DROUGHT OF THE SEASON.

17

Poor clay-slate soils, thin and cold, with occasional quartz rock, and granite in mass or in drifted boulders, accompanied us beyond the summit of the Ardoise hills, which form the water-shed between the Atlantic rivers and those which empty themselves into the Bay of Minas. Pine forests mostly usurped the surface, though here and there, on the margins of lakelets, or where flatter and less stony tracts occur, labour and industry had overcome nature, and compelled rich herbage and moderate corn to spring up in their stead. It was interesting to observe how the absence of human labour for a few years gave again uncontrolled supremacy to the natural vegetation ; and pine forests, young, but flourishing and dense as ever, gradually covered again even long-established clearings.

The summer and autumn of 1849 will long be remembered in the British provinces of North America, as well as in the north-eastern States of the Union, for its excessive drought. The first striking effects of it I had yet seen came under my observation to-day, in the burnt forest we occasionally passed on either side of the road, and in the blazing trees and underwood, which, in a few places, hemmed us in on both sides, and, with horses less accustomed to fire, might have proved a source of danger. It was remarkable to see how much the soil, and the seeds it contained, seemed to have been quickened by the passage of the fire. Ferns and fire-weeds embraced the blackened stumps and trunks of fallen trees, while smoke still lingered around them; and I was assured that a couple of weeks was often sufficient to produce such effects.

After crossing the water-shed, which rises about seven hundred feet above the sea, and descending about halfway on the other side towards Windsor, we left the stony, granite, and metamorphic slates, and entered upon soils of a more propitious character, derived from those gypsum-bearing and red sandstone rocks which have been referred to the lower part of the Nova Scotia coal for

VOL. I.

B

18

PACING HORSES OF CANADA.

mation. The country is also more undulating, better inhabited, more generally cleared-bearing corn or useful herbage and has a less humid and changeful climate than the Atlantic slope of the Ardoise hills. Here I first saw a field of growing Indian corn; and, as we stopped to change horses, had an opportunity of walking into and examining it. But I could not repress a feeling of melancholy as we drove along, and saw vegetable life everywhere suffering from the excess of drought. Herbage for the cattle was scarcely to be obtained; the grass fields were burned up, and displayed one universal brown. The hay crop had almost entirely failed, and how to obtain winter food for the stock had already become a matter of most difficult consideration. The reader who is possessed of an agricultural eye will judge how far it was possible for a stranger passing through it, to form, under such circumstances, an idea of the agricultural capabilities of the country. I afterwards saw much of the same effect of drought in New Brunswick and the north-eastern States; and I was informed by those who had known the province for forty years, that nothing equal to the drought of 1849 had been experienced in their time.

On starting with our new team of horses, my attention was arrested by the peculiar gait of the off leader. It slipped and waddled along, alternately lifting and resting upon the fore and hind feet of the same side, a pace I had never seen before. It proved to be a Canadian horse, trained, as they frequently are in that province, to this peculiar pace. It is a sort of shuffling, awkwardlooking gait, but is very easy for riding. It is said that a person may ride a whole day at this pace without any fatigue. I hoped to have been able during my subsequent visit to Canada to make a trial of this alleged easiness to the rider, but the opportunity did not fall in my way. Horses so trained are known as pacing horses,

HOW TRAINED IN SARDINIA.

19

and the practice has probably been introduced by the French settlers.

I have never myself seen it in France, and should suppose it to be an uncommon pace even there, and that it has most likely been introduced from the shores of the Mediterranean. I find a notice of it in a work upon Sardinia, lately published by Mr Warre Tyndale.* "Much attention," he says, "is paid to giving the better class of horse a peculiar step called portante, for which we have neither a corresponding word or pace, being something between an amble and a trot, and taught in the following manner :—

