AMONG THE "BLUE NOSES." 199 



British Government to assist in the formation of the station, soon cleared the ground from 

 stumps, &c., and having- erected a wooden government house and suitable warehouses for 

 stores and provisions, the town was laid out so as to form a number of straight and hand- 

 some streets. Planks, doors, window-frames, and other portions of houses, were imported 

 from the New England settlements, and the more laborious portion of the work, which 

 the settlers executed themselves, was performed with great dispatch. At the approach of 

 winter they found themselves comfortably settled, having completed a number of houses 

 and huts, and covered others in a manner which served to protect them from the rigour 

 of the weather, there very severe. There were now assembled at Halifax about 5,000 

 people, whose labours were suddenly suspended by the intensity of the frost, and there 

 was in consequence considerable enforced idleness. Haliburton* mentions the difficulty 

 that the governor had to employ the settlers by sending them out on various expeditions, 

 in palisading the town, and in other public works. 



In addition to 40,000 granted by the British Government for the embarkation and 

 other expenses of the first settlers, Parliament continued to make annual grants for the 

 same purpose, which, in 1755, amounted to the considerable sum of 416,000. 



The town of Halifax was no sooner built than the French colonists began to be 

 alarmed, and although they did not think proper to make an open avowal of their jealousy 

 and disgust, they employed their emissaries clandestinely in exciting the Indians to harass 

 the inhabitants with hostilities, in such a manner as should effectually hinder them from 

 extending their plantations, or perhaps, indeed, induce them to abandon the settlement. 

 The Indian chiefs, however, for some time took a different view of the matter, waited 

 upon the governor, and acknowledged themselves subjects of the crown of England. The 

 French court thereupon renewed its intrigues with the Indians, and so far succeeded that 

 for several years the town was frequently attacked in the night, and the English could 

 not stir into the adjoining woods without the danger of being shot, scalped, or taken 

 prisoners. 



Among the early laws of Nova Scotia was one by which it was enacted that no debts 

 contracted in England, or in any of the colonies prior to the settlement of Halifax, or to 

 the arrival of the debtor, should be recoverable by law in any court in the province. As 

 an asylum for insolvent debtors, it is natural to suppose that Halifax attracted thither 

 the guilty as well as the unfortunate ; and we may form some idea of the state of public 

 morals at that period from an order of Governor Cornwallis, which, after reciting that the 

 dead were usually attended to the grave by neither relatives or friends, twelve citizens 

 should in future be summoned to attend the funeral of each deceased person. 



The Nova Scotians are popularly known by Canadians and Americans as " Blue Noses," 

 doubtless from the colour of their nasal appendages in bitter cold weather. It has been 

 already mentioned that Halifax is now a thriving city ; but there must have been a period 

 when the people were not particularly enterprising, or else that most veracious individual, 

 " Sam Slick," greatly belied them. Judge Haliburton, in his immortal " Clockmaker/'' 

 introduces the following conversation with Mr. Slick : 



" ' You appear/ said I to Mr. Slick, ' to have travelled over the whole of this province, 

 * "Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia," by Judge Haliburton. 



