Four  years  later  Davidson  undertook  to
deliver  at  Fort  Howe,  in  Nova  Scotia,
masts  for  the  British  Navy.  Masts
at  this  time  fetched  £136  sterling
if  they  could  measure  a  diameter  of
3ft.  and  a  length  of  108ft.  His  suc-
cess was  the  foundation  of  an  in-
dustry which  for  a  century  has  been


THE    LOYALISTS.  61

the  chief  source  of  revenue  to  the
Province.
The  great  settlement  of  the  St.  John
Valley  dates,  however,  from  the  coming
of  the  United  Empire  Loyalists  in  1783.
St.  John,  indeed,  is  known  to-day  as  the
City  of  the  Loyalists.  Nearly  twelve
thousand  souls  arrived  at  the  river
mouth  in  this  historic  year,  and  many
of  these  were  Scots.  One  group  of  lots
in  Parrtown,  as  it  then  was  called,  fell
to  men  of  the  42nd  Highlanders.
No  migration  in  the  history  of  peoples
carried  with  it  more  romance,  more
tragedy,  than  this  movement  of  the
Loyalists,  men  and  women  who  gave
up  home  and  fortune  in  the  rebel
colonies  further  South.  The  bravest
hearts  and  finest  intellects  sailed  from
New  York  to  this  more  northern  coast,
or  struggled  up  by  land  through  the
inhospitable  forest  to  the  unknown
Canada.  Their  axes  cleared  the  land
for  the  new  settlements;  they  faced  the
privations  of  winter  and  the  old
pioneering  hardships  rather  than  be
traitors  to  the  flag  of  their  forefathers.
