2S2 J. G. BOUEINOT 



the loyalists who came to Nova Scotia at the close of the war of iudepeudence, the gov- 

 ernor of that province was not allowed " upon any pretence whatever to make any grants 

 in the island of Cape Breton or any other island comprehended within his government 

 without express orders to that purpose." ' With the establishment of a separate govern- 

 ment in Cape Breton, however, there was a decided improvement in this par- 

 ticular, and grants were freely made to immigrants. A great current of population 

 began to flow into Cape Breton from the islands and northern parts of Scotland 

 where the great landlords wished to rid their estates of their peasantry and turn them 

 into pasture lands for the raising of cattle and sheep, just as in these later times they 

 have driven off the humble crofters from lands which they wish to make preserves for 

 deer. This Highland migration settled the counties of Pictou and Antigonish, in Nova 

 Scotia, and then began to find its way to Cape Breton, at first to the western coast. 

 From the close of the last century, when this population first came into the country, until 

 the reunion with Nova Scotia when it began to cease, at least twenty-five thousand per- 

 sons are estimated to have settled on the public lands, waste for so many years. Cape 

 Breton from that time was no longer a French but a Scotch colony, whose old homes 

 must be sought in the Hebrides, on the rocky, windy shores of far away Lewis or Storu- 

 oway, or in some rude shelling by the side of a lonely loch or stream amid the mount- 

 ains of northern Scotland. 



For the greater part of this century Cape Breton has had but a sluggish existence. 

 The Scotch population in the early days of settlement led quiet uneventful lives on that 

 remote island of eastern North America. K sometimes their thoughts went back to the 

 islands and mountains of their native land, it was to remember their poverty and wretch- 

 edness and the greed of the great lords under whom they lived, and to congratulate them- 

 selves on the complete freedom which they enjoyed on lands which were now their own, 

 and which with industry and patience gave them at least a comfortable subsistence. The 

 waters that surround the island, and the numerous streams which everywhere find their 

 way to the sea abound in fish of all kinds, and it was easy for them to live in this new 

 land compared with the one they had left. As the country grew older, as its means of 

 communication increased — very slowly it must be admitted in this long neglected island 

 — as its great coal mines were developed, the appearance of Cape Breton improved much 

 for the better. Many of the children of the old settlers went to the American cities, and 

 returning from time to time to their old homes, brought with them fresh ideas which 

 have already made their influence felt, even in the remote Scotch and Acadian settlements. 

 In the beginning of the present century there were only a little over two thousand 

 persons, exclusive of a few hundred Indians, throughout the island, but at the present 

 time the population is close to ninety thousand,^ of whom between fifty and sixty thou- 

 sand are the descendants of the immigrants from the islands and highlands of Scotland. 

 It was not until well into the present century that the rich mines of bituminous coal 

 with which the island abounds, chiefly on the eastern coast, between little Bras d'Or and 



' Brown, " Hist, of C. B.," 386. 



2 The Census returns of 1891 show as follows: Cape Breton, :;4,223; Inverness, 25,781; Richmond, 14,400; 

 Victoria, 12,390. As in other parts of Canada there has been an exodus of young men and women to the United 

 States for the last forty years, and the increase of population from deca<le to decade is consequently not shown by 

 the Census. 



