fruit, for all of us had come from districts
where fruit was grown, so on festive days such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas, we had dried wild crab-apples boiled up in soda water, then
sweetened with molasses. We were all used to better than this, but we
never complained and felt that better times were coming.

Mrs. W. L. Niemann.

My mother was Sophia Oakes. She was born in Sault Ste. Marie in 1823.
She was the daughter of Charles Oakes who had charge of a trading post
for the American Fur Company. Her mother died when she was a very small
child and her father removed with his two children, my mother and her
sister two years younger, to La Pointe, where he had charge of another
post of the same company.

The winters there were very long and severely cold and many times they
would be shut in by the depth of the snow for weeks at a time. One time
in particular the snow was so deep and the cold so intense that they had
been snowbound so long that their supplies were almost exhausted, and my
grandfather sent the men off to get a fresh supply. They were gone much
longer than usual and the little family began to suffer for want of food
and were obliged to go out and scrape away the snow to find acorns. They
also ate the bark of trees.

Finally my grandfather concluded that he, too, must start out to try and
get some food. The windows of the cabin were covered in place of glass,
with deerskins. In getting ready to leave the children, grandfather took
down these skins and replaced them with blankets to keep out the cold
and boiled the skins to provide a soup for the children to drink while
he was gone. My mother was twelve and her sister was ten.

Grandfather had not gone far when his feet were both frozen and he lay
disabled in the snow. Some men chanced along, and carried him to a house
which was about a mile further along. When they reached the house he
refused to be carried in, for he knew he would surely lose his feet if
he went in where it was warm. He asked for an awl and punctured his
feet full of holes and had the men pour them full of brandy. This, while
it was excruciatingly painful, both at the time and afterwards, saved
him his feet.

When he and his men returned to the cabin, he had been gone all day and
all night and into the next afternoon, and they found the little girls
locked in each other's arms fast asleep, having cried themselves to
sleep the night before.

Soon after the little girls were sent t