28 Bulletin of the Natural History Society. 
ours. The only features in this landscape that give it a dreary 
sameness are the one storeyed cottages of the habitans, dirty, desti- 
tute of paint, and with a poverty-stricken look that strikes one with 
amazement in this land of plenty ; and yet some of these cottages 
were not altogether lacking in beauty, for Nature, with a generous 
prodigality, had hidden their defects with a coat of moss ! There 
are many districts further down river where the cottages look neat 
and pretty ; but a little advice to the settlers — English as well as 
French — upon the Upper St. John, about the utility and beauty of 
an application of paint to their houses, w^ould not be amiss. 
On our upward trip we had a fine opportunity of seeing the 
country between Edmundston and Fort Kent. Our boat moved along 
easily, on the top of a Frenchman’s wagon, on what thousands of 
years ago may have been the bed of the river, which now was 
threading its way — perhaps in some places 100 feet below us. The 
view from these terraces is beautiful and gave us an idea of this country 
that could not be obtained in coming along the river by boat, 
for the frequency of boulders and rapids in our path, warned us not 
to let our eyes dwell too long on the landscape on either side of us. 
Our journey from the mouth of the St. Francis to Andover 
occupied four days. One day was spent in Camp, at the French 
village of St. Hilaire, from which place two of our party walked 
overland to Baker’s Lake, a distance of eight miles, but no dis- 
coveries rewarded us for this toilsome trip.* 
The journey to Andover, a distance of about 100 miles, was 
sufficiently interesting and exciting to render us forgetful of all 
fatigue. The water was high enough to render our passage through 
the rapids comparatively safe. Sometimes we sped along before the 
wind at the rate of six or eight miles an hour, at others the winds 
opposed our course when we came to anchor or toiled at the oar. 
Sometimes the thermometer stood in the nineties, and then again a 
grateful shower brought relief. During our passage through the 
gorge below Grand Falls a terrific thunderstorm lent a strange 
weirdness to the scenery, and gave it a grandeur which pen could 
* Along the banks of the St. John, near St. Hilaire, the following plants were noticed 
in addition to some already named — Cerastium arvense, Silene injlata tyerj abundant), Cas- 
tilleia pallida, Prunus pumila (very abundant on islands in the river) Geum album, Aster 
graminifolius Leontodon autumnale. Campanula rotundifolia, Smilax herbacea. Allium 
Schoenoprasum. 
