements
on the St John river extending from the mouth up past
what is now the city of Fredericton. In Prince Edward
Island, then called the Island of St John, there was a
settlement which is variously estimated in size, but
which was comparatively unimportant.

The most interesting of these settlements was that at
Shelburne, which is situated at the south-west corner of
Nova Scotia, on one of the finest harbours of the Atlantic
seaboard. The name of the harbour was originally Port
Razoir, but this was corrupted by the English settlers
into Port Roseway. The place had been settled previous
to 1783. In 1775 Colonel Alexander McNutt, a notable
figure of the pre-Loyalist days in Nova Scotia, had
obtained a grant of 100,000 acres about the harbour, and
had induced about a dozen Scottish and Irish families to
settle there. This settlement he had dignified with the
name of New Jerusalem. In a short time, however, New
Jerusalem languished and died, and when the Loyalists
arrived in May 1783, the only inhabitants of the place
were two or three fishermen and their families. It would
have been well if the Loyalists had listened to the
testimony of one of these men, who, when he was asked
how he came to be there, replied that 'poverty had brought
him there, and poverty had kept him there.'