62 PROFITS OF FARMING. 



The reader will naturally inquire, as I did — '' Here 

 you possess a farm of 1100 acres, and you have only 100 

 cleared, and of this 100 only 50 in arable culture ; why 

 don't you clear more, and farm more extensively?" 

 " We clean up two or three acres every year of the 

 lumbered land (land from which the timber has been 

 cut,) because it is unsightly, not because we want it — 

 we have as much land already as it is profitable to 

 cultivate.'"* 



And this I afterwards found to be a very prevailing 

 opinion, not only in New Brunswick and the other 

 Provinces, but in the United States, as far west as the 

 foot of Lake Erie, the limits of my own tour. It is 

 profitable to farm as much as can be cultivated with the 

 members of a man's own family — it is not profitable to 

 farm with paid labour. That such an opinion should be 

 so widely entertained shows that it is the result of a very 

 wide experience. At the same time it may only be true 

 of the system of farming hitlierto adopted by the parties 

 who entertain it, or inculcate it upon others. It may 

 not be true of another or more improved system. 



In reference to the agricultural capabilities and 

 improvement of the colony, and especially in reference 

 to the question of its being desirable as a settlement for 

 British farmers possessed of capital and skill, this ques- 

 tion is a most important one. I shall briefly state the 

 general result of my inquiries when I shall have gone 

 over a larger portion of the province. 



Woodstock, the chief town in the county of Carlton, is 

 advantageously situated at the mouth of the Medux- 

 nakik, on the right bank of the St John. It has four 

 churches, a grammar school, and about 3000 inhabitants. 

 It is likely to flourish, both because it is connected with 

 one of the richest agricultural districts in the province, 

 and because here the road to Houlton in Maine branches 

 off, and it ought therefore to be the centre of the traffic 



