FISHERIES OF NOVA SCOTIA.

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closed up by ice. This latter circumstance, if a railway should be made from Halifax to the St Lawrence, ought to place the West India trade of a large portion of the Canadas and of New Brunswick in the hands of the Nova Scotia merchants while all the circumstances taken together will doubtless, in the end, make them the chief purveyors of fish both to Europe and America. At present, they complain of the bounties given by their several Governments to the French and United States fishermen. But bounties are in all countries only a temporary expedient: one part of a people gets tired at last, of paying another part to do what is not otherwise profitable; bounties are therefore abolished, and employment in consequence languishes. The fisheries of Nova Scotia are the surer to last that they are permitted or encouraged to spring up naturally, without artificial stimulus, and in the face of an ardent competition.

Of the coast fisheries, the most important to the trade of Halifax is that of mackerel. This fish abounds along the whole shores, but the best takes are usually made in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off the shores of Cape Breton and Prince Edward's Island, and especially at Canseau, where the quantity of fish has been "so great at times as actually to obstruct navigation." The excitement caused by the arrival of a shoal of mackerel, is thus described by Judge Haliburton, in The Old Judge:

"Well, when our friends the mackarel strike in towards the shore, and travel round the province to the northward, the whole coasting population is on the stir too. Perhaps there never was seen, under the blessed light of the sun, anything like the everlasting number of mackarel in one shoal on our sea-coast. Millions is too little a word for it; acres of them is too small a tarm to give a right notion; miles of them, perhaps, is more like the thing;

* Gesner's Industrial Resources, p. 124.

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SHOALS AND EXPORTS OF MACKEREL.

and, when they rise to the surface, it's a solid body of fish you sail through. It's a beautiful sight to see them come tumbling into a harbour, head over tail, and tail over head, jumping and thumping, sputtering and fluttering, lashing and thrashing, with a gurgling kind of sound, as much as to say, 'Here we are, my hearties! How are you off for salt? Is your barrels all ready?—because we are. So bear a hand and out with your nets, as we are off to the next harbour to-morrow, and don't wait for such lazy fellows as you be.'"*

A ready market for this fish is found in the United States; and the absolute as well as comparative value of the trade to Nova Scotia, may be judged of from the following return of the quantities of pickled fish of the most plentiful kinds, exported from Halifax in 1847:

From Cape Breton and Newfoundland the largest export consists of cod-fish.

The day after my arrival at Halifax, I drove round the peninsula on which the city stands, and up the northwest arm—an inlet or creek, by which the peninsula is formed, and which runs inland from the bay a few miles behind Halifax.

To one who wishes to form a general idea of the agricultural character and capabilities, as well as of the geological structure and botanical relations of the Atlantic border of the province, this drive is very instructive. On a clear sunny day the views are beautiful, and the ride most exhilarating. The old slate rocks are interspersed with masses of granite-probably, in many cases,

* The Old Judge, by Sam Slick, vol. ii. p. 96.

COUNTRY ROUND HALIFAX.

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only old stratified rocks, a little more changed than themselves—while stunted pine-woods and peaty hollows form the principal features of the surface. Anciently submerged, however, as all this country has been, there are everywhere visible traces of those currents or glaciers which about the same period scratched and grooved so large a portion of the northern continents of Europe and America. Scratches, continuous, deeply cut, generally parallel, but frequently crossing each other at angles of ten to twenty degrees, are beautifully seen on the broad naked granite surface of Point Pleasant, on which the fort stands, upwards of a hundred feet above the sea, and at other places in that immediate neighbourhood. These markings, with the accumulated drift and boulders, strengthen more the general likeness of the country to what the visitor may have seen about Stockholm in Sweden, or Helsingfors in Finland.

Difficult to the farmer, and eminently stony, the country about Halifax really is. In some places, boulders of various sizes are scattered sparsely over the surface; in others they literally cover the land; while in rarer spots they are heaped upon each other, as if intentionally accumulated for some after use. One ought to visit a country like this, while new to the plough, in order to understand what must have been the original condition of much of the land in our own country, which the successive labours of many generations have now smoothed and levelled.

When Cæsar invaded Britain, stony deserts might exist where the plough now easily cuts the soil; so that the greater produce is not due alone to the higher skill of those who now cultivate the land, but more probably to the effect of labour and hard toil expended upon it by drudging serfs in former ages. The northern end of Lough Corrib, in Ireland, would probably still bear a comparison with many of these difficult places in North America. The huge walls of stones which the peasantry

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PROSPECTS OF THIS STONY SURFACE.

have gathered from their fields in other parts of the same island, indicate that, within comparatively recent periods, they have been little better; while what England has been may be inferred from the fact that, in an oldfarmed district in Northumberland, I have myself known of six hundred cart-loads of trap boulders being raised and carried out of a single field. I am less inclined, therefore, than some may be to bewail as hopeless the apparently unimproveable condition even of the stonier parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The progress of agriculture in such districts is necessarily slow, but a thousand years will do for these countries infinitely more than it has done for us. Productive fields and farms have indeed already risen in many places from among the rocks and stones around the city of Halifax. market it affords for produce, and the wealth from time to time accumulated by its merchants, have had their effect upon the surface; and gardens and fields and small farms have gradually spread their cheerful surfaces along the hilly slopes which skirt the beautiful bay. But where and while such stony tracts occur, arable farming on a large scale can never be carried on. It is not in this neighbourhood, therefore, that the agricultural emigrant is to look for those rural attractions which are to dispose him to settle in Nova Scotia.

The

One would scarcely expect that much should ever have been done in such a locality for the general promotion of North American agriculture. And yet I was much interested to meet with a work published at Halifax in 1822, under the title of Letters of Agricola, by John Young, Esq.-the father, I believe, of the present Attorney-General of the province-which, for sound knowledge of the subject, both practical and scientific, for honest common sense, and for a warm but prudent zeal to improve the country in which he lived, is, as a whole, superior to any other book of the time I have hitherto

LETTERS OF AGRICOLA.

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met with in any language. It was not to be wondered at that, through the exertions of Mr Young, a provincial Board of Agriculture should have been established, and many county agricultural societies, which still exist, though less patriotically urged forward, perhaps, than in his time.

The publication of the Letters of Agricola marks an era in the agricultural history of the province; the writings of the author of Sam Slick an era, not only in its social history, but in that of the steam traffic and intercourse of the world. Both writers must rank among the truest patriots of Nova Scotia. Is there none in the province now who can take up the mantle of Young again, and re-awaken, in behalf of agriculture, the spirit which, thirty years ago, when less was known of its principles, he was so successful in creating?

If we are permitted to draw any conclusion from the increase of population in Nova Scotia, this province would appear to have advanced as rapidly as almost any other part of North America. The number of its inhabitants, at different periods, is stated to have been—

The province has many resources in fishing, mining, and agriculture, and cannot be prevented from increasing, both in population and in wealth. But its progress will be more rapid in proportion to the wisdom, energy, and singleness of purpose of those whom the colonists-to whom all public officers are now responsible-may select to manage their affairs.

It possesses an area of nine and a half millions of acres, of which five and a quarter millions are granted to private parties, and four and a quarter still remain in the hands of the provincial Government. It does not grow corn