FARMS AND FARMERS. 183 



people in the Dominion. Excellent houses with pretty 

 gardens and orchards and capacious well-filled barns meet 

 the eye on every side. Each considerable farmer owns 

 improved farm machinery ; he keeps a harness horse and 

 waggon to drive to market, &c., and has a piano for his 

 daughters to play on. I mention .these things to show 

 that he possesses the comforts of life, but like every 

 farmer in America, he has to work hard. The old-country 

 man would be surprised to see with how little assistance 

 he puts in his crops. The Canadian farmer, with his 

 brace of sons in their teens, manages a hundred-acre 

 farm with little or no hired help. 



The only direct tax the farmer has to pay is a land tax 

 of about 4s. per hundred acres; in addition to this he 

 has also to perform statute labour on the roads. Every 

 male who has resided for twelve months in the island 

 has a vote, subject only to the performance of the said 

 statute labour, or payment of an equivalent a mere 

 trifle. Hitherto the one absorbing subject of public 

 interest has been the land tenure. In the outside world 

 empires might rise and fall and continents be convulsed, 

 but the islander thought of nothing and cared for nothing 

 but his land-bill of the day. 



There are no stones on the island. Stones are trouble- 

 some things on a farm, but the total want of them is not 

 an unqualified advantage to the farmer to whom good 

 roads are a necessity. In summer and in mid-winter the 

 roads are admirable. In the former season they are 

 smooth and level, with a strip of elastic turf on either side, 

 on which the equestrian may canter to his heart's content ; 

 in the latter season they are excellent for sleighing, but 



