64 EMIGRATION, OR 



honest, decent, industrious, and therefore an improving 

 family. They had resided several years in the States, 

 from whence they came to this place. Crossed the Thames 

 again, and passed down it a few miles ; some fine cleared 

 farms hereabouts, with the stumps of the trees rooted out, 

 but are, apparently, managed in a slovenly manner. They 

 belong chiefly to merchants in Sandwich, and elsewhere, 

 and are let out in shares; the owners getting one-third, 

 and the tenant two-thirds of the grain &quot; raised&quot; (grown) 

 thereon : the houses and barns are also in a dilapidated 

 state. Some good apple and peach orchards, which bear 

 the finest fruit in the country ; ungrafted apples finer than 

 half the grafted ones in England. Cider from 4s. 6d. to 

 9s. per barrel ; or take two empty barrels at the time of 

 cider making, you have one of them back full. An 

 English farmer of property has been about here lately, 

 looking out a cleared farm to purchase. Old cleared farms, 

 with houses and barns, on the flats, worth from 35s. 

 to 2/. per acre. A lot of uncleared land on Bear Creek 

 Flats was lately sold for 9s. per acre, and generally can be 

 bought for ready money at 4s. or 5s. per acre. Passed 

 a man digging a mill race at the side of a rapid in the 

 river, and a large quantity of timber cut out just by for the 

 mill ; he is doing it all himself, having no money to hire 

 with, and his neighbours tardy in helping him ; as he told 

 me he had expected fourteen or fifteen the day before. It 

 is a very general practice for settlors in the new parts help 

 ing, and even in some instances doing the whole of the work, 

 in making mill dams, for something to eat and drink only 

 \vhile doing it. Although the land is rich enough for any 

 thing, yet there is nothing sown but wheat, corn, and oats, 

 and a few peas : no clover, or very little at least, which I 

 am confident would grow in the greatest luxuriance ; wheat 

 often several years successively, then without sowing any 

 grass seeds, it remains in its rough state, when up comes the 

 wild grass and lies a few years, when it is again ploughed for 

 the same deteriorating rotation. There appears no energy 

 in the people for improvement ; a small couch or twitch grass 

 spreads in these ill-managed farms, which might with little 

 trouble be eradicated. Some of the great wheat farmers half 

 starve their cattle in winter, as they are too idle to get any 

 hay ; and although government have offered a premium of 

 261. to those who may grow the most hemp on not less than 



