480 NOTES.

Pictou, and even those among the hilly districts of the country, have made rapid strides towards independence; and the Highlanders, also, who have settled within the Bras d’Or Lake, and along the sea- coasts of Cape Breton,are, at least those who have been located for three or four years, in tolerable circumstances, although they have not so much ambition to become comfortable as the English or Lowland Scotch.

In 1818, several families from Yorkshire arrived at Prince Ed- ward Island, where they did not, on leaving England, intend to remain; but being delighted with the appearance of the colony, they applied to the agent of Sir James Montgomery, to give them leases of one hundred acres to some, and of two hundred acres of woodland to others, fronting on the road leading from Char- lotte Town to Stanhope. The terms were, the first two years free,:,: the third year at Sixpence, the fourth at ninepence, and afterwards, 3- _. for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, to continue at the annual .3 t; rent of one shilling sterling per acre. A cow was‘also given by the.“ proprietor to each of the settlers, to be paid for when their circum- stances admitted. These people went to work with such deter-' mination, and economized their time and means with such prudence, that, in 1826, when I had occasion to go among them, they had each from fifteen to twenty acres of land cleared, and under ex- cellent cultivation, one or two horses, four or five horned cattle, a few sheep, some pigs and poultry. They were allowed to name their settlement Little York, and I was delighted to observe the order in which they kept their agricultural implements, and the neatness and cleanliness of every thing about them reminded me of England.

The plan adopted by my friend Mr Cormack, when he planted the settlement of New Glasgow, which the followmg extract from a letter from him to me explains, has been successful :—

“ To secure a foundation to that settlement, [New Glasgow,] I encouraged and guarded the first settlers, until they had marked out and possessed the grounds, according to the notions with which they had left their native soil; and to secure its existence and prosperity afterwards, I supplied their wants so far as to enable them to labour on the land without working for others, and, by this measure, to

make them feel attached to it as their own. Afterwards, I advanced 5