a sufficiency of such
distress'd objects already in this country,' wrote Edward
Winslow from Halifax, 'the good people of England have
collected a whole ship load of all kinds of vagrants from
the streets of London, and sent them out to Nova Scotia.
Great numbers died on the passage of various disorders--the
miserable remnant are landed here and have now no covering
but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a
proportion of provisions at my door.'

But the increase of population in Nova Scotia from
immigration during the years immediately following 1783
was partly counterbalanced by the defections from the
province. Many of the refugees quailed before the prospect
of carving out a home in the wilderness. 'It is, I think,
the roughest land I ever saw'; 'I am totally discouraged';
'I am sick of this Province'--such expressions as these
abound in the journals and diaries of the settlers. There
were complaints that deception had been practised. 'All
our golden promises,' wrote a Long Island Loyalist, 'are
vanished in smoke. We were taught to believe this place
was not barren and foggy as had been represented, but we
find it ten times worse. We have nothing but his Majesty's
rotten pork and unbaked flour to subsist on... It is the
most inhospitable clime that ever mortal set foot on.'
At first there was great distress among the refugees.
The immigration of 1783 had at one stroke trebled the
population of Nova Scotia; and the resources of the
province were inadequate to meet the demand on them.
'Nova Scarcity' was the nickname for the province invented
by a New England wit. Under these circumstances it is
not surprising that some who had set their hand to the
plough turned back. Some of them went to Upper Canada;
some to England; some to the states from which they had
come; for within a few years the fury of the anti-Loyalist
feeling died down, and not a few Loyalists took advantage
of this to return to the place of their birth.

The most careful analysis of the Loyalist immigration
into the Maritime Provinces has placed the total number
of immigrants at about 35,000. These were in settlements
scattered broadcast over the face of the map. There was
a colony of 3,000 in Cape Breton, which afforded an ideal
field for settlement, since before 1783 the governor of
Nova Scotia had been precluded from granting lands there.
In 1784 Cape Breton was erected into a separate government,
with a lieutenant-governor of