[RAYMOND] PRE-LOYALIST SETTLEMENTS OF NOVA SCOTIA 25 
deep at its entrance, a league and a half in width and four leagues 
long.” ! 
Paul Mascarene, however, seems to have shared the views of 
Governor Philipps as to the advisability of placing the seat of govern- 
ment at some convenient port on the Altantic coast, for in a description 
of Nova Scotia prepared for the information of the British Government 
about this time he writes: “If duly protected with a fort and garrison, 
Canso would be likely to become the chief place of trade, though not 
so conveniently situated for a seat of government as Port Roseway, 
La Have, Marligash, Chebucto, etc”? Thus was foreshadowed the 
choice of an Atlantic seaport as the capital of Nova Scotia, but not until 
nearly thirty years later was the project realized, and even then the 
founding of Halifax by Cornwallis must be regarded as a military 
movement rather than the beginning of an intelligent scheme of coloniza- 
tion or attempt at developing the natural resources of Acadia. 
The motley group of so-called settlers at Halifax was joined by a 
few New Englanders, most of whom had been at Louisbourg during 
its recent occupation by the English. Small bands of European Pro- 
testants, chiefly Germans from the Palatinate, with a few Swiss of 
Alsatian birth, were brought over at government expense, and after 
a short stay at Chebucto were lodged in a new settlement on Merliguesh 
Bay.* But outside of the palisades of Halifax no sign of colonization 
appeared. Meanwhile the clouds were again beginning to darken the 
political sky. In 1755 the storm broke. The descendants of the first 
European colonizers of Acadia were torn from their homes and deported 
over the seas. 
The expulsion of the Acadians was regarded by Lawrence and 
Shirley as preliminary to a well considered plan for the introduction 
of English inhabitants into Nova Scotia in large numbers. On the eve 
of the expulsion Lawrence wrote to Colonel Monckton:—“ When the 
French inhabitants are removed, you will give orders that no person 
presume to take possession of any of the lands until a plan of the whole 
has been laid before me, and terms of encouragement to English settlers 
. deliberately formed and made publick.”’ 
Lawrence and Shirley had begun to consider the details of the plan 
of settlement when war with France broke out afresh, and in consequence 
the lands tilled by the exiled Acadians lay desolate for the next five 
years. The two governors agreed, early in 1756, that steps should be 
taken as soon as possible to repeople the evacuated lands with New 
‘See Jesuit Relations, Cleveland Series, Vol. I, pp. 57, 68. 
? See Murdoch’s History of Nova Scotia, Vol. I, p. 396. 
# Lunenburg. See Appendix No. 1. 
