86 THE LABRADOR PEX1NSULA. CHAP. v. 



brance, have been purchased for five pounds a two-hun- 

 dred acre lot, and many a one has been sold for a half joe. 

 All this cannot be matter of wonder, when I tell you that 

 a great scarcity of provisions prevailed for two or three 

 years consecutively, in consequence of failures in the 

 crops, and what brought on the famine, or " scarce year" 

 (about the year 1790, if I am not mistaken), was the 

 almost entire destruction of the deer by the wolves for 

 two consecutive years. The snow lay upon the ground from 

 December until April, at the depth of from four to five feet. 

 In the month of February of the last of these years, a near 

 relative of mine sent all the way to Albany, in the State 

 of New York, a distance of more than two hundred miles, 

 for four bushels of Indian corn ! and this was to be brought 

 all that distance by two men on snow-shoes ! It took them 

 about eight weeks to accomplish this journey, and during 

 this time about one-third of the quantity was necessarily 

 consumed by the men ; the residue of this precious cargo, 

 pounded up in a mortar made of a maple stump, with the 

 winter greenberry, and mucilaginous roots, latterly boiled 

 with a little milk, constituted the principal food for two 

 families, consisting of seven souls, for the space of four or 

 five months ! It was remarked, I have heard some of the 

 oldest settlers assert, that the usual supply of fish even 

 had failed. The few cattle and horses which the settlers, 

 at great cost and trouble, had collected, were killed for 

 food. The faithful dog was, in several instances, sacrificed 

 to supply that food which he had so often been the means 

 of furnishing to his then kind but starving master. The 

 famine this year was general throughout the Bay of 

 Quinte ; and such was the distress, that, during this 



