her spent half the money father earned at his straw
work (he was a straw chair maker,) in whiskey to keep us warm; but I do
think a larger mess of good hot _praters_ (potatoes,) would have kept us
warmer than the whiskey did."]

Nothing can be more comfortless than some of these shanties, reeking
with smoke and dirt, the common receptacle for children, pigs, and
fowls. But I have given you the dark side of the picture; I am happy to
say all the shanties on the squatters' ground were not like these: on
the contrary, by far the larger proportion were inhabited by tidy folks,
and had one, or even two small windows, and a clay chimney regularly
built up through the roof; some were even roughly floored, and possessed
similar comforts with the small log-houses.

[Illustration: Log house]

You will, perhaps, think it strange when I assure you that many
respectable settlers, with their wives and families, persons delicately
nurtured, and accustomed to every comfort before they came hither, have
been contented to inhabit a hut of this kind during the first or second
year of their settlement in the woods.

I have listened with feelings of great interest to the history of the
hardships endured by some of the first settlers in the neighbourhood,
when Peterborough contained but two dwelling houses. Then there were
neither roads cut nor boats built for communicating with the distant and
settled parts of the district; consequently the difficulties of
procuring supplies of provisions was very great, beyond what any one
that has lately come hither can form any notion of.

When I heard of a whole family having had no better supply of flour than
what could be daily ground by a small hand-mill, and for weeks being
destitute of every necessary, not even excepting bread, I could not help
expressing some surprise, never having met with any account in the works
I had read concerning emigration that at all prepared one for such
evils.

"These particular trials," observed my intelligent friend, "are confined
principally to the first breakers of the soil in the unsettled parts of
the country, as was our case. If you diligently question some of the
families of the lower class that are located far from the towns, and who
had little or no means to support them during the first twelve months,
till they could take a crop off the land, you will hear many sad tales
of distress."

Writers on emigration do not take the trouble of searching out the