e who remained,--seventy in number--lived in
small huts, covered over only with the bark and branches of trees to
shelter them from the bitter cold of winter, enduring incredible
hardships. To procure food for their families, they must trudge eighty
miles to Truro, through cold and snow and a trackless forest, and there
obtaining a bushel or two of potatoes, and a little flour, in exchange
for their labor, they had to return, carrying the supply either on their
backs, or else dragging it behind them on handsleds. The way was beset
with dangers such as the climbing of steep hills, the descending of high
banks, crossing of brooks on the trunk of a single tree, the sinking in
wet or boggy ground, and the camping out at night without shelter. Even
the potatoes with which they were supplied were of an inferior grade,
being soft, and such as is usually fed to cattle. Sometimes the cold was
so piercing that the potatoes froze to their backs.

Many instances have been related of the privations of this period, some
of which are here subjoined. Hugh Fraser, after having exhausted every
means of procuring food for his family, resorted to the expedient of
cutting down a birch tree and boiling the buds, which he gave them to
eat. He then went to a heap, where one of the first settlers had buried
some potatoes, and took out some, intending to inform the owner. Before
he did so, some of the neighbors maliciously reported him, but the
proprietor simply remarked that he thanked God he had them there for the
poor old man's family. On another occasion when the father and eldest
son had gone to Truro for provisions, everything in the shape of food
being exhausted, except an old hen, which the mother finally killed, for
the younger children. She boiled it in salt water for the benefit of the
salt, with a quantity of herbs, the nature of which she was totally
ignorant. A few days later the hen's nest was found with ten eggs in it.
Two young men set off for Halifax, so weak from want of food, that they
could scarcely travel, and when they reached Gay's River, were nearly
ready to give up. However they saw there a fine lot of trout, hanging by
a rod, on a bush. They hesitated to take them, thinking they might
belong to the Indians who would overtake and kill them. They therefore
left them, but returned, when the pains of hunger prevailed. Afterwards
they discovered that they had been caught by two sportsmen, neither of
whom would carry them. Al