ers on a fine expanse of water,
which forms one of the Otanabee chain of Small Lake. I hope, however, to
give you a more minute description of our situation in my next letter.

For the present, then, I bid you adieu.

LETTER VIII.

Inconveniences of first Settlement.--Difficulty of obtaining Provisions
and other necessaries.--Snow-storm and Hurricane.--Indian Summer, and
setting-in of Winter.--Process of clearing the Land.

November the 20th, 1832.

OUR log-house is not yet finished, though it is in a state of
forwardness. We are still indebted to the hospitable kindness of S------
and his wife for a home. This being their first settlement on their land
they have as yet many difficulties, in common with all residents in the
backwoods, to put up with this year. They have a fine block of land,
well situated; and S------ laughs at the present privations, to which he
opposes a spirit of cheerfulness and energy that is admirably calculated
to effect their conquest. They are now about to remove to a larger and
more commodious house that has been put up this fall, leaving us the use
of the old one till our own is ready.

We begin to get reconciled to our Robinson Crusoe sort of life, and the
consideration that the present evils are but temporary, goes a great way
towards reconciling us to them.

One of our greatest inconveniences arises from the badness of our roads,
and the distance at which we are placed from any village or town where
provisions are to be procured.

Till we raise our own grain and fatten our own hogs, sheep, and poultry,
we must be dependent upon the stores for food of every kind. These
supplies have to be brought up at considerable expense and loss of time,
through our beautiful bush roads; which, to use the words of a poor
Irish woman, "can't be no worser." "Och, darlint," she said, "but they
are just bad enough, and can't be no worser. Och, but they aren't like
to our iligant roads in Ireland."

You may send down a list of groceries to be forwarded when a team comes
up, and when we examine our stores, behold rice, sugar, currants,
pepper, and mustard all jumbled into one mess. What think you of a rice-
pudding seasoned plentifully with pepper, mustard, and, may be, a little
rappee or prince's mixture added by way of sauce. I think the recipe
would cut quite a figure in the Cook's Oracle or Mrs. Dalgairn's
Practice of Cookery, under the original title of a "bush pudding."

And then woe an