know what pleasure a safe
return can give.

"Long Point now boasted four inhabitants in twenty miles, all settled on
the lake shore. Their nearest neighbour, Peter Walker, at the mouth of
Patterson's Creek [now Port Dover], was three miles distant by water and
six by land. But from this time, 1795, for several years to come, there
was a constant influx of settlers.

"Few days passed without some foot traveller asking a night's rest. The
most of the travellers would set to work cheerfully for a few days, and
assist in cutting roads, making sheds, sawing boards, or felling timber.
The winter was now fast approaching, and much was to be done in
preparation for the coming spring. My father succeeded in hiring five or
six men for as many months. The great object was to get some land
cleared, so that they could plant maize, potatoes, and garden vegetables
for the next year's consumption. They had also to make preparations for
sugar-making, by hollowing out troughs, one to each tree that was
tapped, sufficiently large to hold the sap that would run in one day.

"Their evenings were devoted to netting the twine, which my father had
purchased at Niagara for that purpose. My mother hired Barbara Proyer as
a help, and time passed less heavily than she had imagined. My father
had brought with him a sufficient quantity of flour and salt pork to
last them a year; for fresh meat and fish he depended upon his gun and
spear, and for many years they had always a good supply of both. My
father had a couple of deer-hounds, and he used to go to the woods for
his deer as a farmer would go to his fold for a sheep. Wild turkey and
partridge were bagged with very little skill or exertion, and when the
creek and lake were not frozen he need scarcely leave his own door to
shoot ducks; but the great sporting ground--and it is still famous, and
the resort of sporting gentlemen from Toronto, London, and indeed all
parts of Canada West--is at the head of Long Point Bay. I have known
him, several years later, return from there with twenty wild geese and
one hundred ducks, the result of a few days' shooting. Pigeons were so
plentiful, so late as 1810 and 1812, that they could be knocked down
with poles. Great would have been the sufferings of the early settlers
had not a kind and heavenly Father made this provision for them. But
deer were not the only animals that abounded in the woods; bears and
wolves were plentiful, and the latter used to keep up