PROGRESS IN SUSSEX VALE. 123 



clearings bring out the natural picturesque of the mixed 

 mountain, river, and forest scenery ; while the still life 

 of the peaceful church, and scattered houses of the 

 valley, and the cattle grazing in the flat meadows that 

 skirt the stream, unite to impress the traveller in New 

 Brunswick the more, from the comparative rarity in 

 which he finds such pictures scattered as yet over this 

 new province. 



The Trout Brook, of which I have spoken as a tribu 

 tary of the Salmon River, which flows through the vale 

 of Sussex, emerges from a less extensive but very 

 beautiful valley, apparently girt in by lofty hills at its 

 upper end. This valley is peopled for the most part by 

 the descendants of the New Jersey loyalists a Dutch 

 volunteer corps, who settled here in a body at the close 

 of the American revolutionary war. Though the clear 

 ings are extensive now, and many large comfortable- 

 looking farm-houses are scattered along the valley, yet 

 it was all a roadless wilderness then. Canoes on the 

 rivers, and the Indian portages, were the only means of 

 transit in summer, and sledges and snow-shoes in winter. 

 There are persons now living whose fathers were 

 obliged at that time to haul flour, for the support of 

 their families, on hand-sleighs all the way from St John. 

 Numberless moose-deer then filled the forest, and helped 

 to feed the early settlers till their lands were cleared and 

 capable of producing corn. Now, sixty years after, 

 good roads, well executed bridges, cleared land, excellent 

 crops, comfortable houses, high-bred cattle and horses, 

 good conveyances public and private, commodious 

 churches, well-taught schools, well-provided inns, and 

 an intelligent industrious people all in the midst of 

 scenery lofty, soft, rounded, beautifully varied with hill 

 and valley, mountain and meadow, forest and flood 

 have taken the place of the pathless wilderness, the 

 endless trees the untaught Indian, and the savage moose. 



