166 MARRIAGES IN NEW BRUNSWICK. 



copal church, along with a thin congregation. The 

 clergyman, Dr Thomson, had been in St Stephens for 

 twenty-seven years, and assured me he liked the winters 

 of New Brunswick better than those of his native Ireland. 



In the evening, I assisted at a private marriage per 

 formed in his study before witnesses from his own family. 

 The parties came quite unattended, and such things he 

 informed me often happened. Without any notice, two 

 people drop into his house, produce a license, and are 

 forthwith married without any further ceremony. 



The license bears to be from the governor, and not 

 from the bishop. The clergy of all persuasions are 

 entitled to marry, but they do so according to a fixed 

 form, which each sect has been obliged to draw up and 

 submit to the approval of the Provincial Assembly.* 



The morning was still misty and disagreeable, with 

 occasional drizzly rain ; but with a one-horse waggon, 

 and a sharp St Stephens bailiff for my driver a north 

 country Irishman who had been long in the country I 

 started early on my way to Fredericton, a distance of 

 about seventy-five miles. There was in this tour little 

 to interest me, after what I had already seen of the 

 county of Charlotte. The cold light-coloured clays, 

 covered at times, and on the tops of the hills, with a 

 gravelly slate-drift, lighter and more easily tilled, formed 

 the available soils; while extensive flat bottoms 5 covered 

 with beds of gravel or with cedar-swamps, occurred at 

 intervals during the first eighteen miles. The three 

 broad ridges of Tower-hill, separated by deep valleys, 

 the first of which we crossed about seven miles from St 

 Stephens, made the road heavy to pass. On this first 

 ridge is the house and farm of my former travelling- 

 companion, Mr Brown. I paid a short visit to his family 

 in passing ; and in front of his house, though on the oppo 

 site side of the road, I saw one of the stoniest fields I 

 * GESSNER. 



