The fleet on which the colony set sail entered Chebucto Bay in the month of July, 1749. There were thirteen transports, conveying nearly three thousand settlers. These were men of good stock, and the vigor with which they attacked the problems before them was sufficient evidence of this fact. Streets were promptly laid out, a civil government was organized, and the entire population got to work on the practical issue of providing shelter for themselves and their families. Houses were built, and, last, but not least, in that day and generation a fort was erected on the rounded top of the hill around which they had plotted their town. This was the forerunner of the citadel of Halifax of to-day. Around the entire settlement was built a high palisade. The early history of Halifax did not include sieges or sustained attacks by an enemy, but it was in the atmosphere of unrest and conflict from its first days. While the French residents of Acadia had not been molested in their possession of land in Nova Scotia, they had never taken the oath of allegiance to England. Among them were many turbulent spirits who incited the Micmac Indians of the country to outrages against English people and who took part in these outrages themselves in the disguise of savages. Moreover, the French had pressed the boundaries of Canada as close to the boundaries of Acadia as they dared, and they continually tried to foment ill feeling amidst the simple Acadian peasants against the English. The story of the days between the conquest of Acadia by the English and the final peace between France and England in the New World is one of partisan warfare, of forays and minor sieges and attacks by land and water. All of these things went on around Halifax, and enemy vessels even slipped into her harbor in bold dashes upon rich covey or unsuspecting foe. From Halifax went forth Lawrence at the order of Governor Cornwallis to oppose the French at Beasejour, now Cumberland, where the French had built a fort on what they claimed was their own ground. Lawrence built another fort on the opposite side of the little stream of Missigouache, which the French claimed to be the boundary between the rival domains, and went back to Halifax for reinforcements. His building the fort was opposed by the French skirmish, and the blood shed in this little skirmish was the first blood to flow in combat between France and England in Old World or New since the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. In the council rooms of the citadel at Halifax the order to deport the French peasantry, or Acadians, was debated. From the government house here went forth the orders that this act should be done. The story of the deportation of the Acadians and of their sufferings has been told many times in prose and very beautifully by Longfellow in verse. [Illustration: OLD MARTELLO TOWER NEAR HALIFAX, N. S.]