A townsite, named Halifax in honour of the president of the imperial Board of Trade, was laid out by Cornwallis on the eastern slopes of a peninsula jutting out into the main harbour. In their first year of occupation, settlers leveled the surrounding forest, laid out streets and erected primitive log shelters. High priority was given to surrounding the site with a barricade of felled trees, later replaced by upright wooden posts, to provide protection against Indian attack. The need for such fortifications became obvious as early as September 1749, when a Micmac scalping party killed four soldiers engaged in cutting wood. Fear of Indians, supply shortages and their total inexperience with pioneer life demoralized many of the early settlers who fled to Boston at the first opportunity. Halifax survived its initial traumatic years, however, essentially because of continual infusions of money and manpower by the imperial government.
As this engraving by Richard Short (active 1759-1761) shows, by the late 1750s Halifax had become a thriving community with a civilian population estimated to be in excess of 5,000. The original log cabins had been replaced by multistory frame buildings. The Indian menace had largely disappeared after the fall of Louisbourg in 1758. Thus palisades were no longer considered necessary and citizens could walk freely in the outlying fields. Halifax appeared assured of a continued existence.
