20 THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 



homes in the wilderness. Others made shingles on 

 the river's edge, and rafted them down to market. It 

 is to be observed that all the industries the men had a 

 chance of participating in were such as required some 

 knowledge, more or less, of woodcraft and the use of the 

 axe. The women made homespun cloth for the winter, 

 attended to their gardens and home duties, and some- 

 times picked berries. They all got on well enough 

 during the summer, notwithstanding the ceaseless tor- 

 ments of the flies ; but when winter came round a despe- 

 rate struggle for existence commenced. The young men 

 without families did well enough. Used to logging, 

 cooking, &c., they readily obtained employment in the 

 lumber woods. Here they were comfortable and well 

 fed; but, unfortunately, they were rarely able to assist 

 their friends, owing to the distance, and to the fact that 

 in those days wages in the lumber business were never 

 paid till the spring. How the main body of the immi- 

 grants, numbering over two hundred souls, managed to 

 pull through that winter, they only can describe. Every 

 morsel of food they ate had to be carried on the backs, or 

 " portaged " on the traboggens, of the men. They just 

 kept alive, and that was all. Fuel was plentiful, and, 

 literally buried in the snow, they lived like bears in their 

 dens. In some cases two or three families were dependent 

 on one pair of snow shoes for their daily bread. 



The other side of this picture is pleasanter. A short 

 time ago I visited this Acadian settlement ; it is still 

 embosomed in the forest; no trace of it is visible from 

 the outside world. On the forest road leading to it, were 

 it not for the everlasting cow-bells, the traveller might 



