172 IDLE MEN ON THE SCOTTISH BORDERS. 



now costs only 4s. to bring it from Fredericton, a dis 

 tance of twenty-five miles, then cost them 19s. As 

 they expressed it to me, &quot; A man must work as hard 

 here as at home, and longer hours. He must build his 

 own house, make his own family s shoes, and do many 

 other things. A useless man need not come here.&quot; 

 Yet, they added, if a piece of good land was to be got 

 handy, many of their friends were ready to come from 

 home to join them. 



In the middle of last summer, I made a short 

 visit to the beautifully farmed country which lies be 

 tween Cornhill and Yetholm, at the foot of the Cheviots, 

 on either side of the Scottish Border, and near the 

 paternal home of these Harvey settlers. It is a pretty 

 country, at such a season of the year, for the lovers 

 either of the picturesque or of fine farming, to visit. 

 In the small village of Yetholm I found, by the report 

 of the parish minister, that there were no less than 

 thirty able-bodied men, accustomed to work on the 

 adjoining farms, who were then unable to procure a 

 single day s labour. Alarmed by the fall in the prices 

 of grain foolishly so, I think, on the part of farmers in 

 such a half-pastoral district as that the holders of the 

 land had ceased to employ a single labourer they could 

 dispense with. How the country suffers from this, 

 besides the individual privation and misery it occasions ! 

 Every one of these patient intelligent men who emi 

 grates is a loss to his country ; and yet, I thought, how 

 much more happy and permanently comfortable would 

 those now idle men be, were they situated with their 

 families on little farms of their own, like their old 

 neighbours now settled at Harvey. Had I known 

 of a bit of good land a handy &quot; to that settlement, I 

 could have felt in my heart to urge them to make up a 

 party among themselves with the view of going there, 

 and to offer to aid them in their views. Every one 



