104 TKEATMENT OF NEWLY CLEARED LAND. 



Mr Porter, on clearing new land from the forest, will 

 give the reader an idea of the general character of the 

 treatment to which less prudent men subject their land. 

 He cuts down the wood and burns it, then takes a crop 

 of potatoes, followed by one of wheat with grass seeds. 

 Nine successive crops of hay follow in as many years ; 

 after which the stumps are taken up, the land is ploughed, 

 a crop of wheat is taken ; it is then manured for the first 

 time, or limed, and laid down again for a similar succes- 

 sion of crops of hay. This treatment is hard enough ; 

 but the unskilful man, after burning and spreading the 

 ashes, takes two or three or more crops of grain, leaves 

 it to sow itself with grass, then cuts hay as long as it 

 bears a crop which is worth the cutting — after all which 

 he either stumps and ploughs it, or leaves it to run again 

 into the wilderness state. 



In clearing land in this district, it is calculated that the 

 first three crops, which are merely harrowed in, will pay 

 all the expense of cutting the timber, burning, and culti- 

 vating. If the settler then abandon it, he is no loser : 

 everything he cuts off it afterwards is gain, or any sum for 

 which he can sell his cleared land. This is a great induce- 

 ment to the exhausting system, which clears annually new 

 land for grain, cuts for hay all which the old cropped land 

 will yield, till it is again overrun with a young growth 

 of wood, and neither saves, collects, nor values manure. 



This system is barbarous, reprehensible, and wasteful 

 to the country — and yet it is probably the method which 

 yields a ready sustenance to the settler's family at the 

 smallest expense of mental and bodily labour. Our con- 

 demnation of the pioneers of civilisation in a new country 

 ought not, therefore, to be too severe or indiscriminate. 

 With all our skill, we English farmers and teachers of 

 agricultural science should, in the same circumstances, 

 probably do just the same, so long as land was plenty, 

 labour scarce and dear, markets few and distant, and 



