few-and-far-between

Updated: June 24, 2025

In those days, the emigrant's trials were indeed hard, compared with what they are now. The country was quite unsettled, excepting that here and there the nucleus of a small village appeared to vary its loneliness, for the clearings were mostly confined to the vicinity of the Great Lake. There were no plank, gravel, or macadamized roads then; saw and grist-mills were few-and-far-between.

Samuel Strickland - Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West: The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I)