232 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
the rest of their days. Many of them, as we have seen, had lived in 
the Connecticut-Valley Massachusetts towns, and the distance from 
these towns to Boston, where they embarked for Nova Scotia, was 
between seventy-five and a hundred miles. The road they took was 
the old “ Bay Path” road, laid out as a highway in 1673, which led from 
Springfield, where it is still called the Bay Road, to Brookfield, thence 
to Worcester, and so through Marlborough, Wayland, and Watertown, 
into Boston. At one of Boston’s wharves they found vessels waiting 
for them, and on these they took passage, probably with very mixed 
feelings, for the new homes to which Providence was leading them. 
How they travelled on the Bay Path road, whether chiefly by their 
friends’ ox-teams,—some naturally on horseback, and some no doubt 
walking the whole weary way—we are not told, nor has any definite 
information come to us concerning the vessels they sailed in; but their 
travel on the Massachusetts road we know was toilsome and slow, 
and their voyage to Cobequid Basin, interrupted by contrary winds, 
was none of the pleasantest, and their first years in Colchester were 
years of daily hardship and deep discouragement of soul. The priva- 
tions they suffered, however, we cannot suppose they felt as we would 
feel such privations now, life in rural Massachusetts in 1760 was at 
best primitive and plain, and to modern comforts, to say nothing of 
luxuries, the farmers of New England generally were absolute strangers. 
Not reaching Colchester until late in May, the Onslow people 
were unable to sow their grain at the proper time, and the ensuing 
summer proved very dry.' To crown all, an early frost blasted the 
crop, and by winter the people found themselves in great need. Early 
the next spring (April 17, 1762) Lieutenant Governor Jonathan Belcher 
sent the following message to the House of Assembly: “From repre- 
sentations to me of the present distressing indigent circumstances of 
the inhabitants in several townships, particularly those of Truro, On- 
slow and Yarmouth, for want of supplies and provisions and seed 
corn in the present season for improving their lands, I must earnestly 
recommend to your immediate examination the state of their necessi- 
ties, that such relief may be speedily administered as the nature of their 
compassionate case may in all humanity deserve from the benevolent 
interposition of the Legislature, to whom alone their supplication 
must be directed, as there is no other method for their public as- 
sistance.” 
The members of the House having considered the communication, 
“Resolved that a message be sent His Honour in answer thereto, to 

1See Archdeacon Raymond’s first monograph on Col. Alexander McNutt, &c., 
pak 
