encamped on the shores of Lake Ontario, near Cobourg, waiting for means of transport to their intended settlement, in what is now the rich and fertile county of Peterborough, then mostly a verdant wilderness. These people were the pioneers of civilisation, for their future home was fully forty miles distant from the frontier settlement of that day. There was not then even the semblance of a track through the wooded country which they had to traverse, and a kind of road had to be cut from Lake Ontario to Rice Lake, a distance of twelve miles through the tangled forest. Rice Lake had then to be crossed, and the rapid and turgid Otanabee, for the distance of twenty-five miles, was to be ascended by this little army of settlers. In order to cross the lake and ascend the river, three boats were constructed, and propelled on wheels over the rough track from the one lake to the other; but when this part of the difficulty was got over, and the baggage and provisions were brought so far in safety, it was found that, owing to the dryness of the season, and the consequent shallowness of the waters of the Otanabee, it was impossible to proceed without additional means of transport; so a great boat of light draught, sixty feet in length, by eight feet in width, had to be at once constructed, and with the aid of stout rowers, frequently relieving each other, this vessel was steered through the rapids, and got somehow over the shallows. After difficulties and hard ships, enough to fill the poor adventurers with despair—which difficulties and hardships were aggravated by fever and ague, that alike unsparingly attacked the robust and the delicate, the strong on whom the weak relied, and the weak who were thus rendered still more helpless—they arrived at what is now known as one of the most beautiful and prosperous towns in Canada, and was then but a trackless wilderness. Those who arrived first commenced, immediately to put up rude huts, or wigwams, made of great strips of bark, branches of trees, and sods; and as
