alifax, is a continued range of mountains, rising one over
the other, as far as the eye can reach. The winters are severe, and
the springs backward. The trees appeared to be as bare on the 26th of
May as the same kind of trees do in the middle of March, with us in
Massachusetts. To us there was something hideous in the aspect of
their mountains; but this may have been partly owing to our own
hideous habitation, and low spirits. The same objects may have
appeared charming in the eyes of a Scotch family, just arrived from
the fag-end of the Island of Great Britain.

The capital, _Halifax_, was settled by a number of British subjects in
1749. It is situated on a spacious and commodious bay or harbour,
called Chebucto, of a bold and easy entrance, where a thousand of the
largest ships might ride with safety. The town is built on the west
side of the harbor, and on the declivity of a commanding hill, whose
summit is two hundred and thirty-six feet perpendicular from the level
of the sea. The town is laid out into oblong squares; the streets
parallel and at right angles. The town and suburbs are about two miles
in length; and the general width a quarter of a mile. It contained in
1793, about four thousand inhabitants and seven hundred houses. At the
northern extremity of the town, is the king's naval yard, completely
built and supplied with stores of every kind for the royal navy. The
harbor of Halifax is reckoned inferior to no place in British America
for the seat of government, being open and accessible at all seasons
of the year, when almost all other harbors in these provinces are
locked up with ice; also from its entrance, situation, and its
proximity to the bay of Fundy, and principal interior settlements of
the province. This city lying on the S coast of Nova Scotia has
communication with Pictou, sixty-eight miles to the NE on the gulf of
St. Lawrence, by a good cart road finished in 1792. It is twelve miles
northerly of Cape Sambro, which forms in part the entrance of the bay;
twenty-seven south easterly of Windsor, forty N by E of Truro, eighty
NE by E of Annapolis, on the bay of Fundy, and one hundred and
fifty-seven SE of St. Ann, in New Brunswick, measuring in a straight
line. N lat. 44, 40, W lon. 63, 15.

It was settled chiefly by Scotchmen; and since the revolutionary war,
which secured our independence, they have received considerable
additions from the United States, of a class of men denominated
refugees,