64 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
there two years, with an additional expence to Government of building 
Forts and Barracks for their security. Troops were sent for their 
Protection and lately five hundred pounds of the Provincial Funds was 
expended for opening Roads of Communication from Halifax to those 
settlements.”’ 
It would seem that from the very outset Colonel McNutt was 
hampered by the magnitude of his schemes and the insufficiency of his 
resources. He was unable to settle the required number of families 
at Granville within the time limited for the purpose, and the lands 
were in consequence assigned to other settlers. The same fate befell 
much of the land reserved for him on the Basin of Minas and at Cobequid. 
The prolongation of the war in Canada interfered to a considerable 
degree with the colonization of Nova Scotia. There was, moreover, 
an influential element in New England strongly opposed to eastward 
emigration. Very soon after Governor Lawrence’s death, Colonel 
McNutt submitted a memorial to President Belcher and the Council 
at Halifax in which he explains that he would have been able to procure 
settlers for his lands at Cobequid, Shubenacadie and Port Roseway 
before the close of 1760 had not a great number of his intending settlers 
been enlisted into His Majesty’s service for the year.! He had, at con- 
siderable expense and trouble, obtained eight hundred and fifty subscribers 
who were to settle on his lands early the next year, and had agents 
both in the provinces to the westward and also in Ireland to assist 
him in his work. In his memorial, November 3, 1760, he says that 
he had already sent a vessel to bring out settlers from Ireland and was 
himself proceeding to the northern part of that kingdom in order to 
procure settlers, the late Governor Lawrence having given him every 
encouragement to direct the rising tide of Irish immigration to the 
shores of Nova Scotia. 
It would, undoubtedly, have been better for Colonel McNutt’s 
original design of promoting the settlement of his townships from the 
old colonies in America had he remained on this side of the Atlantic: 
Nevertheless, he was not unmindful of his interests in America, for in 
his memorial to Lieut. Governor Belcher of the 3d of November, 1760, 
' Writing to the Lords of Trade under date December 12, 1760, Lieut. Governor 
Belcher observes: “I beg leave to observe to your Lordships that great pains have 
been taken on the Continent to retard the progress of these settlements, for besides 
the common method of representing the lands much below their true value, on the 
raising of the new levies all means were taken, as I understand, by the principal 
land owners (of New England) to break the measures of the Nova Scotia grantees 
by obliging them to enter into the service of the late campaign, but a peace will 
quickly put an end to such artifices, and those persons who have seen the lands 
and are returned to settle their affairs for residing here will soon remove all Ed nu 
arising from false reports of the soil.” 
