New Brunswick -- Description and travel; New Brunswick -- History
fire in their huts to prevent the other part from freezing. Some very
destitute families made use of boards to supply the want of bedding:
the father or some of the elder children remaining up by turns, and
warming two suitable pieces of boards, which they applied alternately
to the smaller children to keep them warm; with many similar
expedients.
Some readers looking only at the present state of the country may smile
at this account as wildly exaggerated, and may suppose that the skins
of the moose and other wild animals would have been a far better
substitute for bedding. But I have received the account of the above
facts, with many other expedients which were at that time adopted by
the settlers, from persons of undoubted veracity, and who had been eye
witnesses of what they related. It is, however, needless to enlarge
upon the hardships they endured, as most of the sufferers are now no
more. Some indeed were discouraged and left the country; but most of
those who remained had the pleasure of seeing the country improved and
their families comfortably settled. Many of those Loyalists were in the
prime of life when they came to this country; and most of them had
young families. To establish these they wore out their lives in toil
and poverty, and by their unremitting exertions subdued the wilderness,
and covered the face of the country with habitations, villages, and
towns.
I have not noticed these circumstances as if they were peculiar to the
settlers of New-Brunswick; but to hold up to the descendants of those
sufferers the hardships endured by their parents; and to place in a
striking point of view, the many comforts they possess by the
suffering, perseverance, and industry of their fathers. All new
settlements formed at a great distance from the parent state, are
exposed to difficulties, till the country becomes improved. Many of the
Colonies in North America, when first settled, were more than once on
the point of total extinction. The remnant of the inhabitants of some
of them were even embarked to abandon the country altogether, when they
were stopped by succour from home. The remembrance of the difficulties
of the first settlers should make their descendants contented with
their present advantages, and instead of wishing to change, to use
their own exertions to improve the country, and duly to appreciate the
many blessings and privileges they enjoy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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