Digby's attractions have to do with scenery, climate and summer pastimes. Early settlers passed by its site. There are no wars or monuments to make it famous. Sam Slick called it a small but beautiful village "where the people of New Brunswick take refuge from the unrelenting fogs, hopeless sterility and calcareous waters of St. John." Travellers from the States find it a cool retreat from the heat and dusty winds of less favoured places. Here "the blue air winks with life like beaded wine." The green of barricading heights glows darkly against the clear Nova Scotia sky; the bay which the Frenchmen's ships first ploughed seeks restlessly the solution of the tides, yet makes a level course for cat-boat, launch and fishers' smack to scud upon. On the warmest days one may walk comfortably along the main road of the village without hat or parasol. Fans are de trop in Digby. Æolus and Triton sit at her gate to pull the punkawallah.
A fleet of transports found its way through the stern-walled portal of the roadstead just a hundred and thirty years ago. Fifteen hundred refugees from New England who had forsworn comfort and goods in order to remain under British rule established a settlement five miles within the Basin, and called it Digby for the Admiral who commanded their British convoy, the Atalanta. Some were descendants of Mayflower pilgrims. Later came other Loyalists from the South and
