48 LETTING LAND ON SHARES. 



home method of paying rents. In this way a man who 

 has nothing receives a farm, with stock, implements, and 

 seed, from the owner, provides all the labour or works 

 the farm, and receives half the produce of cheese, stock, 

 grain, potatoes, &c. This is said to be, in general, rather 

 a better thing for the cultivator than for the owner. In 

 most cases, however, there are specialties in the bar- 

 gain, the owner receiving more or less according to the 

 condition, position, or richness of the farm. I have 

 already spoken of the system of reckoning the value of 

 land for renting by the quantity of hay it will produce. 



Leaving Mr Gray's, we continued our drive up the 

 river. Hitherto we had been upon the grey sandstones, 

 some beds of which, from the quantity of earthy felspar 

 cement they contain, are capable of yielding soils of fair 

 quality. We now came upon the slate rocks, and upon 

 these we continued, with the intervention of a narrow 

 band of red sandstone, and occasional masses of trap, 

 or trap-like metamorphic slates, for upwards of twenty 

 miles. We then crossed a broad zone of granite, which, 

 like a long ribbon, stretches across the province in a 

 north-east and south-west direction, from the Bay de 

 Chaleurs down to this part of the Hiver St John, and 

 hence over into Maine. 



On the slates good land often occurs ; but, as the river 

 banks are high, a journey along the river side is not 

 favourable to an estimate of the quality of the upland. 

 The granite region, and much of the slate country 

 adjoining it, are thickly strewed with stones ; though the 

 soil itself, as seen among the stones, or where the stones 

 are removed, is very good. Eich intervale land and 

 occasional islands were seen along the river and the 

 cleared openings we passed. The frequent boldness and 

 beauty of the landscape, the varying forms and fresh 

 verdm-e of the trees — elm, butter-nut, black-birch, maple, 

 oak, beech, cypress, and numerous pines — with the good 



