SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN. 405 



upon tliem. I sympathised with the wishes expressed 

 by the priest to be able to maintaiu a permanent school 

 among them. Difficulties stand in the way of a Govern- 

 ment grant, inasmuch as, by the Canadian regulations, 

 aid is given only to schools which have a certain 

 minimum number of pupils. It is in forming the school, 

 and breaking in the children to attend at all, that the 

 main difficulty lies. When formed, it might possibly 

 be made self-supporting. So far as I have learned, 

 all the provincial Governments have been anxious to 

 minister, as far as their means and knowledge go, to 

 the comfort and improvement of these vanishing races 

 of people ; though individual feeling and party bias 

 in the provinces, as at home, occasionally obstruct for 

 a time the adoption of the most judicious and beneficent 

 proposals. 



Tuesday^ Oct. 9. — After breakfast this morning we 

 climbed the sugar-loaf mountain — a warm, difficult, and 

 steep ascent over rocks, stones, and windfalls. It is 

 upwards of eight hundred feet in height, though not high 

 enough, as I had expected, to give us a view over the 

 uplands towards the south, though these are not so high 

 as those on the Canadian side. The prospect from the 

 summit was extensive and beautiful. Up the river, the 

 eye penetrated as far as the gorge through which the 

 Metapediac enters the Restigouche from the north, and 

 down — beyond Campbelton and Dalhousie on the one 

 side, and the Tragadegash Mountain on the other — far 

 along the Bay de Chaleur, almost to its mouth. North 

 and south, hardwood ridges, with intervening valleys, 

 extended as far as our elevation permitted us to see. 

 It was clear that, for many miles on either side of the 

 river, the land was naturally favourable to agricultural 

 settlements, and partook in a great degree of the good 

 qualities of the soils I had passed over on my way from 

 the Canadian forest to the ferry on the Restigouche. 



