tempts to set up a
coasting trade. Failure dogged all their enterprises,
and soon the glory of Shelburne departed. It became like
a city of the dead. 'The houses,' wrote Haliburton, 'were
still standing though untenanted: It had all the stillness
and quiet of a moonlight scene. It was difficult to
imagine it was deserted. The idea of repose more readily
suggested itself than decay. All was new and recent.
Seclusion, and not death or removal, appeared to be the
cause of the absence of inhabitants.' The same eye-witness
of Shelburne's ruin described the town later:

The houses, which had been originally built of wood,
had severally disappeared. Some had been taken to
pieces and removed to Halifax or St John; others had
been converted into fuel, and the rest had fallen a
prey to neglect and decomposition. The chimneys stood
up erect, and marked the spot around which the social
circle had assembled; and the blackened fireplaces,
ranged one above another, bespoke the size of the
tenement and the means of its owner. In some places
they had sunk with the edifice, leaving a heap of
ruins, while not a few were inclining to their fall,
and awaiting the first storm to repose again in the
dust that now covered those who had constructed them.
Hundreds of cellars with their stone walls and granite
partitions were everywhere to be seen like uncovered
monuments of the dead. Time and decay had done their
work. All that was perishable had perished, and those
numerous vaults spoke of a generation that had passed
away for ever, and without the aid of an inscription,
told a tale of sorrow and of sadness that overpowered
the heart.

Alas for the dreams of the Pynchons and the Parrs!
Shelburne is now a quaint and picturesque town; but it
is not the city which its projectors planned.

CHAPTER VII

THE BIRTH OF NEW BRUNSWICK

When Governor Parr wrote to Sir Guy Carleton, commending
in such warm terms the advantages of Shelburne, he took
occasion at the same time to disparage the country about
the river St John. 'I greatly fear,' he wrote, 'the soil
and fertility of that part of this province is overrated
by people who have explored it partially. I wish it may
turn out otherwise, but have my fears that there is scarce
good land enough for them already sent there.'

How Governor Parr came to make so egregious a mistake
with regard to the comparative merits of the