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66

TOWN OF COLERIDGE.

only a few rare trees were being cut up, by this huge force, when I visited the scene of Sir John's indefatigable exertions, and expensive ingenuity.

Coleridge, being the lower limit of the navigation of the Upper St John, which drains an extensive and improvable country, must hereafter become a town of considerable consequence. This will be hastened and increased if the proposed improvement in the St John, between the head of the tide-waters near Fredericton, one hundred and twenty miles below the Grand Falls, be carried into effect, and if, by means of a canal through the peninsula at Coleridge, the navigation of the upper can be connected with that of the lower part of the river. It is unfortunate that, in a new country like this, there is always more to be done than there is of money to do it with; and that, consequently, many most desirable improvements are obliged to stand over, till more favourable times arrive. Colebrook is a very old military station, which it is now thought expedient to strengthen, from its proximity to the American boundary as fixed by the Ashburton Treaty.

CHAPTER III.

Upper St John.-Colonel Coomb's farm.-Growth and consumption of buckwheat.-Aversion to the oat among settlers of French extraction. -Valley of the Madawaska.-Edmonston, or Little Falls.-Houses of the Acadian farmers.-Tea-dinners.-Ascent of the river Tobique. -Rich upper lands of this river.-Large growth of buckwheat.Why buckwheat is unfavourable to good husbandry.—Terraces of the St John River. Autumnal tints of North America--Ferry farm at Woodstock.-Time of growth of grain crops in New Brunswick.— Sumach trees.-Apple orchards.-Scotch settlement.-Making land at Fredericton.-Rising of stones under the influence of the frost.Turnip culture in the province.-Fire-weeds and Canada thistle. -Stanley, the settlement of the New Brunswick Land Company. -Heavy wheat in this province.-Price of farms.-Hop culture.-Running fire in the fields.-Bilbery swamp.-Farm and opinion of an Aberdonian.-Advice to intending emigrants.-Wild raspberry.Raspberry hay.-Mare's-tail cut for hay.-Boistown.-Great fire of 1825.-Gloomy landscape.-Fires in the forest.-Nakedness of the cleared land. An Irish settler.-Evil of farmers engaging in the timber trade.-Deserted farms, and emigration to the United States, how brought about.-Success of farmers in New Brunswick, who mind their farms only.-Price of farms on the Miramichi River.-Increasing consumption of oatmeal.-Legislative bounty for the erection of oatmeal mills.

MONDAY, 20th August.-At nine in the morning we started for Edmonston, or the Little Falls, at the mouth of the Madawaska, where the latter river empties itself into the St John. The distance is about forty miles. After ascending the right bank about a mile, we crossed the river by a ferry-boat, and continued our journey up the left bank, as only a few miles farther up the state of Maine comes down to the water's edge, and the river

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COLONEL COOMB'S FARM.

forms the international boundary. The soil and country, after we crossed the river, immediately became of inferior quality, and the settlers appeared to be both needy and indifferent cultivators.

They were chiefly French Canadians, brought here to work at the saw-mills; and who, seven years ago, on the failure of this employment, squatted on the pieces of land they now occupy. Freehold grants of land on the Upper St John were withheld by the Government, till about a year ago, when the disputed boundary question had been settled.

At a distance of twelve miles we came to Colonel Coomb's farm, the first piece of good land of any extent, upon the bank of the river, which we had yet passed. The hill-tops on each side of the road and river were generally covered with soft wood; but farther inland the land was said to be better adapted to farming purposes. It is generally upland of second quality, a sort of third-rate soil.

Colonel Coomb's farm contains 1025 acres, of which 80 only were cleared. Of these, 50 acres consist of high intervale or terrace, of a light-coloured clay loam, occasionally sandy, as is the case with nearly all the higher terraces. This intervale land he valued at £15 an acre, the cleared upland at £3, and the whole farm at £1200 to £1500. On the intervale I walked through beautiful crops of potatoes, oats, and Indian corn. heads of the Indian corn were large, and fully formed, but had not yet escaped from their sheath. It was sown on the 28th of May, and the crop I saw would yield 50 or 60, though the average is only about 30 bushels an acre. It generally ripens here.

The

On the poorer soil of the upland, buckwheat is sown, and yields 35 bushels. This grain has been everywhere very extensively cultivated in New Brunswick of late years, and since the wheat has become so precarious a crop.

CULTIVATION OF BUCKWHEAT.

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We saw large breadths of it, on our way up the valley, during the remainder of this day's journey; and, subsequently, in nearly all parts of the province. Colonel Coomb assured us that at least three-fourths of all the bread consumed in this district was made of buckwheat. It is used chiefly in the state of thin cakes, called pancakes. These are generally small, and, when nicely made and browned, very much resemble our English crumpets, with half their thickness. They are eaten hot, and generally with butter and molasses, or maple honey. All over Northern America these pancakes are seen at the breakfast and tea table, and are really very good. As to the nutritive quality of this grain, I find by analyses, which I have since had made, that buckwheat flour possesses about the same value, in this respect, as our best varieties of British-grown wheat.

Potatoes yield here 250 bushels an acre, and oats 30 bushels. Wheat used to yield 25 bushels. Newly cleared upland will yield 20, and old upland 10 to 15 bushels of wheat, when this crop succeeds; but for the last seven years Colonel Coomb's had not raised enough for his own family.

I found that in this valley, as I subsequently found in Lower Canada and in the north-eastern parts of this province, the oat is generally disliked as food by the natives of French extraction. This is one reason why

they live so much on buckwheat cakes, and on bread made of mixed buckwheat, barley, and rye. The oats of New Brunswick are very good, and are said sometimes to weigh as much as 50 lb. a bushel. They form one of the most certain crops of the province; and hence both the cultivation and the use of the oat for food has, of late years, been greatly extending.

The oat is a kind of grain which differs much in quality and in palatableness, according to the variety raised the climate in which it is grown, and the way in which it

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SCOTCH AND ENGLISH OATS.

is manufactured into meal. For these reasons, English oats and oatmeal are generally quite different from, and inferior, both in quality and flavour, to those of Scotland; and hence one reason of the dislike which many profess against an oatmeal diet. Thus the definition of Dr Johnson, instead of being unjustly regarded as a bit of ill-natured satire, should be considered rather as the expression of a wise opinion, in which he was before his time—that, "while Scottish oats were food for man, English oats were only food for horses." As elsewhere in the province, the land on the Upper St John is generally ill-treated,—the take-all-and-give-nothing system being pursued, partly from ignorance and partly from idleness. The old Acadian French, who are settled in numbers in the upper part of this valley, are described as fine industrious men ; but the Lower Canadians, who came across from the shores of the St Lawrence, are represented by the English settlers as a 66 miserable set.' This probably arises from the fact that, as the Irish do with us, the poor Lower Canadians come into and through the country as beggars in great numbers.

There was little change in the character of the country till we were more than half-way to Edmonston. The upland was covered with soft wood, rare clearings, little rich intervale land, and that chiefly at the mouths of the small streams which come into the St John from the north. But beyond this the country improved much, both in beauty and fertility. The river channel opens up into a wide valley, with extended cultivation, scattered farmhouses, and a striking back-ground of mountains towards the north. For the last twelve miles the river had become the boundary-the one bank being British, and the other American, as it is usual to express it. This beautiful valley, with the rich lands which border the river above the mouth of the Madawaska, as far almost as that of the river St Francis, is the peculiar seat of the

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