r agreed to give the settlers
the land about Port Roseway which they desired. He promised
them that surveyors should be sent to lay out the grants,
that carpenters and a supply of 400,000 feet of lumber
should be furnished for building their houses, that for
the first year at least the settlers should receive army
rations, and that they should be free for ever from
impressment in the British Navy. All these promises were
made on the distinct understanding that they should
interfere in no way with the claims of the Loyalists on
the British government for compensation for losses
sustained in the war. Elated by the reception they had
received from the governor, the agents wrote home
enthusiastic accounts of the prospects of the venture.
Pynchon even hinted that the new town would supersede
Halifax. 'Much talk is here,' he wrote, 'of capital of
Province... Halifax can't but be sensible that Port
Roseway, if properly attended to in encouraging settlers
of every denomination, will have much the advantage of
all supplies from the Bay of Fundy and westward. What
the consequence will be time only will reveal.' Many
persons at Halifax, wrote Pynchon, prophesied that the
new settlement would dwindle, and recommended the shore
of the Bay of Fundy or the banks of the river St John in
preference to Port Roseway; but Pynchon attributed their
fears to jealousy. A few years' experience must have
convinced him that his suspicions were ill-founded.

The first instalment of settlers, about four thousand in
number, arrived in May 1783. They found nothing but the
virgin wilderness confronting them. But they set to work
with a will to clear the land and build their houses.
'As soon as we had set up a kind of tent,' wrote the Rev.
Jonathan Beecher in his Journal, 'we knelt down, my wife
and I and my two boys, and kissed the dear ground and
thanked God that the flag of England floated there, and
resolved that we would work with the rest to become again
prosperous and happy.' By July 11 the work of clearing
had been so far advanced that it became possible to allot
the lands. The town had been laid out in five long parallel
streets, with other streets crossing them at right angles.
Each associate was given a town lot fronting on one of
these streets, as well as a water lot facing the harbour,
and a fifty-acre farm in the surrounding country. With
the aid of the government artisans, the wooden houses
were rapidly run up; and in a couple of