FARMING. 93 



New Brunswick, stripped of its forests, will maintain by 

 agriculture a population proportionate to its area. 



With the rich prairie lands and the semi-tropical 

 climate of the south-west it would be folly to attempt 

 a comparison. These regions would be the El Dorado oi 

 the farmer were it not for certain drawbacks in the shape of 

 scarcity of labour, heavy taxation, fever and ague, &c. In 

 British America the difficulty of procuring farm labourers 

 is also felt ; but, on the other hand, taxation falls lightly 

 on the farmer in no part of the world can he enjoy 

 greater security of life and property, or a healthier and 

 more invigorating climate. These advantages, combined 

 with great and growing facilities for marketing his 

 produce, go far to compensate for the hard labour of 

 clearing the land and for the shortness of the farming 

 season. 



The land may be divided into three lots viz. upland, 

 intervale, and swamp. The latter, so far from being low- 

 lying, is often the highest land in the province either 

 cariboo barrens clothed with lichens and stunted bushes, or 

 else densely wooded with spruce, fir, and cedar; for farming 

 purposes it is almost useless. The best farms contain a 

 certain portion both of upland and intervale. Stock has 

 to be housed and fed for nearly six months ; but nature, 

 as a set-off against the length of winter, gives most 

 bountiful crops of grass. The intervale lands along the 

 rivers and lakes are periodically flooded by the freshet, 

 top-dressed by the sediment that remains after the waters 

 have receded, and year after year, withput cultivation, 

 yield an abundance of hay. Nothing strikes the stranger 

 more forcibly than the rapidity of the vegetation : hardly 



