112 ENCOURAGEMENT TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 



support was the provincial grant of £20 which he annually 

 received. In regard to their elementary schools, the Pro- 

 vincial Legislature has lately adopted important means 

 of improvement in the establishment of training schools 

 at St John and Fredericton. Every settlement in the 

 province has its school. The settlers build a school- 

 house, and select a master. This master must then — if 

 not a pupil of the training school, or if he has not been 

 previously examined — undergo an examination by the 

 master of the training school, and, according to his pro- 

 ficiency, he receives a certificate, which entitles him to 

 an annual stipend of =^10, <£'20, or ^30. As yet, the 

 training schools have not been able to supply instructed 

 masters for all the schools ; houses are not in most places 

 built for the masters, and the schools are usually shut up 

 in the summer months. This is very much the case also 

 with the schools in the newer states of the Union, and as 

 the population becomes more dense, these evils will dis- 

 appear. In the principal town of each county a gram- 

 mar-school is established, to which larger grants are given. 

 In 1848, the grants to parish and Madras schools 

 amounted to .^13,882. 



The schoolmaster teaches the religious catechism which 

 the parents of his pupils wish their children to learn. 

 Thus the same master sometimes teaches in the same 

 school the Church of England Catechism, the Assembly's 

 Catechism, and that of the Romish Church. The school- 

 master at Bay du Vin was surprised that I should think 

 there was anything remarkable in his being required to 

 teach all the three, though he said he had once before 

 heard some one make remarks regarding it. He was 

 himself a Roman Catholic ; but it was enough for him 

 that he had been ordered to do it. 



We drove rapidly over the remaining twenty-two 

 miles to Richibucto. This tract of country presented the 

 common level surface, and the sandy, often thin, poor. 



