100 THE OAT TAKING THE PLACE OF BUCKWHEAT. 



Boistown, where we stopped to bait, the landlord told me 

 of a farm on the river, containing 1500 acres, having 60 

 cleared — and of these 20 were intervale land, producing 

 30 to 35 tons of hay per acre — which could be obtained 

 for £150 to £200. Five years ago this farm would 

 have brought £400 or £500. 



A few miles farther on, after passing the mouth of the 

 Renous river, which comes in from the left, the land 

 became of better quality. Though we were still upon 

 sandstones of the coal measures, and the surface stones 

 were chiefly sandstone boulders, sometimes mixed with 

 frequent masses of granite, yet the soil was more 

 tenacious and clayey ; and good crops of wheat and 

 oats were ripening upon many of the wayside farms we 

 passed. 



On the Miramichi we looked in vain for the frequent 

 fields of buckwheat, which we had seen upon the St 

 John. The oat here takes its place, and is gradually 

 assuming an important place as an article of ordinary 

 diet among the people. Until lately, the humblest people 

 refused to eat anything but the finest flour. They even 

 thought they could not live upon anything else. But 

 the failure of home wheat, and the want of money 

 to buy that imported from Canada or the United States, 

 has had the salutary effect of compelling the people to 

 try the virtues of their own excellent oats ; and it is to be 

 hoped they will every year become more and more 

 attached to this most nutritive grain. The Provincial 

 Legislature have most judiciously aided this alteration 

 by offering bounties for the erection of oat-meal mills 

 throughout the province, the want of which had hitherto 

 been almost a complete bar to the use of the oat as 

 human food — especially in the newly settled districts, 

 where the need was most urgent, and the want most 

 felt. In 1847 the sum of £500 was paid out of the 

 Provincial Treasury for this purpose ; and as such mills 



