“Our fare knew no other variety than salt pork, potatoes, and sometimes bread, for breakfast; pork and potatoes for dinner; pork and potatoes for supper; with a porridge of Indian corn-flour for the children.  Sometimes we had the change of pork without potatoes, and potatoes without pork; this was the first year’s fare:  by degrees we got a supply of flour of our own growing, but bruised into a coarse meal with a hand-mill; for we had no water or windmills within many miles of our colony, and good bread was indeed a luxury we did not often have.

“We brought a cow with us, who gave us milk during the spring and summer; but owing to the wild garlic (a wild herb, common to our woods), on which she fed, her milk was scarcely palatable, and for want of shelter and food, she died the following winter, greatly to our sorrow:  we learned experience in this and in many other matters at a hard cost; but now we can profit by it.”

“Did not the difficulties of your first settlement incline you to despond, and regret that you had ever embarked on a life so different to that you had been used to?” I asked.

“They might have had that effect had not a higher motive than mere worldly advancement actuated me in leaving my native country to come hither.  Look you, it was thus:  I had for many years been the pastor of a small village in the mining districts of Cumberland.  I was dear to the hearts of my people, and they were my joy and crown in the Lord.  A number of my parishioners, pressed by poverty and the badness of the times, resolved on emigrating to Canada.

“Urged by a natural and not unlawful desire of bettering their condition, they determined on crossing the Atlantic, encouraged by the offer of considerable grants of wild land, which at that period were freely awarded by Government to persons desirous of becoming colonists.

“But previous to this undertaking, several of the most respectable came to me, and stated their views and reasons for the momentous step they were about to take; and at the same time besought me in the most moving terms, in the name of the rest of their emigrant friends, to accompany them into the Wilderness of the West, lest they should forget their Lord and Saviour when abandoned to their own spiritual guidance.

“At first I was startled at the proposition; it seemed a wild and visionary scheme:  but by degrees I began to dwell with pleasure on the subject.  I had few ties beyond my native village; the income arising from my curacy was too small to make it any great obstacle:  like Goldsmith’s curate, I was.

‘Passing rich with forty pounds a year.’

My heart yearned after my people; ten years I had been their guide and adviser.  I was the friend of the old, and the teacher of the young.  My Mary was chosen from among them; she had no foreign ties to make her look back with regret upon the dwellers of the land in distant places; her youth and maturity had been spent among these very people; so that when I named to her the desire of my parishioners, and she also perceived that my own wishes went with them, she stifled any regretful feeling that might have arisen in her breast, and replied to me in the words of Ruth:—­