EARLY EMIGRATION. 11

Some Scotch, and a few Irish families,together with a few German and Swiss Protestants, found their way before this time to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward’s Island (then called St John’s.) A few Highlanders, also, many of whom were disbanded soldiers, settled at Glengarry, and other places above Montreal. It was not, however, until after the American revolutionary war that emigration to our colonies, of any great consequence, took place. From that period to the present time, notwithstanding the vast swarms that have continued annually to flock to the United States, not less than from eight to eighteen thousand settlers have arrived yearly in British America from England, Scotland, and Ireland, while their departure from the United Kingdom has scarcely been observed.

From the best authenticated accounts, the priva- tions which the early colonists endured, and the hardships to which circumstances, connected with a Wilderness country, subjected them, were severe in a degree of which those who now plant themselves in America have scarcely a conception. They had not only to suffer the miseries of hunger, and the want of almost every convenience to which they had been accustomed, but they could scarcely enjoy even that relief from toil which sleep usually affords, from the dread of being burnt in their habitations by the . Indians, or of becoming victims to the murderous tomahawk or scalping knife of those savages.*

* Before the suuender of Louisburg, rewards weie given by the F1 ench to the Indians f01 every Enghsh scalp they produced, in much the same way as premiums are at present paid by some of the