Many, especially of
the well-to-do, went to England; a few found refuge in the West
Indies; but the great majority, over fifty thousand in all,
sought new homes in the northern wilderness. Over thirty
thousand, including many of the most influential of the whole
number (with about three thousand negro slaves, afterwards freed
and deported to Sierra Leone) were carried by ship to Nova
Scotia. They found homes chiefly in that part of the province
which in 1784 became New Brunswick. Others, trekking overland or
sailing around by the Gulf and up the River, settled in the upper
valley of the St. Lawrence--on Lake St. Francis, on the Cataraqui
and the Bay of Quinte, and in the Niagara District.
Though these pioneers were generously aided by the British
Government with grants of land and supplies, their hardships and
disappointments during the first years in the wilderness were
such as would have daunted any but brave and desperate men and
women whom fate had winnowed. Yet all but a few, who drifted back
to their old homes, held out; and the foundations of two more
provinces of the future Dominion--New Brunswick and Upper
Canada--were thus broadly and soundly laid by the men whom future
generations honored as "United Empire Loyalists." Through all the
later years, their sacrifices and sufferings, their ideals and
prejudices, were to make a deep impress on the development of the
nation which they helped to found and were to influence its
relations with the country which they had left and with the
mother country which had held their allegiance.
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