THE SACKVJLLE AND AMHEEST MAESITES. 77 



action of the marsh-mud which is deposited by the tidal 

 waters, ought on a tolerably managed farm, producing 

 its own manure fully to enrich besides, and to keep in 

 good condition, an acre of the upland which surrounds 

 the marsh, and which is itself naturally rich and pro 

 ductive land. Thus a hundred thousand acres of upland 

 ought, by the aid of the marsh, ,and the mud of its 

 streams, to be yearly covered with rich crops of grain 

 or other produce. 



Wheat here is excellent, but, in the present condition 

 of the marsh, it is liable to rust. Oats are a more 

 certain crop. If we suppose this upland, thus manured, 

 to produce forty bushels of oats an acre, the hundred 

 thousand acres would yield a return of four millions of 

 bushels, or an equally nutritive produce of potatoes, cab 

 bage, turnips, buckwheat, barley, Indian corn, or wheat. 



The oats weigh from 36 to 40 Ib. a bushel, and 

 will yield half this weight (18 to 20 Ib.) of oatmeal, 

 as much as will sustain a full - grown man for a 

 week. The entire produce of grain or other food 

 from the upland margin of the flat lands, aided by 

 the manuring substances which they can contribute, 

 should thus sustain eighty thousand full-grown men, or 

 an average population, young and old, of a hundred 

 thousand souls. 



This roughly-calculated possible sustaining power of 

 the district I was looking upon, struck me the more 

 from its remarkable inconsistency with a fact which 

 had on various occasions been communicated to me at 

 St John that New Brunswick does not produce a suf 

 ficiency of first-class butcher-meat for its own markets, 

 and that its shipping is chiefly supplied with salt provi 

 sions from the United States, because the beef of the 

 province will not stand salt. It was still more in 

 contrast, also, with an opinion to which I have else 

 where alluded as being very prevalent in the colony, 



