222 CITY OF BANGOR. 



sloping upland which skirts the Penobscot is a town of 

 ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants, well built, straggling 

 and unfinished, like all these new towns. It is difficult, 

 therefore, to judge of its population from the ground it 

 covers. It appears to be a place of considerable busi 

 ness, and to be prosperous and growing. The lumber 

 trade of the interior, and the supplying of the lumberers 

 and inland dealers with stores, are the chief sources of 

 profit to its inhabitants. Land-speculating, also, has 

 made and marred many fortunes in this city and state, 

 causing sudden prosperity followed by crashes and great 

 failures. But here, as elsewhere, those have become the 

 wealthiest in the end who have kept clear of specula 

 tion, and have been content with a safe and steady 

 business. Though often left behind for a time, by their 

 more daring neighbours, they have still kept their place 

 and increased in wealth after the more sudden stars had 

 one by one disappeared. 



Farming in Maine is not of itself profitable enough 

 to satisfy the haste of the people to become rich. The 

 farms are for the most part small from eighty to a 

 hundred acres and the land which I passed through 

 generally poor. Complaints against the climate, if 

 I may judge from my own experience, abound tenfold 

 more here than I heard them in New Brunswick that 

 the season is short, that Indian corn won t ripen, and so 

 on. Oats and potatoes, however, are allowed to be sure 

 crops, when the latter are free from disease. 



On the Kenebec River, which is farther to the west, 

 there are good intervale lands, and the uplands, which 

 are a strong loam, are very productive in hay. Stock 

 husbandry is for this reason beginning to be attended to 

 in that district of the State, but the turnip-culture is 

 still almost unknown. Between Ellsworth and Bangor, 

 the country through which I passed is very much over 

 spread with granitic drift and boulders. Pale yellow, 



