A RETURNED EMIGRANT. 39 



Miramichi, he informed me that, among his parishioners, 

 the industrious men who attend to their farms and let 

 lumbering alone arc all prosperous, and that no such per 

 son need have any fear about making a living. 



All these more eastern parts of North America are 

 subject to occasional accessions of mental fever, which 

 make the inhabitants restless at home, and determine 

 them to try their fortunes anew in more western regions. 

 They have, as I have elsewhere said, obtained as yet 

 little heart-hold of the soil, and are therefore easily moved 

 to quit it. Some idle fellow goes off to the west, and 

 he writes to his friends flaming accounts of the country 

 he has gone to. The news spread, and presently the 

 fever smites some, and no considerations will restrain 

 them. 



Mr Kankin told me, among others, of a settler, an 

 Irishman, who had a good farm on the Miramichi, but 

 who had been seized by the Illinois or Wisconsin fever, 

 and whom he tried in vain to persuade to stay on the 

 Miramichi. Off he would go. He sold his form for 

 250, and set off. &quot; Some months after, the same man 

 walked into my office at Newcastle. * What, you here ! 7 

 I said ; and he explained to me that he had found things 

 very different from what he expected, and that he had 

 come back to see if he could get his old farm again. But 

 he had only 50 of his money left, and the person who 

 had bought his farm did not intend to give it up. Well, 

 I advised you to stay where you were. Sure, you did, 

 sir, and I have suffered for my obstinacy ; but I could 

 never have been content to have remained here if I had 

 not seen with my own eyes, and now I shall be a happier 

 man. And so he has gone into the wilderness again 

 with his 50, to hew himself out another farm, and to 

 begin the world anew.&quot; 



These accessions of fever come on at irregular intervals. 

 The Indiana, the Illinois, the Michigan, and the Wis- 



