Down North and Up Along 
miles from Halifax and across the harbour — 
to spend the winter. Then the people from 
Jamaica, half frozen and half starved, wanted 
to go home, refused to do any more work, 
then or afterwards, and became generally 
riotous. Finally, the well disposed were re- 
moved to a place near the harbour of Halifax, 
where they probably formed the nucleus to 
the picturesque settlement which we passed 
upon our approach to that city. 
In 1800 the troublesome Maroons at Pres- 
ton were sent to Sierra Leone, having cost 
both Jamaica and the British Government a 
very large sum of money. 
Other importations and exportations of the 
coloured race followed, Preston being always 
one of the centres of their settlement ; and the 
pretty brown-skinned girls who sit on the 
curbstone every market day with their berries 
and eggs are descendants of those insurgents 
from sunny Jamaica or of the fugitives from 
the cotton fields of the United States. It is 
said the negroes are not yet reconciled to the 
climate of Nova Scotia — small wonder that 
they are not ! — and though many of them were 
born there, they sigh for the palms of the 
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