It froze hard during the night.  The ice was fully half an inch thick on the bays, and along the margin of the lake we were obliged to break a passage for the skiff for upwards of fifty yards before we got into clear water.  It was cold, and blew fresh from the north-west, and the wind being directly down the lake, caused a heavy swell, which increased every minute.  As the gale freshened, our skiff shipped so much water that we thought it prudent to put across to the Alnwick shore, which was more under the lee, being sheltered by islands.  While passing near one of these, I observed some person walking to and fro, apparently making signals of distress.  I called Redpath’s attention to this, and bade him “row to the shore that we might ascertain what he wanted.”  This our boatman positively refused to do, saying that “he had hired himself to ferry us to Tidy’s, and he was not bound to go half a mile out of his way to hunt after every infernal Ingine (Indian) we might see on our road.”

I, however, insisted on his immediately complying with my request.  It was fortunate I did so, for on landing we found a man walking backwards and forwards, trying to keep himself warm.  Indeed, the poor fellow looked nearly frozen.  He seemed to have lost all power over his limbs, and was quite unable to articulate.  I made Redpath light a fire, and in the meantime I gave the man a dram from our whiskey-bottle, which greatly revived him.  We soon had a blazing fire, which had the desired effect of unloosing the tongue of our new acquaintance, and he informed us, “he was one of the Irish emigrants sent off by Government under the superintendence of the Honourable Peter Robinson; that several hundreds of them had been forwarded from Cobourg to Rice Lake, a few days before, on their way to the new settlements up the Otonabee River, and were now camped at Tidy’s.  He and his friend, a man of the name of Daly, a tailor by trade, wished to settle in the township of Asphodel, on the River Trent.  They had accordingly taken a boat and had rowed down the lake in the hope of reaching Crook’s Rapids on the Trent before nightfall.  Irishman-like, their only stores for the voyage consisted of a bottle of whiskey, to which it appears they applied themselves more diligently than to the navigation of their boat, which they let drift at the mercy of the winds and waves while they slept.

They did not wake up from their drunken slumbers till dark, when they found themselves stuck in a rice bed, and unable to extricate themselves from the dilemma in which they were placed; whereupon they again had recourse to the bottle, which this time proved fatal to Daly who, being very drunk, fell overboard.  His companion, however, managed to catch hold of him and succeeded in getting him into the boat only to suffer a more lingering death, for he was frozen stiff before morning dawned.  The survivor had covered his unfortunate companion with a blanket, the only one they had with them, in the hope it would keep him from perishing with cold during the night, which care, however, proved unavailing.  He managed at dawn to extricate the boat from the rice bed, but not being able to row so large a boat, especially in his present condition, she drifted upon the point of the island on which we found him.