112 WINDFALLS AND THE TELEGRAPH WIRES. 



agriculture is not even in its most favoured spots 

 equal to its advantages ; and large breadths of its most 

 fertile wilderness are held as inheritances for future 

 generations. We did not find the autumn ploughing 

 so far advanced, even as among the more northerly 

 French and Scotch of Botsford parish. This may be a 

 result of the constitutional idiosyncrasy of the Dutch 

 population ; but the fact that twenty times as many 

 turnips were sown this year in Albert County as ever 

 was known before, argues that, even among them, agri 

 cultural progress has begun to find a place. 



In ten minutes after our arrival at Nixon s we were 

 mounted on a rude unspringed farm-waggon, behind an 

 excellent pair of horses, which carried us swiftly to the 

 west along the high road I had traversed before. The 

 wind had been very high all day, and, though in the 

 shelter of the broad wood we had felt little of it, many 

 windfalls had been occasioned by it along this more open 

 road. We saw the electric telegraph broken in two 

 places by fallen trees, in the twelve miles which brought 

 us to Sleeves ; and there we met the Company s wire- 

 mender and his staff, who had been posting from place 

 to place all day, connecting it at the broken points. But 

 finding that, as fast as he repaired one spot, a fresh wind 

 fall broke it at another, he had stabled his horses and 

 given up the pursuit till the wind should abate. This 

 is an evil with which, in our open countries, we are 

 unacquainted, but which frequently happens among the 

 forests, and sufficiently accounts for the interruption of 

 electric communication which often takes place between 

 Halifax and St John. 



Little more than an hour brought us to Sleeves , 

 where we obtained another conveyance, and turned off 

 to the right to visit and spend the night at Butternut 

 Kidge, a distance of eight miles. After ascending and 

 crossing a comparatively low ridge, in which limestone 



