HARDSHIPS OF EMIGRATION. 19 



to emigrate en masse from the Island of Prince Edward to 

 Canada. They were allotted a large tract of hardwood 

 land 100 acres to each male adult, if my memory serves 

 me right to be paid for by simply making a road to their 

 own settlement, which lies on high table-land three miles 

 from the Restigouche River. The immigrants arrived at 

 their new homes in the early summer, men and women all 

 on foot, and carrying their bundles on their backs. The 

 men at once commenced to swing the axe, whilst the 

 women looked after their children and kept up a continual 

 smoke of cedar bark to drive away the flies from them, or 

 else sat down on the stumps to do their knitting. The 

 men chopped and burnt each an acre or so of forest, and 

 in the land thus cleared the women planted a few seed 

 potatoes with the hoe, and sowed a little buckwheat and 

 a few garden seeds in the blackened ground amongst 

 the still smoking stumps. In the centre of each little 

 clearing a log shanty, roofed with spruce bark, was 

 erected. The wealth of each family consisted of a slender 

 store of food, clothes, seeds, and yarn contained in a 

 bundle, and of a few shillings in cash. 



As soon as possible the young men set to work to earn 

 some money, and, a Government road and line of tele- 

 graph happening fortunately to be in course of construc- 

 tion between Canada and New Brunswick, many of them 

 obtained employment. For this they received " store 

 pay," i. e. goods out of their employer's stores ; and when 

 Sunday came round these fellows, with their week's wages, 

 consisting of flour, salt fish, and perhaps a small bit of 

 pork or a couple of ounces of tea done up in a bundle on 

 their backs, trudged some 10, 15, or 20 miles to their 



