Effects of the Climate 011 Europeans. 45 



towns, and surrounded only by the bare necessaries of life ; 

 while their children inherited the lands they had cultivated 

 with far less demand on their energies; and finding that their 

 patrimony could always bring enough to maintain them in 

 idleness, they neglected the farm, and the soil became impo- 

 verished. In this way whole districts, once famous for their 

 fertility, are now worn out entirely from the prolonged system 

 of constant demand without adequate remuneration * 



The settler in the wilderness districts spends the year be- 

 tween the woods and the farm, and no doubt, of the two, he 

 infinitely prefers the former, where he is not over-worked, and 

 always gets a good dinner and pay for a hard day's work. 

 But as soon as he has driven the logs down the streams, he 

 must hasten to his home to till and saw enough to maintain 

 his family during his absence. Sad experience has long since 

 established a canon that no branch of industry can prosper 

 as long as there is ready access to alcoholic drinks; hence 

 none are allowed, tea being substituted and used extensively 

 at each meal. Thus, while pork, fresh meat, beans, molasses, 

 and home-baked bread are the sole articles of food in the 

 lumber camp, he lives more sparingly in his home, where salted 

 pork is often the only animal food in the larder from year's 

 end to year's end. The result is, wherever the sameness of 

 living has been pursued for some time, there is never much 

 difficulty in recognizing its effects on the outward aspect of 

 the inhabitants.! Here, unlike the United States, the infusion 



* In the rural districts agriculture is still very primitive, whilst horti- 

 culture is very much neglected ; in fact, neither have received anything like 

 the attention they deserve, and apparently never will until the forests are 

 exhausted and the settler thinks more of his farm than of felling trees. 



t During my wanderings in the forest districts I was constantly applied 

 to for advice regarding conditions of ill-health demonstrably the result of 

 long-continued subsistence on one sort of food ; scurvy and diseases 

 resultant of mal-assimulation being especially common. It would, I feel, 

 be beneficial to health in the rural districts if more wheaten bread was 

 used and less buckwheat, which, although it tastes well, is poor in nitro- 

 genous substances and fat ; moreover, the custom of serving up both 



