eived a grant of land on which he made a
settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we find Captain
Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land
and houses they occupied. In 1783 the commanding officer
at Detroit reported the arrival from Red Creek of two
men, 'one a Girty, the other McCarty,' who had come to
see what encouragement there was to settle under the
British government. They asserted that several hundred
more would be glad to come if sufficient inducements were
offered them, as they saw before them where they were
nothing but persecution. In 1784 Jehu Hay, the British
lieutenant-governor of Detroit, sent in lists of men
living near Fort Pitt who were anxious to settle under
the British government if they could get lands, most of
them being men who had served in the Highland and 60th
regiments. But it is safe to assume that no large number
of these ever settled near Detroit, for when Hay arrived
in Detroit in the summer of 1784, he found only one
Loyalist at the post itself. There had been for more than
a generation a settlement of French Canadians at Detroit;
but it was not until after 1791 that the English element
became at all considerable.

It has been estimated that in the country above Montreal
in 1783 there were ten thousand Loyalists, and that by
1791 this number had increased to twenty-five thousand.
These figures are certainly too large. Pitt's estimate
of the population of Upper Canada in 1791 was only ten
thousand. This is probably much nearer the mark. The
overwhelming majority of these people were of very humble
origin. Comparatively few of the half-pay officers settled
above Montreal before 1791; and most of these were, as
Haldimand said, 'mechanics, only removed from one situation
to practise their trade in another.' Major Van Alstine,
it appears, was a blacksmith before he came to Canada.
That many of the Loyalists were illiterate is evident
from the testimony of the Rev. William Smart, a Presbyterian
clergyman who came to Upper Canada in 1811: 'There were
but few of the U. E. Loyalists who possessed a complete
education. He was personally acquainted with many,
especially along the St Lawrence and Bay of Quinte, and
by no means were all educated, or men of judgment; even
the half-pay officers, many of them, had but a limited
education.' The aristocrats of the 'Family Compact' party
did not come to Canada with the Loyalists of 1783; they
came, in most cases, after 1791, some of t