f peace became known, tens of thousands
of the Loyalists shook the dust of their ungrateful
country from their feet, never to return. Of these the
more influential part, both during and after the war,
sailed for England. The royal officials, the wealthy
merchants, landowners, and professional men; the high
military officers--these went to England to press their
claims for compensation and preferment. The humbler
element, for the most part, migrated to the remaining
British colonies in North America. About two hundred
families went to the West Indies, a few to Newfoundland,
many to what were afterwards called Upper and Lower
Canada, and a vast army to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
and Prince Edward Island.

The advantages of Nova Scotia as a field for immigration
had been known to the people of New England and New York
before the Revolutionary War had broken out. Shortly
after the Peace of 1763 parts of the Nova Scotian peninsula
and the banks of the river St John had been sparsely
settled by colonists from the south; and during the
Revolutionary War considerable sympathy with the cause
of the Continental Congress was shown by these colonists
from New England. Nova Scotia, moreover, was contiguous
to the New England colonies, and it was therefore not
surprising that after the Revolution the Loyalists should
have turned their eyes to Nova Scotia as a refuge for
their families.

The first considerable migration took place at the time
of the evacuation of Boston by General Howe in March
1776. Boston was at that time a town with a population
of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, and of these nearly
one thousand accompanied the British Army to Halifax.
'Neither Hell, Hull, nor Halifax,' said one of them, 'can
afford worse shelter than Boston.' The embarkation was
accomplished amid the most hopeless confusion. 'Nothing
can be more diverting,' wrote a Whig, 'than to see the
town in its present situation; all is uproar and confusion;
carts, trucks, wheelbarrows, handbarrows, coaches, chaises,
all driving as if the very devil was after them.' The
fleet was composed of every vessel on which hands 'could
be laid. In Benjamin Hallowell's cabin there were
thirty-seven persons--men, women, and children; servants,
masters, and mistresses--obliged to pig together on the
floor, there being no berths.' It was a miracle that the
crazy flotilla arrived safely at Halifax; but there it
arrived after tossing about for six days in the