The promise so solemnly solicited was given with one impulse, and it was religiously kept. Animated by the right spirit, the brave fellows addressed themselves to their labour of love; and so earnestly did they work that they cleared an ample space, as if by magic, and before the night set in they had erected a log church, 50 feet by 30, on the same spot on which now stands one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in Canada. While the work was proceeding the poor priest was attacked with ague, and he was compelled to lie at the foot of a great tree on a couch constructed of the coats of the hardy church-builders. When the crisis passed he was again in their midst, assisting them by advice or cheering them by a kindly word; but during that day he was frequently driven beneath the pile of clothing by a new paroxysm of his disorder. In a similar manner the same indefatigable priest erected six other churches in the course of three years: and so careful was he in selecting the best sites, as to position, convenience, and conspicuousness, that in every case these primitive structures have been replaced by good churches, solidly built, with comfortable dwellings for the priests attached. These churches, erected in the midst of the forest, are now every Sunday surrounded by forty or fifty waggons, many of them with a pair of good horses, the property of the substantial yeomanry, nay the gentry of the country, who, little more than a quarter of a century since, were penniless emigrants, with no friend save Providence, and no capital other than their strength, their industry and their intelligence. Let us take one of these pioneers of civilisation as an instance of what in those days they had to endure.
It is now about thirty years since an honest hardworking Irishman determined to go into the woods, and there make a home for himself and his wife and infant child. He had not, as he afterwards used to declare, 'as much as a half-crown in the world.' He however managed to take, and pay for by instalments, 100 acres of land, then
