As has already been intimated, amidst all the discouragements and disappointments, the Highlanders used every means in their power to supply the wants of their families. They rapidly learned from the Indians and their neighbors. The former taught them the secrets of the forests and they soon became skilled in hunting the moose, and from the latter they became adepts in making staves, which were sent in small vessels to the older colonies, and in exchange were supplied with necessaries. But the population rather decreased, for a return made January 1, 1775, showed the entire population to be but seventy-eight, consisting of twenty-three men, fourteen women, twenty-one boys and twenty-girls. The produce raised in 1775, was two hundred and sixty-nine bushels of wheat, thirteen of rye, fifty-six of peas, thirty-six of barley, one hundred of oats, and three hundred and forty pounds of flax. The farm stock consisted of thirteen oxen, thirteen cows, fifteen young neat cattle, twenty-five sheep and one swine. They manufactured seventeen thousand feet of boards. While the improvement was somewhat marked, the supply was not sufficient; and the same weary journeys must be taken to Truro for necessaries. The moose, and the fish in the rivers, gave them a supply of meat, and they soon learned to make sugar from the sap of the maple tree. They learned to dig a large supply of clams in the autumn, heap the same on the shore, and cover with sand. Scarcely had these people become able to supply themselves, when they were again tried by the arrival of a class poorer than themselves. Inducements having been held out by the proprietors of Prince Edward Island to parties in Scotland, to settle their land, John Smith and Wellwood Waugh, living at Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, sold out their property and chartered a small vessel to carry thither their families, and all others that would accompany them. They arrived at Three Rivers, in the year 1774, followed by others a few months later. They commenced operations on the Island with fair prospects of success, when they were almost overwhelmed by a plague of mice. These animals swarmed everywhere, consuming everything eatable, even to the potatoes in the ground; and for eighteen months the settlers experienced all the miseries of a famine, having for several months only what lobsters or shell-fish they could gather on the sea-shore. The winter brought them to such a state of weakness that they were unable to convey food a reasonable distance, even when they had means to buy it. In this pitiable condition they heard that the Pictou people were beginning to prosper and had provisions to spare. They sent one of their number David Stewart to make inquiry. One of the settlers, who had come from one of the older colonies, brought with him some negro slaves, and when the messenger arrived had just returned from Truro to sell one of them, and brought home with him some provisions, the proceeds of the sale of the negro.