134 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



and must have lived five years in the province. The 

 Assembly, or the law-making power, is made up of 

 the Senate and the House of Commons ; a Senator 

 must have lived a year in the province and own 300 

 acres, a member of the lower house at least 100 acres. 

 The members of both houses are elected annually ; all 

 free inhabitants, who have lived a year in the country 

 and have paid their taxes, cast their votes at the elec- 

 tion for members of the lower house ; but for a vote at 

 the election of Senators they are qualified by a free- 

 hold of 50 acres of land. 



From New-Bern to Snead's Ferry on the Neus 

 river it is 53 miles, flat sandy land covered with pine- 

 forest. The sand, however, where it has not been dis- 

 turbed by wind, weather, or water, is generally over- 

 laid with an inch or more of good black earth ; but if 

 the timber has been taken off, the land ploughed or in 

 any way touched, this black earth disappears rapidly. 

 Everywhere clay lies beneath the sand, often very little 

 below the surface, and could at small expence of 

 trouble be turned up for the betterment of the sand. 

 Approaching the sea-coast by this road, w r e observed 

 that in place of the fine, white, barren, sand, blacker 

 and mirier soil appeared now and then ; really such 

 places were where large swamps had dried off, and 

 they deserved to be made more use of. Still nearer 

 the coast, the landscape is no longer so uniformly 

 flat as farther inland, but grows uneven and broken, 

 with ranges of very low sand-hills standing one be- 

 hind the other or pell mell. On the Neus river also 

 it was observable that the face of the country was 

 changed, the land losing its dead flatness ; a broad and 

 high natural embankment followed the course of the 



