100 THE OAT TAKING THE PLACE OF BUCKWHEAT. Boistown, where we stopped to bait, the landlord told me of a farm on the river, containing 1500 acres, having 60 cleared-and of these 20 were intervale land, producing 30 to 35 tons of hay per acre-which could be obtained for £150 to £200. Five years ago this farm would have brought £400 or £500. A few miles farther on, after passing the mouth of the Renous river, which comes in from the left, the land became of better quality. Though we were still upon sandstones of the coal measures, and the surface stones were chiefly sandstone boulders, sometimes mixed with frequent masses of granite, yet the soil was more tenacious and clayey; and good crops of wheat and oats were ripening upon many of the wayside farms we passed. On the Miramichi we looked in vain for the frequent fields of buckwheat, which we had seen upon the St John. The oat here takes its place, and is gradually assuming an important place as an article of ordinary diet among the people. Until lately, the humblest people refused to eat anything but the finest flour. They even thought they could not live upon anything else. But the failure of home wheat, and the want of money to buy that imported from Canada or the United States, has had the salutary effect of compelling the people to try the virtues of their own excellent oats; and it is to be hoped they will every year become more and more attached to this most nutritive grain. The Provincial Legislature have most judiciously aided this alteration by offering bounties for the erection of oat-meal mills throughout the province, the want of which had hitherto been almost a complete bar to the use of the oat as human food-especially in the newly settled districts, where the need was most urgent, and the want most felt. In 1847 the sum of £500 was paid out of the Provincial Treasury for this purpose; and as such mills LOWER PART OF THE RIVER. 101 are not costly, the wants of many districts have been already fully supplied. About sunset we reached the ferry across the northwest, where it joins the main or south-west Miramichi river, and travelled the remaining ten miles to Douglas chiefly in the dark. The land is generally of better quality along this lower part of the river, is more extensively cleared, and more skilfully cultivated. Newcastle, a considerable village four miles below the junction of the north-west river, and Douglas, a town six miles farther down, are supported in part by their traffic with the country farmers, but chiefly by the lumber-trade, of which the mouth of the Miramichi has long been an important centre. Soon after leaving Newcastle, we met with an accident by which the pole of our carriage was broken-a circumstance of the more importance as we had still some hills to descend before we could reach Douglas. But my travelling companion, Mr Brown, was equal to any emergency. A spare rope, and a couple of stakes from the fence, in his hands soon placed us again in marching order; so that, with a little care, and by walking on foot down the dark slopes, we reached Douglastown in safety before midnight. CHAPTER IV. Douglastown.-Great heat.-Value of farms.-Mode of reclaiming forest land.-Expense of clearing soon repaid.-Plague of grasshoppers, in New Brunswick and New England. Legislative grants for the promotion of agriculture. Average produce, prices and wages in Northumberland county. - Town of Chatham. - Golden rod, a troublesome weed.-North American oaks.-European weeds on the cleared lands. — History of an Annandale settler. Bush-bean.-Provincial encouragement to elementary and grammar schools. -Bay-du- Vin schoolmaster.-Richibucto.-Buctouche river.-Sweet fern soils. Patience and contentment of the French settlers, and restlessness of the Anglo-Saxons.—Shediac, famed for its oysters.-The Bend-Bore of the river Petitcodiac.-Height of high water above that of the Bay.— Country between the Bend and the city of St John.-Case of Mr Nixon, and his opinion of New Brunswick as a poor man's country.— Use of river mud as an improver of the soil. - Greater industry among new settlers than among the native-born.-Blighting of buckwheat.-Burned Bridge.-Beauty of Sussex Vale.-Mr Evanson's home farm, its value and produce.-Mr Aiton's farm.-Rent and course of cropping. Hampton, and its conglomerate soils. Fine-looking yeomen of New Brunswick.-Price of farms around Hampton.-A discontented Irishman.-Dyked marshes of St John and the Atlantic border. - Farms around St John, their quality and value. — Rate of wages for agricultural labour in the several counties of the province. AUGUST 27.-Yesterday and to-day have been excessively hot. We found it so as we travelled down the river in our open carriage, but we had no means of ascertaining the temperature. At Douglastown, I am informed that the thermometer has frequently stood during the past week as high as 95° Fahr. in the shade. On this, and a subsequent visit to the Miramichi, I was much indebted to the hospitality of Mr Rankine, one of MR PORTER'S FARMS. 103 the oldest resident merchants, and the representative of a wealthy firm long connected with the North American colonial trade. I visited with him to-day the farm of Mr John Porter, on which I found good land, well cultivated, with fair crops of wheat and oats, and a field of excellent turnips, (Aberdeen yellows.) The wheat averages 20 bushels per acre, of 60 to 65 lb., and the oats 40 bushels of 37 to 40 lb. On the upland, where the soil is heavier, the oats weigh as high as 48 lb. This farm is mostly flat land-an extension of the high intervale on which the town stands. It consists of 80 acres, of which 60 are cleared, and is worth £400, but would at present sell for £300. He assured me that, though he has a large family, he could make a living off this farm. * - Above this, the same gentleman possesses another farm on the upland. It is stronger land, and produces better oats; but it is more difficult to work, and is later in spring. It consists of 150 acres, of which 50 are cleared, yields 15 tons of hay, lets for a money-rent of £33, and is valued at £400, all currency. Ten years ago, this farm was let for £50. The tenants have never done anything else but farm, and they have been enabled to support their families and pay their rents though, as I have already remarked, the renting of farms is not a popular or much practised mode in this country. It is an excellent plan, however, for a new beginner, who wishes to know something of the country before he fixes upon a spot for his permanent residence. Much of the moving, and of the want of local attachment which is seen in North America, is probably to be ascribed to the hasty settlement which circumstances compel so many emigrants to make on their arrival in America. The course of cropping adopted by a skilful man like * £20 sterling make £25 provincial currency. 104 TREATMENT OF NEWLY CLEARED LAND. Mr Porter, on clearing new land from the forest, will give the reader an idea of the general character of the treatment to which less prudent men subject their land. He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop of potatoes, followed by one of wheat with grass seeds. Nine successive crops of hay follow in as many years; after which the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, a crop of wheat is taken; it is then manured for the first time, or limed, and laid down again for a similar succession of crops of hay. This treatment is hard enough; but the unskilful man, after burning and spreading the ashes, takes two or three or more crops of grain, leaves it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as it bears a crop which is worth the cutting-after all which he either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again into the wilderness state. In clearing land in this district, it is calculated that the first three crops, which are merely harrowed in, will pay all the expense of cutting the timber, burning, and cultivating. If the settler then abandon it, he is no loser: everything he cuts off it afterwards is gain, or any sum for which he can sell his cleared land. This is a great inducement to the exhausting system, which clears annually new land for grain, cuts for hay all which the old cropped land will yield, till it is again overrun with a young growth of wood, and neither saves, collects, nor values manure. This system is barbarous, reprehensible, and wasteful to the country—and yet it is probably the method which yields a ready sustenance to the settler's family at the smallest expense of mental and bodily labour. Our condemnation of the pioneers of civilisation in a new country ought not, therefore, to be too severe or indiscriminate. With all our skill, we English farmers and teachers of agricultural science should, in the same circumstances, probably do just the same, so long as land was plenty, labour scarce and dear, markets few and distant, and |