For a few years it looked as though Shelburne was not going to belie these hopes. The autumn of 1783 brought a considerable increase to its population; and in 1784 it seems to have numbered no less than ten thousand souls, including the suburb of Burchtown, in which most of the negro refugees in New York had been settled. It became a place of business and fashion. There was for a time an extensive trade in fish and lumber with Great Britain and the West Indies. Shipyards were built, from which was launched the first ship built in Nova Scotia after the British occupation. Shops, taverns, churches, coffee-houses, sprang up. At one time no less than three newspapers were published in the town. The military were stationed there, and on summer evenings the military band played on the promenade near the bridge. On election day the main street was so crowded that ‘one might have walked on the heads of the people.’ Then Shelburne fell into decay. It appeared that the region was ill-suited for farming and grazing, and was not capable of supporting so large a population. The whale fishery which the Shelburne merchants had established in Brazilian waters proved a failure. The regulations of the Navigation Acts thwarted their attempts to set up a coasting trade. Failure dogged all their enterprises, and soon the glory of Shelburne departed. It became like a city of the dead. ‘The houses,’ wrote Haliburton, ‘were still standing though untenanted. It had all the stillness and quiet of a moonlight scene. It was difficult to imagine it was deserted. The idea of repose more readily suggested itself than decay. All was new and recent. Seclusion, and not death or removal, appeared to be the cause of the absence of inhabitants.’ The same eye-witness of Shelburne’s ruin described the town later: The houses, which had been originally built of wood, had severally disappeared. Some had been taken to pieces and removed to Halifax or St John; others had been converted into fuel, and the rest had fallen a prey to neglect and decomposition. The chimneys stood up erect, and marked the spot around which the social circle had assembled; and the blackened fireplaces, ranged one above another, bespoke the size of the tenement and the means of its owner. In some places they had sunk with the edifice, leaving a heap of ruins, while not a few were inclining to their fall, and awaiting the first storm to repose again in the dust that now covered those who had constructed them. Hundreds of cellars with their stone walls and granite partitions were everywhere to be seen like uncovered monuments of the dead. Time and decay had done their work. All that was perishable had perished, and those numerous vaults spoke of a generation that had passed away for ever, and without the aid of an inscription, told a tale of sorrow and of sadness that overpowered the heart.