It is estimated that more than twenty-five thousand United Empire Loyalists crossed the border at the end of the American Revolutionary War to live under the British flag. These, for the most part, went to Upper Canada, the settlements along Lake Ontario and the Bay of Quinte, being centres of vigorous life and progress; while not a few settled in Quebec, adding to the sound character of its sturdy population. A further accession, moreover, was made by the arrival of two regiments of Hessians and Brunswickers, who came out to garrison the citadel. Many of these presently obtained their discharge in order to marry and settle down in Quebec. The current directory discloses many names of German origin, names now high up in the roll of citizenship, but once in the books of the Hanoverian regiments of George III. A memorable figure passes across the stage of Quebec history just at this time. In 1782 the frigate _Albemarle_, twenty-eight guns, lay in the harbour, and her brilliant, handsome commander was Horatio Nelson. This paragon of fortune had entered His Majesty's Navy as a child of twelve; at fourteen he was captain's coxswain on the expedition of the _Carcass_ to the North Pole; and now, with an astonishing experience crowded into a life of twenty-four years, he dropped anchor before the rock of Quebec. [Illustration: CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON (One of the four American Commissioners to Canada in 1776)] The sober Haldimand was Governor, and the _Sturm und Drang_ of the American Revolution had cast a cloud upon the social life of Canada. For if Quebec was not what it had been in the days of Sir Guy and Lady Carleton, the sterner _régime_ of Haldimand had deeper influences behind it than the militarism of a rigid soldier. Nevertheless, Nelson and his gay company helped to lighten the heavy cloud, and for the space of a few weeks dinners and dances, on shore and on board the _Albemarle_, enlivened the autumn season in the capital. Southey's _Life of Nelson_ contains rather a quaint picture of the commander of the _Albemarle_ about this time. Prince William Henry, then known as the Duke of Clarence, regarded him as the merest boy of a captain he had ever seen. Dressed in a full-laced uniform, an old-fashioned waistcoat with long flaps, and his lank, unpowdered hair tied in a stiff Hessian tail of extraordinary length, he made altogether so remarkable a figure that, to use the Prince's own words, "I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was nor what he came about. But his address and conversation were irresistibly pleasing; and when he spoke on professional subjects, it was with an enthusiasm which showed he was no common being." [Illustration: The Fourth Duke of Richmond. Governor General of Canada 1818-1819.]