r, and near the French
settlements on the Detroit. A few also settled in the country now
known as the Eastern Townships of French Canada. A great proportion of
the men were officers and soldiers of the regiments which were formed
in several colonies out of the large loyal population. Among them were
also men who had occupied positions of influence and responsibility in
their respective communities, divines, judges, officials, and landed
proprietors, whose names were among the best in the old colonies, as
they are certainly in Canada. Many among them gave up valuable estates
which had been acquired by the energy of their ancestors. Unlike the
Puritans who founded New England, they did not take away with them
their valuable property in the shape of money and securities, or
household goods. A rude log hut by the side of a river or lake, where
poverty and wretchedness were their lot for months, and even years in
some cases, was the refuge of thousands, all of whom had enjoyed every
comfort in well-built houses, and not a few even luxury in stately
mansions, some of which have withstood the ravages of time and can
still be pointed out in New England. Many of the loyalists were quite
unfitted for the rude experiences of a pioneer life, and years passed
{295} before they and their children conquered the wilderness and made
a livelihood. The British Government was extremely liberal in its
grants of lands to this class of persons in all the provinces.

The government supplied these pioneers in the majority of cases with
food, clothing, and necessary farming implements. For some years they
suffered many privations; one was called "the year of famine," when
hundreds in Upper Canada had to live on roots, and even the buds of
trees, or anything that might sustain life. Fortunately some lived in
favoured localities, where pigeons and other birds, and fish of all
kinds, were plentiful. In the summer and fall there were quantities of
wild fruit and nuts. Maple sugar was a great luxury, when the people
once learned to make it from the noble tree, whose symmetrical leaf may
well be made the Canadian national emblem. It took the people a long
while to accustom themselves to the conditions of their primitive
pioneer life, but now the results of the labours of these early
settlers and their descendants can be seen far and wide in smiling
fields, richly laden orchards, and gardens of old-fashioned flowers
throughout the country