VARIETIES OF INTERVALE LAND.

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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

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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, 14 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

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upper intervale, resting on accumulations of gravel and sand, and therefore for the most part light, and sometimes sandy. Wheat, oats, Indian corn, and potatoes, are the crops raised-the corn more largely since the failure of wheat and potatoes commenced. The wheat on the ground this year promises 25 bushels an acre, potatoes yield an average of 150 to 200 bushels. The Indian corn always ripens, yields about 50 bushels, and is at present the most profitable crop.

The straw of the Indian corn is a very valuable fodder. If cut before it is dead ripe, it is as valuable as hay, and the cattle eat it as readily. Of this fact I afterwards met with many corroborations, though, both in the Provinces and in the Northern States, the wasteful practice of leaving the straw in the field uncut extensively prevails. Besides the grain, as much as three tons of excellent fodder may be generally reaped from an acre of Indian corn of the taller varieties. The advantage of this, not only in saving food, but in manufacturing manure, every home farmer at least will understand.

Indian corn has at various times been recommended as a grain crop to our British farmers. But our summers are not dry and hot enough to make it certain as a grain crop. It is worthy of a trial, however, as an occasional fodder or green crop on our lighter barley soils. A wellmanured field would raise a large crop of green stalks, which are very sweet, and it might be profitable either for soiling or for making into hay.

The stock kept by Mr Rankine was seventeen milk cows and thirteen other cattle, which consume on an average about 60 tons of hay. Butter and cheese meet with a ready sale. He had also sixty-five sheep, which average, including lambs, 6 lb. of wool. This his family manufactures into excellent homespun checks and tartans, which are sold in the neighbourhood.

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PROFITS OF FARMING.

The reader will naturally inquire, as I did-" Here you possess a farm of 1100 acres, and you have only 100 cleared, and of this 100 only 50 in arable culture; why don't you clear more, and farm more extensively?" "We clean up two or three acres every year of the lumbered land (land from which the timber has been cut,) because it is unsightly, not because we want it— we have as much land already as it is profitable to cultivate."

And this I afterwards found to be a very prevailing opinion, not only in New Brunswick and the other Provinces, but in the United States, as far west as the foot of Lake Erie, the limits of my own tour. It is profitable to farm as much as can be cultivated with the members of a man's own family-it is not profitable to farm with paid labour. That such an opinion should be so widely entertained shows that it is the result of a very wide experience. At the same time it may only be true of the system of farming hitherto adopted by the parties who entertain it, or inculcate it upon others. It may not be true of another or more improved system.

In reference to the agricultural capabilities and improvement of the colony, and especially in reference to the question of its being desirable as a settlement for British farmers possessed of capital and skill, this question is a most important one. I shall briefly state the general result of my inquiries when I shall have gone over a larger portion of the province.

Woodstock, the chief town in the county of Carlton, is advantageously situated at the mouth of the Meduxnakik, on the right bank of the St John. It has four churches, a grammar school, and about 3000 inhabitants. It is likely to flourish, both because it is connected with one of the richest agricultural districts in the province, and because here the road to Houlton in Maine branches off, and it ought therefore to be the centre of the traffic

COUNTRY NEAR WOODSTOCK.

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with the upper portion of that state. The boundary line between Maine and New Brunswick runs about ten miles west of Woodstock.

From the mouth of Eel River, twelve miles below Woodstock, where we left the granite region, the soil has gradually improved; and from the neighbourhood of the town northwards to the Grand Falls, and on both sides of the St John, it is generally equal in quality to the best upland in New Brunswick. The Cambrian appears in this region to have given place to the Silurian slates, and the soil resembles in some degree those of the upper Silurian slates, which I afterwards saw in the wheat region of western New York.

The president of the county Agricultural Society drove me a few miles inland to what is called Scotch Corner, in the direction of the Maine boundary. A long, flat, second terrace, or intervale, stretches inland about a mile from Woodstock.

The cleared land on this flat is valued at £5 an acre. The country as we proceeded was beautifully undulated-chiefly covered, where the forest remained, with large hardwood trees. The rock maple and black birch, mixed with butter-nut and elm, indicate good, deep, heavy land-the beech a heavier soil.

At Scotch Corner, I saw a fine second crop of potatoes, grown without manure; and I examined a field of oats, which was the tenth grain crop (oats, pease, and buckwheat in succession) grown on it without manure. The soil consisted of fragments of a shivery slate, which crumbles readily, and which, at a depth of sixteen inches, rests on ⚫ the rotten slate rock.

Old Country agriculturists, or those who, without being farmers themselves, condemn every practice which differs from what they have been in the habit of hearing commended at home, cannot fairly appreciate the circumstances of the occupier of new land in a country like this. For ten years for eight, or twelve, or twenty years in