CLEARING MOLLIFIES THE CLIMATE. 33 



better for a settler to buy a farm already partially 

 cleared, than to go into the wilderness. He could buy 

 for less than it would cost to clear with the help of paid 

 labour, while he would also avoid the disagreeables of 

 the untouched wilderness. At the same time, it pays the 

 clearer, who expends only his own labour in the work, to 

 go into the woods, take the first six crops, and then sell. 



The reader will excuse me from doing more than 

 merely reporting this old settler s advice. From what I 

 have elsewhere stated, the home agriculturist will under 

 stand that the clearer, or first settler, is also, by his 

 usual course of procedure in this country, a robber and 

 exhauster of the land ; and that he who buys a partly 

 cleared farm, from which six or more crops have been 

 taken, must be prepared to follow upon the cleared land 

 a more generous form of husbandry than it has previously 

 been subjected to, if it is to be made to produce satisfac 

 tory crops. Where the land is really good, however, 

 this more generous husbandry is both easily attainable 

 and followed by satisfactory returns. 



The clearing of the woods in this country has the 

 effect, not only of diminishing the prevalence of rust and 

 mildew, which, near the river, are sometimes extensively 

 injurious, but also of mollifying the climate. On the 

 rivers which are bordered by burned or cleared lands, 

 the ice breaks up, sledging ceases, cutting timber is 

 stopped, and river driving and all agricultural operations 

 commence a fortnight earlier than where the natural 

 forest remains. Thus, on the whole, the temperature of 

 the province will improve, and the season for rural 

 operations lengthen, as the country is more cleared and 

 becomes more thickly settled. At the same time, the 

 aptitude of the land to grow certain crops, and for rural 

 operations generally, may in reality be lessened, if, as on 

 the Bay de Chaleurs, the indiscriminate cutting of the 



VOL. II. C 



