[EATON] THE SETTLING OF COLCHESTER COUNTY 255 
signified its willingness to set apart for him. Advertising for settlers 
and enthusiastically portraying the advantages of emigration to Nova 
Scotia, by the 28th of August he gathered a company, variously stated 
as from upwards of two hundred, probably about the correct number 
to near four hundred, as McNutt with his habitual tendency to ex- 
aggerate afterward tells the Lords of Trade, on board a vessel called 
the Hopewell, the captain of which was Richard Caldwell, and sailed for 
Halifax. On the 9th of October the ship reached Cornwallis Island, in 
Halifax harbour, and there the passengers disembarked. In his 
memorial to the Lords of Trade of August, 1766, Lieutenant Governor 
Francklin, answering McNutt’s charges of unfair dealing on the part 
of the Government, and rebutting false claims he had made concerning 
the part he had taken in settling the province, sketches McNutt’s 
actual service, and mentions as the second band of immigrants he had 
brought, this North of Ireland colony of October, 1761. The immigrants, 
Francklin says, were “indigent people, without means of subsistence,” 
who “chiefly remained at Halifax the ensuing winter and were supported 
by the Government, the charitable contributions of the inhabitants, and 
some provisions borrowed by Colonel McNutt from the Government.” 
He says that early the next spring a contribution was made by the 
Council and principal inhabitants of Halifax for the hire of a vessel to 
take the people and their families to the District of Cobequid, ‘where 
the best lands and greatest quantities of marsh in that part of the 
country were assigned them, and also to furnish them with provisions 
out of the Provincial Fund.” 
The arrival of this company with McNutt is noticed in a dispatch 
from Halifax printed in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal on the 
26th. of October, 1761, and the Boston News Letter on Thursday, October 
29th. The dispatch reads: “Halifax in Nova Scotia, October 15th. 
Last Friday [October 9th] arrived here the Ship Hopewell of London- 
derry, by whom came upwards of 200 persons for the settlement of the 
Province, with Colonel Alexander McNutt, who we are informed has 
contracted for 10,000 tons of shipping, 5,000 bushels of wheat, 5,000 
bushels of barley, 5,000 bushels of potatoes, 3,000 bushels of flax seed, 
300 bushels of hemp seed, with other seeds in proportion, for the use 
of the Irish Settlers in Nova Scotia, the ensuing Spring. The Pas- 
sengers arrived here in good health, and a considerable number of them 
will proceed to-morrow with Colonel McNutt to view and examine the 
country.” Archdeacon Raymond, drawing his information from 
authentic records, says that during the passage from Ireland the small- 
pox broke out on the Hopewell, and that when the vessel reached 
Halifax harbour, by the Lieutenant Governor’s orders her passengers 
were landed on Cornwallis Island, where they remained several days 
