As far as dates can be given for an emigration which, was spread over a number of years, 1783 may be taken as the birth year of the Loyalist settlements in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and 1784 as that of Upper Canada. We have an accurate official account of the Loyalists in the maritime provinces in the year 1784, entitled a report on Nova Scotia by Colonel Robert Morse, R.E.[173] The scope of the report included New Brunswick, which was in that year separated from Nova Scotia; and it is noteworthy that the writer recommended union of the maritime provinces with Canada, placing the capital for the united colony in Cape Breton. The Loyalists in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick or, as Colonel Morse styled them, the ‘new inhabitants, viz., the disbanded troops and Loyalists who came into this province since the Peace’, were mustered in the summer of 1784 and were found to number 28,347, including women, children and servants. Among them were 3,000 negroes, largely from New York. As against these newcomers there were only 14,000 old British inhabitants, of whom a great part had been disaffected during the war owing to their New England connexion. Of the refugees 9,000 were located on the St. John river, and nearly 8,000 at the new township of Shelburne in the south-west corner of Nova Scotia. Morse gave a pitiable account of the condition of the immigrants at the time when he wrote. Very few were as yet settled on their lands; if not fed by the Government they must perish. ‘They have no other country to go to--no other asylum.’ There had been the usual emigration story in the case of Nova Scotia, supplemented by exceptional circumstances. Glowing accounts had been circulated of its attractions as a home and place of refuge. Thousands who left New York after the Peace had been signed, and before the port was finally evacuated by the British troops, went to Nova Scotia, having to find homes somewhere. Then ensued disappointment, hardship and deep distress; and the country and its climate were maligned, as before they had been unduly praised. Nova Scotia was christened in the United States Nova Scarcity, and the climate was described as consisting of nine months winter and three months cold weather.[174] In the end many of the emigrants drifted off again. Some succumbed to their troubles; but the strong ones held on, and the Loyalists made of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia sound and thriving provinces of the British Empire. [Sidenote: Loyalist colonization of the province of Ontario.]