16 EMIGRATION TO CANADA 



from side to side to keep her on an even keel. I paid more atten- 

 tion to the working of the ship that night than I did to sleeping. 

 When we reached Montreal we took the train from there to 

 Lachine, nine miles up and there we took the boat for Kingston 

 and went up the St. Lawrence river and the canals to that city. 

 We then took another boat up the Bay of Quinte to Belleville, 

 where we lodged with Robin Archer, a friend of my uncle. One 

 thing I remember about the morning we reached Belleville. Like 

 any other "tenderfoot" we were wandering up the street in the 

 early morning and a man was taking down the shutters and he 

 asked us if we were new arrivals. We said that we were and he 

 asked us if we would care to take our "bitters" now. We said 

 that we would if it were not too bitter, in fact, that we would 

 like to have some. We went in and he put a bottle before us and 

 a cup and asked us to help ourselves and, behold, it was whiskey 

 of a very unpleasant taste. 



Two days after we reached Belleville, Frederick and I ar- 

 ranged to start for my Uncle's place in Seymour, thirty-two miles 

 away and began to walk and succeeded very well the first part of 

 the day. During the afternoon we got very hungry and we had 

 no idea as to where we could get any food, as we thought that the 

 public houses of Canada, like those in Ireland, only gave drink. 

 We spent the whole day walking in the hot sun without food, and 

 late in the afternoon reached a point in the road where I asked a 

 man if we were near Seymour. "Oh," said he, "you are in Sey- 

 mour now." We asked him if he knew Alec Nevin, our uncle, 

 who lived in Seymour, and he said that he had never heard 

 of him. He noticed we were tired and when my brother told him 

 that we were hungry too, and that we had had nothing to eat all 

 day, he told us to go up to his house and tell the wife that he sent 

 us and she would give us all the bread and milk we could eat. 



We went up as he told us and the bread and milk greatly 

 refreshed us and we were informed that we had still ten miles to 

 go, as my uncle lived on the western side of the township, while 

 we were then on the eastern side. We travelled on and had 

 various adventures and discussions with men we saw on the way 

 but late in the evening we reached my uncle's house and, behold, 



