The book Arran; - Cook Clan

IMPROVEMENT AND EMIGRATION 223
bear, fishing trout, and be able to turn their hands to anywork
in wood or iron. Some would go up the Ottawa in
the winter to labour in the lumber camps. Till the crops
were properly set agoing everything possible had to be done
to earn money for the supply of necessaries of food and
clothing. Even when the wheat and barley and potatoes
were flourishing in the fertile soil, there was pinching, for
some seasons, between the old and new crops. At such a
time Highland pride had to fence with Highland generosity.
The clothing brought from home gave out, and there had to
be new supplies from the wool of their own sheep, the wool
being put through all the processes at home before the erection
of carding-mills. Trousers and coats were of a grey
stuff composed, as in Arran, of the mixed black and white
wool; dandier shirts and dresses of checks dyed with hemlock
and butternut bark.
Travelling was hard before the making of roads and to
some degree dangerous also, from the presence of bears and
the chance of losing one's way ;
and there were some mishaps
in the forest. On the snow there was the comfort and
grandeur of the ox-sleigh, used mostly in going to church.
Oxen and horses were at first very scarce, but gradually
accumulated. Shopping was no light matter with the
nearest store thirty-six miles away, and no post-office nearer
than Quebec. And at the outset everything had to be
carried by hand or on the back. Women, even, thus bore
their burdens of maple- sugar, butter, cheese, etc., and
brought back groceries, crockery, and such like—a trip of
seventy-two miles. It is recorded of a John Sillars that he
bought a hundredweight of flour at Quebec, had it ferried
across to St. Nicholas, and then carried the load on his back
for forty miles to his home.
Until a proper clergyman was settled in the district,
marriages were as long-distanced an affair as shopping.
For a time the ceremony meant a trip to Quebec, that is