It Was Only Eight O'clock A.M., And We Had Still Four
Hours To Dinner, Which Gave Us Ample Leisure To Listen To The Old
Man's Stories, Ramble Round The Premises, And Observe All The
Striking Features Of The Place.
Mr. Y - - was a Catholic, and the son of a respectable farmer from
the south of Ireland.
Some few years before, he had emigrated with
a large family of seven sons and two daughters, and being fond of
field sports, and greatly taken with the beauty of the locality in
which he had pitched his tent in the wilderness, he determined to
raise a mill upon the dam which Nature had provided to his hands,
and wait patiently until the increasing immigration should settle
the townships of Smith and Douro, render the property valuable,
and bring plenty of grist to the mill.
He was not far wrong in his calculations; and though, for the first
few years, he subsisted entirely by hunting, fishing, and raising
what potatoes and wheat he required for his own family, on the most
fertile spots he could find on his barren lot, very little corn
passed through the mill.
At the time we visited his place, he was driving a thriving trade,
and all the wheat that was grown in the neighbourhood was brought
by water to be ground at Y - -'s mill.
He had lost his wife a few years after coming to the country; but
his two daughters, Betty and Norah, were excellent housewives, and
amply supplied her loss.
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