It forms a part of the present undertaking to record some of the facts relative to the steps by which the now powerful United States were, as a whole, ushered into the arena of nations, and by which a large class of Americans, true to their British allegiance, were compelled to leave their native country to found another colony in the northern wilderness. To be justified in rebelling against the constituted authorities there must be the most cogent reasons; to take up arms against the State—to initiate a civil war, is assuming the most fearful consequences. To present even a brief account of the circumstances which led to the settlement of Upper Canada, it becomes necessary to dwell for a time upon the great rebellion of 1776, the result of which was adverse to those Americans who adhered to the old flag under which they had been born, had come to the new world, and had prospered; a rebellion which was attended and followed by persecution and violence, imprisonment and confiscation, banishment, and, too often, death; which caused a stream of refugee loyalists to set in toward the wilderness of Canada. At the time of the rebellion of the English colonists in America, they consisted of thirteen provinces. Massachusetts, with her colony of Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. It may be well to briefly notice these several states, and the part each took in the war for Independence. The first Englishman to set foot upon the continent of America was John Cabot, who discovered Newfoundland, and probably the adjacent mainland, June 4, 1497. The event is noticed in the Privy Purse expenditure thus: “1497, Aug. 10—To hym that found the new Isle, £10,” which seems to have been a grant for his services. VIRGINIA. In the year 1578, Sir H. Gilbert endeavoured to establish a settlement at the mouth of the Roanoke. Failing in his undertaking, his half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, made a similar effort the following year, which likewise failed. It was Sir Walter Raleigh who gave the name to Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth, the virgin Queen. A third and successful effort was made to colonize in 1607–8, at Jamestown. This dates the commencement of English colonization of America. Some time later, America was looked upon as a country quite beyond the pale of civilization, even as Botany Bay was at a still later period; and in the year 1621, the British Government transported to Virginia 100 convicts. But notwithstanding, “Virginia,” to use the words of Morse’s Geography, “the birth-place of Washington, has given six Presidents to the Union.”