A ROAST GOOSE DINNER. 129 



of Sussex Vale, is valued at 2 an acre. I was very 

 much tempted to buy four hundred acres of wilderness 

 which were offered me at this price, but I succeeded in 

 restraining myself. It will make the fortune of some 

 future purchaser. 



There may be minor breaks and upheavals of the 

 strata, although the soil is, generally speaking, red 

 between Sussex Vale and Hammond River ; but here 

 the break in the rocks is on a magnificent scale, and 

 along both banks of the river lofty cliffs of the red 

 sandstone conglomerate accompany the traveller for 

 many miles. 



We stopped, my conductor and I, at De Bout s, where 

 we came upon the Hammond River, to bait our horses. 

 This man is the owner, I was told, of a thousand acres 

 on this river, of mills also, and of a more valuable family 

 of sons and daughters, for some of whom he was building 

 comfortable houses. He was standing in front of his 

 house, when we arrived, basking in his shirt-sleeves in 

 the November sun. My conductor addressed him as an 

 old acquaintance, and asked refreshment for his horse. 

 He was the second person in the province, I think, 

 whom I had found costive and unwilling in his answers 

 to my questions regarding the district in which he lived. 

 I therefore began to refrain my attentions to him, and 

 looked about the neighbourhood till the horses were fed. 

 But it was now his dinner-time, and he asked my con 

 ductor to share the family dinner before he started; 

 &quot; and you may bring the man with you,&quot; he added. 

 I went in, as I supposed he really meant nothing, and 

 sat down with him and his family and my conductor, 

 which it is as usual to do in New Brunswick as in Nova 

 Scotia and the States. The chief dish was a roast 

 goose cut up into fragments, and served in its own oil 

 a dish not specially suited to a traveller who many 



VOL. II. I 



