THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



419 



NATURAL AND COMMERCIAL FEATURES OF THE NORTH 

 AMERICAN CONTINENT. 



No. I. 



To enable us to form a proper estimate of the present and 

 further growth of the produce trade of North America, we 

 must uudersland what the natural and commercial features of 

 that great continent really are. Unless we do so, we are 

 as likely to think of these too lightly or too extravagantly as 

 to hit the mark ; and a dry array of figures is not enough. 



Considering that the New World is but a portion of the 

 Old, separated by a wide and stormy ocean, and new in the 

 sense only that it was unknown till lately, it is unreasonable 

 to suppose that other laws of nature than those with which 

 we are familiar have existence there, and that the physical 

 conformation of the country differs from that which we wit- 

 ness here in England every day. Yet such unreasonableness 

 is not the exception, but the rule. The great mass have as 

 vague notions of America as if that country were located in 

 the moon, and believe in endless feet of richest black surface 

 soil, endless cropping without labour or manure, and end- 

 less felicity in the Canadian bush, or upon the western 

 prairie. 



Some there are, however, who look upon America with a 

 jaundiced eye, and are incredulous of the great in.'ustrial 

 and social progress that has already, and is still taking 

 place. Such are not aware that the United States, at no re- 

 mote period, bid fair to feed the world ; that to-day, at a 

 thousand miles back from the Atlantic sea-board, the looms of 

 Lyons and Spitaltields and India are more freely patronized 

 than anywhere in Europe by equal numbers ; and that those 

 are not wanting with gifts and attainments of the highest 

 order. It is a fact that the North West contains the gay, 

 and rich, and virtuous, as well as the vicious and depraved ; 

 and that here and there its school-houses, its business places 

 and its streets are not surpassed by the best in Europe. 



To America we owe the perfection of the telegraph, the 

 reaping-machine, and innumerable mechanical contrivances of 

 the most useful kind ; and in the coarser-manufactured cot- 

 tons the Massachusetts manufacturer competes successfully 

 wherever these are used. 



It is nothing that America has enormous inland seas, rivers 

 navigable for several thousand miles, boundless forests and 

 prairies, cloudless skies, the extremes of heat and cold, and the 

 greatest cataract. These are the accidents of the country 

 only, and witli them removed or modified, there would be 

 little in fertility or otherwise to distinguish America from 

 other lands. In America, as here and elsewhere, in the sweat 

 of his brow man tills the ground, and in exact proportion as 

 he sows in spring so he reaps at harvest. 



In fact, the real counterpart of all we meet in North 

 America (with the exception of what is accidental and extra- 

 ordinary), is to be found in England. Penetrate into an 

 English forest, and in its oppressive solitude all that is want- 

 ing to make it redolent of Canada and grizzly bears, is an 

 occasional decayed and fallen tree, or successive pools of weed- 

 grown water, flanked by prickly brushwood through which one 

 can scarcely penetrate. To be sure, the majestic pioe is absent ; 

 but the backwoodsman often chops a life-time among oak, and 

 hemlock, and beech, and maple. 



Scotland abounds in the scenery of Vermont and New 



Hampshire, and can match the classic grandeur of the Hud- 

 son river, the thousand islands, aud the lakes ; and Wales and 

 Windermere are quite as wild and pleasing as the Alleghany 

 chain and the Juniata. The Western prairie may be seen on 

 Plaistow Marsh ; and the bush and prairie clap-board 

 dwelling among the cabbage gardens outside'of modern Babel. 

 In fine, the great point of difference is that of she; Eng- 

 land with its intelligence and power being an ocean speck only, 

 and America a world. And when that only substantial point 

 of difference is known among the trading and emigrating Eng- 

 lish mass, some real progress will have been made in the way 

 of understanding things as they really are in the United 

 States and Canada, and incalculable disappointment and misery 

 spared in future. 



One of the distinguishing features of North America, ia 

 the existence of wooded and unwooded lands, the former 

 usually termed bush, the latter prairie. The wooded portion 

 of the country may be said to embrace the whole territory 

 east of the Misissippi, including the whole of Canada ; and the 

 unwooded portion the whole territory west of the Misissippi. 

 That division, strictly speaking, is not correct, as bush and 

 prairie exist on both sides of that line, but practically it is, 

 and particularly in connexion with the present inquiry, which 

 is limited to the consideration of staple products, the yield 

 either of bush or prairieMands. 



Woodland, it is scarcely necessary to remark, requires a 

 large expenditure of labour or capital before it is fitted for 

 the growth of crops or even for the feed of cattle. First of 

 all, the trees have to be chopped at a convenient height 

 for the swinging of the axe, and afterwards the re- 

 maining trunk, together with the roots, has to be dug 

 out or pulled before there is an approximation to a 

 civilized grain-bearing field. If these obstructions are 

 suffered to remain, the process of cultivation is neces- 

 sarily of the most imperfect kind ; and, whether removed 

 or not, the great work of rough clearing, in anticipation of 

 all strictly agricultural labour, retards extended operations. 

 The farmer, unless rich — and that he seldom is, in a wooded 

 country — cannot bring in more clearing, in a single year, 

 than his own brawny arm can chop during winter ; and if 

 he pulls out stumps as he goes along, he will really make 

 the slowest kind of progress. Individual instances could be 

 adduced in which, after five or six years' assiduous labour^ 

 not exceeding 30 acres have been roughly cleared; and 

 outside of that clearing there is but indifferent summer, and 

 no winter-feed for cattle. Under such circumstances, the 

 high prices of one year have little influence on the produc- 

 tion of another ; and expectations from the bush, in the 

 matter of supply, must be moderate both for the pre- 

 sent and the future. Taking Canada as representative of 

 bush-farming, the trade and navigation returns of that pro- 

 vince, for three years, prove such to be the case, the grain- 

 surplus of 1857 being much less than that of either of the 

 two previous years. 



ToT.u, Wheat Exports from Canada to all Parts. 

 Wheat. Bushels. 



1855 .^193,700 



18,5() 4,9.07,000 



li!.'i7 2.7G2,400 



F F 



