The thin line of alienated land continued around the shores of the Minas Basin, spreading thickly into the Annapolis Valley as the coastline opened out along the Bay of Fundy, and again narrowing after Digby as the shore-line turned southwards past Yarmouth and along the coast of what was then Shelburne County to Cape Sable. Lands had also been taken up across Cumberland County in lines running from Pictou to Truro and along the New Brunswick border to Amherst. Some of the best agricultural lands in the province, and certainly the most heavily alienated areas, were to be found along the Gulf Shore from the Gut of Canso to the New Brunswick boundary. A map of the colony in 1831 would have shown the alienated lands stretching thinly along the coastal margins of Nova Scotia, and reaching some five or ten miles inland, except where the fertile banks of rivers tempted settlers farther into the interior. The accessible land then remaining was predominantly rocky, barren and totally unfit for cultivation, its surface covered by forest, peat bogs and lakes. Most of the good agricultural land which had so far been discovered in the colony had already been alienated to resident settlers or absentee proprietors. "Immigrants who reached Nova Scotia in the years between 18 immediately encountered a second major obstacle to successful settlement. Such lands exist only in limited areas of Nova Scotia, and they were taken up by the earlier arrivals. Generally, at the time that those who came to settle during the first half of the 19th century were left with slim pickings when it came to good agricultural lands. British settlers came throughout the 19th century: a large number from the northwest of Scotland. On account of the American Revolution, Loyalists flooded in beginning in 1784. Then in 1760 came the New England Planters who took over much of the lands previously worked by the French Acadians.
The occupation of the Acadians lasted but for a 150 years when they were rudely put off their lands by the English. These were the French Acadians who dominated the fertile lands of the Annapolis Valley and the shores of the far reaches of the Fundy Basin system. Only in the early part of the 1600s did a wave of Europeans arrive. An ancient wave brought the Mi'kmaq to Nova Scotia and they alone occupied the land exclusively for many, many years.
Best we have an appreciation of the make up of the population in Nova Scotia. Except for the farmers along the Annapolis Valley, most Nova Scotians made their living from the sea. Those residing outside of Halifax, however, were of a different sort. Society, in the first half of the 1800s, in Nova Scotia, was not much different than what might have been observed at the time in "Merry Old England," at least for the white upper class located at the capital city of Halifax. History of Nova Scotia: The Road To Being Canada (Book 3), Chapter One - "Further Settlement"
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