ring
which was to expand into the farm. The coming of the Loyalists really
peopled both New Brunswick {314} and Prince Edward Island: the former
becoming a separate province in 1784, named after the ruling house of
England; the latter named after the Duke of Kent, who was in command of
the garrison at Charlottetown.

More strenuous still was the migration of the United Empire Loyalists
from the south. Rich old planters of Virginia and Maryland, who had
had their colored servants by the score, now came with their families
in rude tented wagons, fine chippendales jumbled with heavy mahogany
furnishings, up the old Cumberland army road to the Ohio, and across
from the Ohio to the southern townships of Quebec, to the backwoods of
Niagara and Kingston and Toronto and modern Hamilton, and west as far
as what is now known as London. I have heard descendants of these old
southern Loyalists tell how hopelessly helpless were these planters'
families, used to hundreds of negro servants and now bereft of help in
a backwoods wilderness. It took but a year or so to wear out the fine
laces and pompous ruffles of their aristocratic clothing, and men and
women alike were reduced to the backwoods costume of coon cap, homespun
garments, and Indian moccasins. Often one could witness such anomalies
in their log cabins as gilt mirrors and spindly glass cabinets ranged
in the same apartment as stove and cooking utensils. If the health of
the father failed or the war had left him crippled, there was nothing
for it but for the mother to take the helm; and many a Canadian can
trace lineage back to a United Empire Loyalist woman who planted the
first crop by hand with a hoe and reaped the first crop by hand with a
sickle. Sometimes the jovial habits of the planter life came with the
Loyalists to Canada, and winter witnessed a furbishing up of old
flounces and laces to celebrate all-night dance in log houses where
partitions were carpets and tapestries hung up as walls. Sometimes,
too,--at least I have heard descendants of the eastern township people
tell the story,--the jovial habits kept the father tippling and card
playing at the village inn while the lonely mother kept watch and ward
in the cabin of the snow-padded forests. Of necessity the Loyalists
banded together to {315} help one another. There were "sugarings off"
in the maple woods every spring for the year's supply of homemade
sugar,--glorious nights and days in the spring for