IMPROVERS AT MIRAMICHI. 41 



paint their new homes in colours somewhat brighter 

 than the truth, and, in those who follow, to proceed to 

 and settle near those whom they have previously known. 

 To a country of ordinary advantages, these influences 

 will long keep up a flow of immigrants 5 and when they 

 cease to operate, it may be inferred tliat its best lands 

 have been taken up, or that disadvantages have been 

 discovered which were not known so well before. 



October 20. Before starting on my journey towards 

 the south, I spent a few hours on the south side of the 

 Miramichi Eiver, opposite to Douglastown, and walked 

 over the farms of Mr Wright, Mr Peters, and Mr 

 Cunard, all zealous improvers. It was very agreeable 

 to me to meet here, as I had previously done at Dalhousie 

 and Bathurst, with the intelligent directors of a county 

 agricultural society, whom I found not only possessed of 

 much knowledge and enterprise themselves, but desir 

 ous of diffusing knowledge, by every means in their 

 power, among the farming population of the district. 



Mr Wright s farm was chiefly upon a light, sandy, 

 and stony drift. It was a remark made to me, both here 

 and elsewhere in this district, that where the large stones 

 on the surface consist of granite, the land is best and 

 strongest. We were now upon the more siliceous sand 

 stones of the coal-measures, which generally yield a poor 

 and sandy soil. It is very intelligible, therefore, how 

 granitic drift should stiffen and improve such soils, and 

 how boulders, even of granite, resting for ages on the 

 surface, should, by their gradual crumbling, augment 

 the value of the land for agricultural purposes. It may 

 have been, also, that the same cause which brought the 

 granite boulders may have brought also the finer debris 

 of the granite rocks, and spread it over or intermixed it 

 with the more sandy soils. 



I found the sowing of buckwheat to plough in green 

 in practice here, the use of lime-composts, and other 



