tained) being far more severe than at
present. They were frequently put to the greatest straits for food and
clothing to preserve existence; a few roots were all that tender
mothers could at times procure to allay the importunate calls of their
children for food.--Sir GUY CARLETON had ordered them provisions for
the first year at the expense of Government; but as the country was not
much cultivated at that time, food could scarcely be procured on any
terms. Frequently had those settlers to go from fifty to one hundred
miles with hand sleds or toboggans through wild woods or on the ice to
procure a precarious supply for their famishing families. The
privations and sufferings of some of those people almost exceed belief.
The want of food and clothing in a wild, cold country, was not easily
dispensed with or soon remedied. Frequently in the piercing cold of
winter a part of the family had to remain up during the night to keep
fire in their huts to prevent the other part from freezing. Some very
destitute families made use of boards to supply the want of bedding:
the father or some of the elder children remaining up by turns, and
warming two suitable pieces of boards, which they applied alternately
to the smaller children to keep them warm; with many similar
expedients.

Some readers looking only at the present state of the country may smile
at this account as wildly exaggerated, and may suppose that the skins
of the moose and other wild animals would have been a far better
substitute for bedding. But I have received the account of the above
facts, with many other expedients which were at that time adopted by
the settlers, from persons of undoubted veracity, and who had been eye
witnesses of what they related. It is, however, needless to enlarge
upon the hardships they endured, as most of the sufferers are now no
more. Some indeed were discouraged and left the country; but most of
those who remained had the pleasure of seeing the country improved and
their families comfortably settled. Many of those Loyalists were in the
prime of life when they came to this country; and most of them had
young families. To establish these they wore out their lives in toil
and poverty, and by their unremitting exertions subdued the wilderness,
and covered the face of the country with habitations, villages, and
towns.

I have not noticed these circumstances as if they were peculiar to the
settlers of New-Brunswick; but to hold up to the desc