372 THE AMERICAN LOYALISTS 1789 previously existed. Saw-mills and grist-mills were built in all the settlements in which there was a population sufficient to pay the expenses/^ The loyalists who settled in Prince Edward Island were not only industrious in their varions occupations^ but extremely ingenious^ building their own SM^ houses and making their own shoes^ ploughs, harrows, and industry, carts ; whilo the women spun, knitted, and weaved linens, ingenuity, cottons, and woollon cloth for domestic use. The powers of endurance shown by those who went to New Brunswick gave proof of their capacity for encountering the difficulties inseparable from colonisation in its earliest stage. They had to make their homes in the wilds of the country, in the face of a relentless winter, where their cabins were covered with snow as soon as they were put up. On their arrival, they found a few hovels where the city of St. John's is now built, the adjacent country exhibiting a most desolate aspect, peculiarly discouraging to men who had just left their homes in the cultivated parts of the United Government States. To relieve their distress, the Governor of the province gave orders that they should be supplied with provisions for the first year at the public expense ; but as the country was not much cultivated at that time, food could scarcely be procured on any terms.* Eemembering the state of helplessness in which Phillip JSon on found himsolf when he endeavoured to open up the country landing. ^^ j^jg arrival, it is not difficult to see how different his position would have been had he brought with him some of the colonists who had looked in vain to the British Govern- ment for assistance in forming a settlement in New South Wales. How well he knew and felt the difference be- tween such men and those he had to depend upon, may be seen in the remark he addressed to Sydney : — " If fifty Fifty farmers were sent out with their families, they would do worth a more in one year in rendering this colony independent of the thousand "^ ••iit convicts. mother country, as to provisions, than a thousand convicts. ♦ McGregor, British America, vol. ii, pp. 49, 60, 223. Digitized by Google