“The fore and hind legs are attached to each other by two cords, supported by others fastened to the saddle so as to prevent their dragging on the ground; and, thus fettered, the horse is put in action-the trainer pulling the right and left side of the bit, alternately, and giving a corresponding pressure with his leg, which forces the animal to move either the two off or the two near legs simultaneously, producing thereby an easy glissade step. It has been compared to the Turkish amble, but, judging from personal experience, it is as dissimilar as it is to our cavalry or farmer's trot. The movement is delightfully easy, especially easy where one has to be on horseback for many consecutive hours; and, as Cetti says, 'Il viaggiare in Sardegna e perció la piu dolce cosa del monde : l'antipongo all' andare in barca col vento in poppa.' The travelling in Sardinia is, on this account, the most agreeable thing in the world: I prefer it to going in a boat with the wind astern."

I do not know how the training is effected in Canada, but it is very interesting to find this pace prevailing in two countries so remote from each other. May it not have been introduced into Canada by some of the

*The Island of Sardinia. London, Bentley, 1849, vol. i. p. 200.

20

GYPSUM COUNTRY AND QUARRIES.

Romish clergy from the islands or borders of the Mediterranean?

Windsor, which we reached after another hour's drive is a neat, clean, well-built little town, standing on the estuary of the Avon, and within a short distance of the mouth of the St Croix river. Both of these rivers empty themselves into the Bay of Minas, and are distinguished by the lofty white cliffs of gypsum which are seen at various places along their banks. The country adjoining the lower part of both rivers is in many places gypsiferous, and the undulating appearance of its surface, the rounded hills, and the sudden hollows which here and there appear, are in great part to be ascribed to the numerous swallow holes and sinkings which have been produced through the gradual solution and removal, by surface water or by springs, of the gypsum from beneath. A similar surface of rounded hills and hollows afterwards attracted my attention along the shores of the Cumberland basin, in some parts of New Brunswick, and on the gypsiferous strata along the out-crop of the upper beds of the Onondaga salt group, and the base of the Helderberg limestone in Western New York.

After a hasty dinner, at the small but clean town of Windsor, I paid a hurried visit to the plaster quarry of Judge Haliburton, which affords the principal article of export from the river Avon. The gypsum occurred and was worked very much as our limestones are, forming a face of rock in which different layers were visible of various degrees of whiteness, and crystalline structure. The whitest and purest is quarried and conveyed, by an economical railway to the river, where it is shipped chiefly for the United States.

At Windsor, it is usual to embark in the steamer for St John in New Brunswick. In favourable weather this is a run of twelve or fourteen hours with the steamers now on the station. That I might see a por

WINDSOR TO WOLFVILLE.

21

27

tion of the richest land in the province, however, I had been recommended to proceed westward to Annapolis, about eighty miles by land, and thence by a steamer which plies regularly to the city of St John.

Starting again with the stage, we ascended the Avon till it became sufficiently narrow to be bridged over, and then crossed to Falmouth by one of those covered wooden bridges of which I afterwards saw so many in North America. They form long dark wooden tunnels, stronger, perhaps, and more durable for their darkness, but most effectual in preventing either the beauties or defects of the river scenery from reaching the eye of the passenger.

Whoever has sailed up the Avon to our English Bristol when the tide was low, would, this afternoon, have agreed in the propriety of the name which has been given to this river of Windsor. The tide was low, and, as in the English Avon, lofty and steep mud banks confined the waters, and showed at once how high the tide must rise, and how fertilising its muddy water must be.

From this point the land had an improved appearance, and the first good crop I had seen during my whole day's ride began to cheer my eyes. As we drove along, I gradually shook off the feeling of despondency, with which I had looked upon the parched upland country through which I had come to Windsor. I was now proceeding over a more elevated and less valuable portion of that rich alluvial land, for which the shores of the Bay of Minas, and its tributary creeks, and of the head-waters of the Bay of Fundy in general, have been long famous. Advancing twelve or fifteen miles further to Horton and Wolfville, I found myself on the edge of the richest dyke-land in the province. I quitted the stage at Wolfville, for the purpose of taking a drive over a portion of the most productive land before the evening set in.