ACADIAN HOUSES. 73 



room, in the middle of which a stove was placed, where 

 the baking and cooking was done, round which the family 

 sat to warm themselves, and the pipe from which ascends 

 through and warms the upper rooms. All the other 

 lower rooms enter from this general family apartment. 

 In some houses a kitchen and sitting-room are formed 

 under this first floor and half under ground, into which 

 the family retire in winter. Except the stone founda- 

 tion, the houses consist of a wooden frame-work, with 

 planks nailed over these, and the exterior finished off 

 with shingles or thin boards tacked on, so as to repel the 

 rains and drifting snows. I found a party at dinner, 

 eating with their boiled beef the very dark bread of 

 mixed buckwheat, barley, and rye, of which I have 

 already spoken. As in Lower Canada, pease, as a vege- 

 table food, have here been largely introduced and culti- 

 vated since the wheat crop became uncertain. 



Above the Grand Falls we observed no hemlock trees ; 

 and it is said that they do not grow in this upper region 

 of the St John. This fact will probably admit of a geo- 

 logical explanation. Again, as to the intervale land — the 

 low intervale is generally lighter and more sandy than 

 the low intervale of the under part of the river. This 

 may arise partly from the lighter and finer particles of 

 drift being carried by the flowing w^aters to a greater 

 distance downwards, leaving the sand behind, and partly 

 from the nature of the country through which the streams 

 descend. The large feeders — the Aroostook, the To- 

 bique, and others, which enter below the Falls — may 

 bring down from the softer strata through which they 

 pass the materials that render the lower intervales more 

 heavy in their soils, and more fertile in their produce. 



Pork ham was a frequent relish to our tea-dinners and 

 tea-teas in this part of the world ; but English leather 

 would be called tender in comparison with the hams 

 which are the pride of the valley of Madawaska. The 



