There are persons still living who have heard their parents or grandparents tell of the dreadful sufferings they endured the second year after the settlement of the Bay of Quinte country. The second year's Government supply, through some bad management, was frozen up in the lower part of the St. Lawrence, and, in consequence, the people were reduced to a state of famine. Men were glad, in some cases, to give all they possessed for that which would sustain life. Farms were given in exchange for small quantities of flour, but more frequently refused. A respectable old lady, long since gone to her rest, and whose grandchildren are somewhat aristocratic, was wont in those days to go away to the woods early in the morning to gather and eat the buds of the basswood, and then bring an apronfull home to her family. In one neighbourhood a beef bone passed from house to house, and was boiled again and again in order to extract some nutriment from it. This is no fiction, but a literal fact. Many other equally uninviting bills of fare might be given, but these no doubt will suffice. Sufficient has been said to show that our fathers and mothers did not repose upon rose-beds, nor did they fold their hands in despair, but with strong nerves and stout hearts, even when famine was in the pot, they pushed on and lived. The forest melted away before them, and we are now enjoying the happy results. The life of the first settler was for a long time one of hardship and adventure. When this Utopia was reached he frequently had difficulty in finding his land. He was not always very particular as to this, for land then was not of very much account, and yet he wished, if possible, to strike somewhere near his location. This involved sometimes long trips into the forest, or along the shores. After a day's paddling he would land, pull up his canoe, and look around. The night coming on, he had to make some preparation for it. How was it to be done in this howling wilderness? Where was he to sleep, and how was he to protect himself against the perils that surrounded him? He takes his axe and goes to work. A few small trees are cut down. Then he gathers some limbs and heaps them up together. From his pocket he brings a large knife; then a flint and a bit of punk. The punk he places carefully under the flint, holding it in his left hand, and then picks up his knife and gives the flint a few sharp strokes with the back of the blade, which sends forth a shower of sparks, some of which fall on the punk and ignite, and soon his heap is in a blaze. Now, this labour is not only necessary for his comfort, but for his safety. The smoke drives the flies and mosquitoes away, and keeps the wolves and bears from encroaching on his place of rest. But the light which affords him protection subjects him to a new annoyance. "Loud as the wolves in Oroa's stormy steep Howl to the roaring of the stormy deep,"