tia and
New Brunswick settlers, who were situated near the
sea-coast. They had no money, and as the government
refused to send them specie, they were compelled to fall
back on barter as a means of trade, with the result that
all trade was local and trivial. In the autumn of 1787
the crops failed, and in 1788 famine stalked through the
land. There are many legends about what was known as 'the
hungry year.' If we are to believe local tradition, some
of the settlers actually died of starvation. In the family
papers of one family is to be found a story about an old
couple who were saved from starvation only by the pigeons
which they were able to knock over. A member of another
family testifies: 'We had the luxury of a cow which the
family brought with them, and had it not been for this
domestic boon, all would have perished in the year of
scarcity.' Two hundred acre lots were sold for a few
pounds of flour. A valuable cow, in one case, was sold
for eight bushels of potatoes; a three-year-old horse
was exchanged for half a hundredweight of flour. Bran
was used for making cakes; and leeks, buds of trees, and
even leaves, were ground into food.

The summer of 1789, however, brought relief to the
settlers, and though, for many years, comforts and even
necessaries were scarce, yet after 1791, the year in
which the new settlements were erected into the province
of Upper Canada, it may be said that most of the settlers
had been placed on their feet. The soil was fruitful;
communication and transportation improved; and metallic
currency gradually found its way into the settlements.
When Mrs Simcoe, the wife of the lieutenant-governor,
passed through the country in 1792, she was struck by
the neatness of the farms of the Dutch and German settlers
from the Mohawk valley, and by the high quality of the
wheat. 'I observed on my way thither,' she says in her
diary, 'that the wheat appeared finer than any I have
seen in England, and totally free from weeds.' And a few
months later an anonymous English traveller, passing the
same way, wrote: 'In so infant a settlement, it would
have been irrational to expect that abundance which bursts
the granaries, and lows in the stalls of more cultivated
countries. There was, however, that kind of appearance
which indicated that with economy and industry, there
would be enough.'

Next in size to the settlements at Cataraqui and on the
Upper St Lawrence was the settlement at Niagara. During