286 HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
had promised to themselves in the outset. They 
discovered, when it was too late, that the decrees of 
Providence were irrevocable. The river Saint Law¬ 
rence remained, as usual, locked up seven months 
in the year by an impenetrable barrier of ice ; and 
Nova Scotia still continued inexorably sterile; so 
much so indeed, that the very men who, in 
1784, had confidently represented this province 
as being capable in the course of three years, 
of supplying all the West Indies with lumber and 
previsions, found it necessary, at the end of those 
three years, to apply for and obtain the insertion of 
a clause in the prohibitory act, to authorise the ad¬ 
mission of both lumber and provisions into that 
province from the United States. On this circum¬ 
stance it is unnecessary to anticipate the reflections 
of the reader! 
In consequence of this permission, there were 
shipped in the year 1790, from the United States to 
Nova Scotia alone, 540,000 staves and heading, 
924,980 feet of boards, 285,000 shingles, and 
16,000 hoops; 40,000 barrels of bread and meal, 
and 80,000 bushels of grain; an irrefragable proof 
that Canada had no surplus of either lumber or 
grain beyond her own consumption, or undoubtedly 
the Canadian market would have been resorted to, 
in preference to that of the United States. And 
thus vanished all the golden dreams and delusive pro¬ 
mises of a sufficient supply from Canada and Nova 
Scotia to answer the wants of the West Indies ; and 
the predictions of the planters and merchants have 
