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