Family jars sometimes rise to feuds, and false surmises grow into untruthful legends. The period of famine is even yet remembered by a few, whose memory reaches back to the immediately succeeding years, and the descendants of the sufferers, speak of that time with peculiar feelings, imbibed from their parents; and many are the touching stories even yet related of this sad first page in the history of Upper Canada, when from Lower Canada to the outskirts of the settlement was heard the cry for _bread! bread! bread!_ The year of the famine is spoken of sometimes as the “scarce year,” sometimes as the “hungry year,” or the “hard summer.” The extreme distress seems to have commenced in the year 1787. With some, it lasted a part of a year, with others a year, and with others upwards of a year. The height of the distress was during the spring and early summer of 1788. But plenty to all, did not come till the summer of 1789. The writer has in his possession accounts of many instances of extreme suffering, during the famine, and for years after, through the ten townships. A few will here be given, as briefly as may be possible. One, who settled in the Sixth Township, (who was subsequently a Member of Parliament for twenty years,) with wife and children, endured great suffering. Their flour being exhausted he sent money to Quebec for some more flour, but his money was sent back; there was none to be had. The wife tried as an experiment to make bread out of some wheat bran, which was bought at a dollar a bushel. She failed to make bread, but it was eaten as a stir-about. Upon this, with Indian Cabbage, or “Cale,” “a plant with a large leaf,” also wild potatoes or ground-nuts, the family lived for many a week. In the spring they procured some potatoes to plant, but the potatoe eye alone was planted, the other portion being reserved for food. One of the daughters, in her extreme hunger digged up for days, some of the potatoe rind and ate it. One day, her father caught her at it, and seized hold of her arm to punish her, for forgetting the requirements of the future, but he found her arms so emaciated that his heart melted in pity for the starving child. Others used to eat a plant called butternut, and another pig-weed. Children would steal out at night with stolen potatoes, and roast them at the burning log heap, and consider them a great treat. One individual has left the record that she used to allay the pangs of hunger by eating a little salt. But the majority of the settlers had no salt, and game and fish, when it could be caught, was eaten without that condiment. Even at a later date, salt was a scarce and dear article as the following will show: “Sydney, 20th November, 1792—Received from Mr. John Ferguson, one barrel of salt, for which I am to pay nine dollars.” (Signed), John German. Often when fish or game was caught, it was forthwith roasted, without waiting to go home to have it dressed. As spring advanced, and