the reception of the immigrants, and when the news spread 

 that a large party of Icelanders was coming there, to settle in 

 the vicinity, the people of the quiet little village were consider- 

 ably excited. Everybody was asking what kind of people 

 these Icelanders were, ; whether they were peaceable ; how 

 they looked, etc. One lady was particularly anxious to know 

 of the Agent how the Icelanders looked, and asked him if they 

 were not Eskimos. The writer was standing at the Agent's 

 side at the time — a much younger and a good deal better 

 looking man than now — when the Agent — who was possessed 

 of some humor — pointed to the writer and said : " Behold a 

 specimen of an Icelander ! " The lady changed the subject 

 of the conversation. 



The party was then moved to Kinmount, and the men 

 were employed on the railway during most of the winter, but 

 owing to some financia 1 difficulties work was suspended, 

 which left the immigrants in a sad plight. There was enough 

 " free grant " land in the vicinity of Kinmount, but upon be- 

 ing examined next spring, with a view of settling some of the 

 party on farms, it was found to be no better than the land in 

 the Muskoka and Parry Sound districts, so very few cared to 

 take up land in the vicinity of Kinmount. 



Several families and young people, who had enough 

 means, then left, and went to Nova Scotia, to join those who 

 had already gone there and were being assisted by the Govern- 

 ment of that province to start an Icelandic settlement on a 

 tract of land in Halifax County, about 30 miles back from the 

 seashore. Altogether some 80 persons went to Nova Scotia 

 from Ontario, although told that they would not be satisfied 

 there — would not be satisfied with lands that other emigrants 

 had passed by — and that they had better follow the current of 

 immigration westward — follow Horace Greely's advice to^go 

 west. 



Some more emigrants came from Iceland the next year 

 and joined the Nova Scotia colony, so there were at one time 

 about 200 souls in that settlement. But when the people in 

 this settlement heard from those of their countrymen who had 

 in the meantime gone to the Northwest, they picked up stakes 

 and came to the Red River valley — mostly during the year 



