316 FEENCH MORE HOME-LOVING. 



to Montreal to devote a day to an excursion to St 

 Hilalre, and a climb to the top of Beloeil. They will 

 be able to procure agreeable accommodation at an hotel 

 which the seigneur was building at the time of my visit, 

 in a beautiful situation, for the accommodation of rail- 

 way tourists. 



In the afternoon I visited, in company with some agri- 

 cultural friends, the brickmaker in whose hands the tile- 

 machine of Major Campbell had been placed. He had 

 this season made 40,000 tiles, all of which he expected 

 to sell at the price of six to eight dollars a thousand, 

 according to the size. It was chiefly a few British 

 farmers in the neighbourhood of Montreal who had 

 hitherto tried them, but so far with much advantage. I 

 am satisfied that, in all the St Lawrence flats, they are 

 to be a means of much agricultural improvement. As 

 they become more in demand, their price at the tile-work 

 will diminish, and the cost of executing thorough-drain- 

 age be in consequence lessened. 



The plea will not be so generally urged here as it is 

 in the New England States, and in that of New York, 

 against the expenditure of money in improvement, 

 " that the land, when drained, will not sell for an equi- 

 valently increased price in the market." For, though it 

 may be equally true here as in the States, yet the 

 French Canadians are a more fixed, home-loving race of 

 people, not so given to change, and would therefore, if 

 they had the money, be more willing to expend it in 

 improving and embellishing the houses of themselves 

 and their children. But the vast number of mortgages 

 with which the farmers in Lower Canada are oppressed 

 may prove an obstacle, which only a board of " Com- 

 missioners for the Sale of Encumbered Estates" will be 

 able to overcome. 



I had only time left to take a hasty drive up and 

 around the hill of Montreal — an excursion to which I 



