MONEY A SETTLER SHOULD HAVE.

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the crops have failed so many years, few in this settlement are in debt. Oatmeal porridge and milk twice a-day, and oatmeal cakes, are the prevailing diet. Odds and ends, as he called sugar, tea, &c., are obtained by the sale of butter and cheese.

Since the failure of the potato, the bush-bean--a prolific French or kidney bean, of which many varieties are cultivated in the United States-has been much grown in this district. It comes a fortnight earlier than the potato, is very prolific, and, when green, is an excellent substitute for the potato. The dry bean is usually baked with pork. This vegetable would probably succeed well in our climate, and as a substitute for the potato, if only in part, is well deserving of a trial among us.

Mr M'Lean thinks a man would do well in Northumberland, who could come over with £50 in his pocket, and better with £100. But he ought not to have too much, if he is to labour contentedly, and to prosper. He had himself only £5 when he settled, besides three carts and a year's provisions.

If these statements of Mr M'Lean are got by heart by the intending emigrant to the wilderness parts of North America, he will require little other guidance to comfort, prosperity, and contentment.

Three miles farther, over a flat coal sandstone country, brought us to the Black River, which also empties itself into the Miramichi Bay, has good heavy land along its banks, and a prosperous agricultural settlement. The next twelve miles to the Bay-du-Vin River, is over a poor sandy country, with occasional patches of cold clay and of peat bog, resting on the flat impervious sand

stones.

The Bay-du-Vin Settlement consists of about a dozen Irish families, who have a school and Catholic chapel. The schoolmaster said he had forty boys at school, but the parents were poor, and paid little; so that his chief

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ENCOURAGEMENT TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

support was the provincial grant of £20 which he annually received. In regard to their elementary schools, the Provincial Legislature has lately adopted important means of improvement in the establishment of training schools at St John and Fredericton. Every settlement in the province has its school. The settlers build a schoolhouse, and select a master. This master must then—if not a pupil of the training school, or if he has not been previously examined-undergo an examination by the master of the training school, and, according to his proficiency, he receives a certificate, which entitles him to an annual stipend of £10, £20, or £30. As yet, the training schools have not been able to supply instructed masters for all the schools; houses are not in most places built for the masters, and the schools are usually shut up in the summer months. This is very much the case also with the schools in the newer states of the Union, and as the population becomes more dense, these evils will disappear. In the principal town of each county a grammar-school is established, to which larger grants are given. In 1848, the grants to parish and Madras schools amounted to £13,882.

The schoolmaster teaches the religious catechism which the parents of his pupils wish their children to learn. Thus the same master sometimes teaches in the same school the Church of England Catechism, the Assembly's Catechism, and that of the Romish Church. The schoolmaster at Bay du Vin was surprised that I should think there was anything remarkable in his being required to teach all the three, though he said he had once before heard some one make remarks regarding it. He was himself a Roman Catholic; but it was enough for him that he had been ordered to do it.

We drove rapidly over the remaining twenty-two miles to Richibucto. This tract of country presented the common level surface, and the sandy, often thin, poor,

SWEET FERN SOILS.

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and stony soils which distinguish so much of the coal measures of New Brunswick. We crossed on our way the Kouchibouguac, the Kouchibouguasis, and the Aldouane rivers, flowing from the west; and for some distance on each side of these rivers, good land and fine settlements were almost universally to be seen. On the flat country, the clearings are few and thinly scattered. Hardwood ridges of land now and then rose above the flat country, and on these were more valuable farms and settlements. But, as I came over this ground again in the ensuing October, I omit any further observations in this place.

28th. I left Richibucto at eight in the morning. It was at first misty, but by degrees became excessively hot. After a few miles of better land, the soil and country became very similar to that we passed over yesterday-flat, poor, pine-clad, sandy soils, except where rivulets and armlets of the sea occurred. Here better land, and a few settlers, as usual, occurred. Fifteen miles brought us to the Big Buctouche River, near its mouth, where it expands into an arm of the sea, and falls into Northumberland Strait, opposite to Prince Edward's Island. Tide-water here extends six or eight miles above the bridge and harbour; and along the inland bay there is much cleared land, and some good farms.

On the sandy soils of the county of Kent, north and south of Richibucto, I saw, for the first time in New Brunswick, the sweet fern (Comptonia asplenifolia,) which had previously arrested my attention in the great sandy plain of Aylesford, in the Annapolis Valley between Windsor and Bridgetown. I afterwards saw it on many other of the more barren sandy portions of the north-eastern part of this province. It is a saying in some of our own rural districts, that, where the common

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PATIENT TEMPER OF THE HABITANTS.

fern grows naturally, something more valuable may be made to grow by art—and so it was remarked to me of the sweet fern in Nova Scotia; but except for rye or buckwheat, or the horse-chesnut, or some similar sandloving plants, the soils on which the Comptonia abounded have generally appeared to me very little adapted to the economical production of vegetable forms likely to minister to the sustenance of man.

Eleven miles farther brought us to the Cocagne River, in the neighbourhood of which there are extensive clearings, and much improved land, but generally light and sandy. A shade of red had begun some time ago to appear in the soil, as if a portion of red drift from the old red sandstones of Prince Edward's Island had been transported, and mixed up with the natural debris of the coal measures of the country.

We saw a few patches of Indian corn on our route to-day, generally poor crops, unlike what we had seen upon the St John, and on the farms of the old French settlers. Along this coast the French are numerous. They have suffered much from the failures of the crops during the last two or three years, but few have left the country. They are a much more patient and contented race than the Anglo-Saxon settlers, who are always painting in brighter colours the beauty and fertility of places they have never seen, and shading more deeply the evils that surround them. Six miles beyond Cocagne I stopped at a farm of 500 acres, bought by its owner thirty years ago for £14, and now valued, with the stock upon it, to the poor-rate at £1000. Yet this man, who had so prospered, wished to sell his farm, that he might start for Indiana. He had no good reason to give for going but the same failure of crops which the humbler habitants so patiently bear. It is to be hoped that, both for Europe and America, these visitations are now for a period overpast.

From Cocagne is nine miles to Shediac, a village of some twenty houses, with a little-frequented harbour, which, among the New Brunswick gourmands, is famed for its oysters. The oysters of this coast, and of the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence generally, are very different in size and appearance from our comparatively small English oysters. They are of a species known as the Canadian oyster (Ostrea canadensis,) are very large, and inhabit a shell which is long, narrow, massive, somewhat curved, and often attains a length of eight inches. The heavy shells are frequently burned into lime, and are occasionally seen in large heaps on the road-sides, collected for this purpose. I don't know to what extent it actually takes place, but I was told that the New Brunswick pigs have learned to open and relish the oysters, and that they frequent the sea-shore and contrive to feed upon them!

We had arrived at Shediac in good time for dinner; but as I wished to accomplish the remaining thirteen miles of my day's journey while it was still light, I left my provincial friends to enjoy their oyster feast, mounted a single horse car, with a young habitant for my guide, and drove on to the Bend, as it is called, on the river Petitcodiac. There were many fires to be seen raging in the woods, and the evening came on early in consequence of the smoke with which the air was everywhere filled.

The Bend is a village which derives its name from being situated at the point where the river Petitcodiac, which had been flowing north-east, bends suddenly almost at a right angle, and flows south-east towards Shepody Bay, one of the head forks of the Bay of Fundy. The tide flows up from this bay a distance of 20 miles, and rises at common tides 22 feet 8 inches, and at the highest tides 28 feet 8 inches. It rushes up with a bore which at spring-tides is 5 or six feet high, and to