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Port Mouton-- First Name: Wologumk, given by the Mi'kmaq. The word means "deep gully or hole in the river".
Second (and Current) Name: Port Mouton, given in 1604 during the visit of Du Guast de Monts, after a sheep was lost overboard. De Monts and his crew settled in the area and used it as a base for exploring the coastal areas of the province.
Third Name: St. Luke's Bay, renamed by settlers from Scotland, sent out by Sir William Alexander.
Fourth Name: Guysborough, named in 1784 by grantees who were disbanded soldiers serving under Sir Guy Carleton during the Revolutionary War. In the second year, all but two houses were destroyed by a fire. The settlers moved to Cape Canso on the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia.
Early Description Of Port Mouton
And anonymous pamphlet published at Edinburgh in 1786, a description is given of Port Matoon, or Gambier Harbour:
The soil for several miles around is full of rocks and stones and the most barren in Nova Scotia. One of the regiments, (the British Legion, commanded by Lieut. Col. Tarleton) which had served with distinction during the Revolutionary war, began a settlement here and built a town late in the year 1783. Unfortunately for them, being somewhat too late, and the ground consequently covered with snow, they were prevented from observing the nature of the soil until the following spring. Their town at this time consisted of 300 houses, and the number of people was something more than 800. They seeing the sterile appearance of their lands, and all their hopes of course frustrated, were meditating upon the best means of getting away to other places, when an accidental fire which entirely consumed their town to ashes, with all their live stock, furniture and wearing apparel, filled up the measure of their calamities. The summer of 1784 had been uncommonly dry, and many large fires were seen burning in the woods in various places, occasioned either by the carelessness of the Indians, or that of the white people at their work in the woods, in neglecting to extinguish their fires, the ground being at the same time quite dry and covered with moss and decaying vegetables. A poor woman at Gysburgh, (such being the name the Loyalists had given the place,) was undesignedly the cause of the misfortune; the fire, after it was once kindled, spreading so rapidly and burning with such fury as rendered all attempts to divert or stop its progress quite ineffectual, destroying in a few minutes almost every house, and driving the inhabitants before it into the water; one man more unfortunate than the rest perished in the flames. Scarcely any of the domestic animals escaped. In short, a more complete destruction from that merciless element never befel any set of men; and if a king’s ship had not been despatched immediately from Halifax with provisions to their relief, a famine must have ensued. On her arrival she found them without houses, without money and without even bread.