110 LAND -SPECULATORS. 



forest, with only occasional clearings. The settlers are 

 chiefly of Dutch descent the natural increase driven by 

 necessity to seek the most eligible spots in the still 

 uncleared forest. Here, as elsewhere in the province 

 indeed, I believe, from what I have heard, it is very 

 much the same in all parts of North America land- 

 speculators have secured all the best land which is readily 

 accessible, and hold it in a wilderness state till a rise in 

 price induce them to sell. Thus the poor men, who 

 cannot afford to give these capitalists their price, must 

 be content with inferior locations, and encounter greater 

 difficulties in providing for their families. The Provin 

 cial Legislature has adopted various measures with the 

 view of remedying this state of things. An annual tax 

 on all such granted lands as are still unimproved such 

 as has been imposed in Canada and applicable to 

 purposes of local improvement, is as likely a method of 

 forcing some of this land into the market on reasonable 

 terms as any other that has yet been proposed. 



I have been told that some of the largest fortunes in 

 the United States have been made by land-speculations ; 

 and the interest of private holders of large grants has 

 often been the principal exciting cause of those violent 

 emigration fevers which have periodically heated the 

 blood and unsettled the lives of so many thousands, not 

 only in the British Islands and on the continent of 

 Europe, but in North America also from St John in 

 Newfoundland to Buffalo on Lake Erie, and even to St 

 Louis on the Missouri. 



From the higher central part of Albert County, 

 through which we were now passing, several streams 

 run in a northerly direction, and fall into the Petitcodiac. 

 This river, as I have on a former occasion mentioned, 

 about twenty miles above its mouth, turns at nearly a 

 right angle, and, from flowing west by north, runs south 

 by east down to Shepody Bay. From near The Bend, 



