ld colonies, as they are certainly in Canada. Many among them gave
up valuable estates which had been acquired by the energy of their
ancestors. Unlike the Puritans who founded New England, they did not
take away with them their valuable property in the shape of money and
securities or household goods. A rude log hut by the side of a river or
lake, where poverty and wretchedness were their lot for months, and even
years in some cases, was the refuge of thousands, all of whom had
enjoyed every comfort in well-built houses, and not a few even luxury in
stately mansions, some of which have withstood the ravages of time and
can still be pointed out in New England. Many of the Loyalists were
quite unfitted for the rude experiences of a pioneer life, and years
passed before they and their children conquered the wilderness and made
a livelihood. The British Government was extremely liberal in its grants
of lands to this class of persons in all the Provinces.

The Government supplied these pioneers in the majority of cases with
food, clothing, and necessary farming implements. For some years they
suffered many privations; one was called "the year of famine," when
hundreds in Upper Canada had to live on roots and even the buds of trees
or anything that might sustain life. Fortunately some lived in favored
localities, where pigeons and other birds, and fish of all kinds, were
plentiful. In the summer and fall there were quantities of wild fruit
and nuts. Maple sugar was a great luxury, when the people once learned
to make it from the noble tree, whose symmetrical leaf may well be made
the Canadian national emblem. It took the people a long while to
accustom themselves to the conditions of their primitive pioneer life,
but now the results of the labors of these early settlers and their
descendants can be seen far and wide in smiling fields, richly laden
orchards, and gardens of old-fashioned flowers throughout the country
which they first made to blossom like the rose. The rivers and lakes
were the only means of communication in those early times, roads were
unknown, and the wayfarer could find his way through the illimitable
forests only by the help of the "blazed" trees and the course of
streams. Social intercourse was infrequent except in autumn and winter,
when the young managed to assemble as they always will. Love and
courtship went on even in this wilderness, though marriage was
uncertain, as the visits of clergymen were ver