EMIGRATION TO CANADA 17 



it was a one-roomed shanty, although he had a frame house al- 

 most erected in which we could sleep during the summer. I may 

 say here that by this time America had lost a large number of its 

 attractions and we began to realize something of the hardships 

 that lay before us. 



The day after we arrived at Seymour a wagon was sent down 

 to Belleville to bring up the other members of the family and in 

 due time it arrived back, but on the way, in crossing a corduroy 

 bridge, my mother was jolted out of the wagon and fell into the 

 ditch; she was none the worse, however, except that her clothes 

 were in quite a bad state. When we all got together at my 

 Uncle's and realized that all our decisions, made while we were in 

 Ireland and on the way to America, had come to naught, we felt 

 very blue. In Ireland it had been decided that I was going to be 

 the farmer and Frederick was to tend to certain other matters and 

 James was to do something else. We now discovered that plough- 

 ing was impossible, because the land was all covered with trees. 

 Almost all the land was taken up by settlers or others and no 

 place was available for a person of small means and no opportunity 

 for anything but manual labour. We stayed at my Uncle's for 

 the better part of June without obtaining any kind of work, and 

 it had begun to be talked amongst the people that we were just 

 a useless crowd. It was finally settled that Frederick was to 

 continue his efforts to try and buy one hundred acres of land and 

 we were to go out to work. 



I hired with James Ponton. My brother James went to a 

 farmer to work in the harvest, and John Spence, my brother-in- 

 law, did the same. Shortly after this Frederick bought one hun- 

 dred acres with eleven acres of clearing and a small shanty on it. 

 To this, he and my mother moved. It was about one and a half 

 miles from where my Uncle lived and this was where Frederick 

 lived during the summer. None of us knew how to chop and we 

 were only fit for harvest work, that anyone can do. 



There was a fine spring of pure water in the forest that Fred- 

 erick bought and he was advised to build his house near it. 

 Then, like a woodsman, he commenced to clear the land where 

 the house was to be, but, never having seen a tree cut down, he 



