46

CITY OF FREDERICTON.

legislative halls, well-built streets, barracks for a thousand men, and a population probably of four or five thousand people. The soil of the level on which it stands is light and sandy, resting at a variable depth on a bed of clay. The hill-slope behind is in general very stony, and costly to reclaim, and is covered for the most part with the native forest of pine. Opposite the town is the mouth of the Nashwauk, a considerable stream, which here falls into the St John; and a little above the town that of the Nashwauksis, or little Nashwauk. The former is navigable for some distance into the interior.

The St John itself is here confined within higher sloping banks, and is about three-quarters of a mile wide. The influence of the tide is observed about four miles above the town; and at Fredericton it seldom rises more than fifteen inches, so that it may be said to be situated at the head of tide-water. Steam and horse ferries are established on the river, by which a regular communication is kept up with the opposite shore.

16th August.-At Fredericton I was joined by Mr James Brown, a member of the Provincial Assembly, and by Dr Robb, Professor of Natural History in King's College, who accompanied me during the whole of my subsequent tour in the province, and to both of whom I was indebted for much information and assistance. The familiarity of the former with the practical agriculture and economical condition of the province, and of the latter with its geology, in so far as it had previously been made out, enabled me to arrive much more rapidly at satisfactory conclusions, in regard to the agricultural capabilities of the province, than I should otherwise have been able to do.

Early this morning we started in an open carriage up the right bank of the river, and stopped to breakfast at Oakhill, a farm lately bought by Mr Jardine, a merchant

A FARM ON THE ST JOHN.

47

of St John, and occupied by Mr Gray, a Scottish farmer, who had recently quitted the neighbourhood of Girvan in Ayrshire, for the purpose of settling in New Brunswick. We found him busy improving and enlarging his farm-buildings, and after breakfast we walked over his farm. As it is the first farm I examined in the province, I may be permitted to give some general description of it.

It consists of a thousand acres in all, of which two hundred are cleared, and eight hundred in forest, chiefly soft (pine), but some of it hardwood. It contains land of three kinds. First, an island in the river of eighty acres, to which I crossed, and found it a free grey loamy clay full of natural richness, and subject to be overflowed only twice during the last thirty years. Second, intervale land, generally light and sandy, but bearing in some places good turnips, and resting upon a loamy clay resembling that of the island, at a depth in some places of no more than eighteen inches from the surface. I do not know the extent of this intervale, on which the house stands. Third, the rest is upland, on the slopes generally very stony, but in other parts of the farm capable of being easily cleared. But two hundred acres of cleared land form a large farm where labour is scarce and dear.

This farm cost about two thousand pounds currency (£1600 sterling), or two pounds an acre over head; and this may be considered about the present price of such mixed farms on the upper St John. It had been exhausted by the last holder by a system of selling off everything—hay, corn, potatoes-the common system, in fact, of North America of selling everything for which a market can be got; and taking no trouble to put anything into the soil in return.

Farming on shares, the Metayer system, is practised in the Provinces and New England states, more than our

48

LETTING LAND ON SHARES.

home method of paying rents. In this way a man who has nothing receives a farm, with stock, implements, and seed, from the owner, provides all the labour or works the farm, and receives half the produce of cheese, stock, grain, potatoes, &c. This is said to be, in general, rather a better thing for the cultivator than for the owner. In most cases, however, there are specialties in the bargain, the owner receiving more or less according to the condition, position, or richness of the farm. I have already spoken of the system of reckoning the value of land for renting by the quantity of hay it will produce.

Leaving Mr Gray's, we continued our drive up the river. Hitherto we had been upon the grey sandstones, some beds of which, from the quantity of earthy felspar cement they contain, are capable of yielding soils of fair quality. We now came upon the slate rocks, and upon these we continued, with the intervention of a narrow band of red sandstone, and occasional masses of trap, or trap-like metamorphic slates, for upwards of twenty miles. We then crossed a broad zone of granite, which, like a long ribbon, stretches across the province in a north-east and south-west direction, from the Bay de Chaleurs down to this part of the River St John, and hence over into Maine.

On the slates good land often occurs; but, as the river banks are high, a journey along the river side is not favourable to an estimate of the quality of the upland. The granite region, and much of the slate country adjoining it, are thickly strewed with stones; though the soil itself, as seen among the stones, or where the stones are removed, is very good. Rich intervale land and occasional islands were seen along the river and the cleared openings we passed. The frequent boldness and beauty of the landscape, the varying forms and fresh verdure of the trees-elm, butter-nut, black-birch, maple, oak, beech, cypress, and numerous pines-with the good

VARIETIES OF INTERVALE LAND.

49

roads along which we passed, and a good dinner by the way, and agreeable companions, full of information new to me, made the day glide on very pleasantly, till we reached the mouth of Eel River, a distance of fifty miles from Fredericton, where we took up our quarters for the night.

Of the intervale land there are three varieties at least along the river St John. The best is that which is just above the present high water, or usual flood level, of the river. It is generally a free rich loam, easily tilled, and producing large returns of hay, a crop here so highly valued. The next is a ledge from eight to twenty feet above the former, which is usually of a lighter quality, and less valuable-sometimes sandy, gravelly, and almost worthless. On these dry worthless sands, and as a token of their worthlessness, springs up the fragrant everlasting, Gnaphalium polycephalum, with which I had the opportunity of becoming very familiar before I quitted the province of New Brunswick.

At a higher level still, the third intervale land occurs; and besides the sand and gravel of which it not unfrequently consists, it carries stones or boulders, occasionally in considerable numbers.

These different intervales are in reality successive terraces, rising to different elevations above the existing bed of the river, but showing the different heights at which the water has stood since the stream began to flow in its present channel.

I have alluded in the commencement of this Chapter to the emigration from the province, which to some had been the cause of much anxiety. I heard at this place of the first striking example of the height to which the emigration fever will run. About eight miles from the mouth of the Eel river lies the Howard settlement, situated on a tract of good second-rate upland, in the

VOL. I.

D

township of Dumfries. In this settlement a farm is at present offered for sale, consisting of 200 acres, of which 60 acres are cleared. Four acres are in wheat, 2 in Indian corn, 24 bushels of oats have been sown, 11⁄2 of buckwheat, and 20 of potatoes. There are also four cows, two oxen, two horses, two heifers, fifteen sheep, 20 tons of hay, with a house 20 feet by 30, and a barn 30 feet by 40. The whole offered for £140 currency (£112 sterling.) The only condition is that of ready money. The owner is said to be mad to go to Wisconsin. It ought not to surprise us that some of those who have shifted once-breaking loose from all ties of place and blood-should after a time have another access of the roving fit, and, right or wrong, insist on moving a second or a third time. Changing their country is to many like a change in their religion-they don't know when or where they ought to stop.

17th August. This morning, the rest of our party proceeding by land, Dr Robb and myself went up the river in a canoe, as far as Woodstock, that we might see better the general character of the country on either side of the river, and look out for a bed of rock-salt, which a sharp New Englander alleged to exist somewhere by the way. As to the latter point, as the river runs all the way through old slate rocks, our exploration was of course unsuccessful; but we found a beautiful white vein of quartz, which looked white and glistening like salt, and had most probably been mistaken for it. The shallowness of the river at this season of the year made the pulling and polling heavy, so that we spent a large portion of the day in going over these twelve miles.

A few miles below Woodstock we stopped to look at a farm on the left bank of the river, owned and occupied by Mr Rankin. It consists of about 1100 acres of intervale and upland, of which 100 were in crop, meadow, and pasture, chiefly on the intervale land. It is an