OBJECTIONS TO BUCKWHEAT. 79 



waters. A little touch upon a rock, at a well-calculated 

 time and place, snatches you from undoubted danger; and 

 the ease with which all mishaps are avoided is apt to 

 make the stranger fancy that it is the simpleness of the 

 work, and not the skill of the workman, that bears him so 

 confidently along. A single trial of his own powers, 

 however, soon sets him right on this point. 



At the mouth of the Tobique I joined my fellow- 

 travellers, and started on my way back to AVoodstock. 

 We kept along the banks of the river all the way, and 

 saw some fine patches of intervale land, the sites of good 

 farms. On some of these, buckwheat, during the last 

 few years, has been grown in very large quantity. I 

 was told of six or seven hundred acres being raised by 

 one individual. 



This grain, I have said, Is sufficiently nutritive. Those 

 accustomed to the use of it even say that it gives more 

 strength than any other food. In the form of cakes, the 

 only form in which I have eaten it, it is also very 

 palatable. But the objection to it as the staple food of a 

 people consists in the ease with which it can be raised, 

 the rapidity of its growth, the small quantity of seed it 

 requires, the slovenly and unskilful husbandry which is 

 sufficient in favourable seasons to secure average crops, 

 and the casualties to which the crop is liable from the 

 seasons. It grows on very poor land, from which no 

 other grain crops in remunerative quantity can be 

 obtained, and it is rarely favoured with the luxury of 

 manure. Like the potato, therefore, it induces an indo- 

 lent, and slovenly, and exhausting culture. And suppos- 

 ing the crops to fail, as the potato and the wheat have done, 

 the poverty of the land, and the want of skill in the farmer, 

 will render it very difficult to replace it by other crops, 

 which demand more industry, more skill, and more atten- 

 tion to the collection, preservation, and application of 

 manures, and which will refuse to grow on exhausted land. 



