160 AMERICAN PREFERRED TO PROVINCIAL SHIPS.

it on the American shores. In the State of Maine, such speculations in wood-land have long been a great source. of mercantile competition and excitement. Many of their leading men have been involved in them; and they are said to have bad a great share in the violence displayed by the people of Maine on occasion of the disputes in reference to the boundary with New Brunswick.

Second, Another reason is, that American ships bear a higher character in the southern ports, and obtain freights at New Orleans or elsewhere, in preference to Provincial ships. They can also be insured as American ships at a lower rate in Boston, than they can as New Brunswick ships at St John. Thus, it is for the interest of the St Stephens merchants to build their ships on the Calais side of the water. Though no better in quality, . they are now American ships, and enjoy all the benefits in the ports of the Union which bonâ fide country ships possess. Were there as large a country, and as extensive and rich a seaboard behind St Stephens as there is behind Calais, this state of things would not exist; and although, on the whole, a very much wider field for commercial enterprise is presented to the British merchant in the vast extent of the home and colonial empire, yet, to a young and rising port, it is chiefly the coasting-trade which is of importance. The ability to build large ships, and to engage in foreign commerce, is a work of time, and is found only in places where considerable prosperity has already been attained, and considerable wealth accumulated.

The above circumstances explain why the shipping of the St Croix River should be found chiefly on the western side ; but it is in favour of St Stephen that its taxes are lighter. I was informed that they were so in the ratio of 10 to 1—that a person who, in St Stephens, pays only 100 dollars of taxes would, with the same property, in Calais, pay 1000. This

may

be an

SMUGGLING ON THE BORDERS.

161

exaggeration, but there is no dispute, I believe, as to the fact that taxation, in all the States, is very much higher than in any of the British provinces.

Considerable smuggling of other kinds goes on along this river. It would be hard, indeed, to prevent it without a very large staff of officers. Flour is smuggled over from the western side, and British goods - after having paid the Provincial duties of 8} per cent

- from the eastern side. A good deal of reciprocal smuggling appears to be connived at on both sides of the border, and it would probably be difficult to say which shore has the advantage.

This forenoon was very wet and disagreeable, so that I could not take an extensive drive round the country, as I had intended.

nded. I was able, however, to mak a short tour of six miles up the river, to what is called Upper Milltown; and, crossing the river there, to return down the Maine side to Calais. The land was generally a yellowish clay, covered with granite boulders. When once cleared, few stones come again within reach of the plough ; but many fields I saw must have cost much time and labour to clear. Until drainage is introduced, these soils, even when cleared of stones, will always be difficult and uncertain to till. A whitish cold clay fills also the bottoms of the many small valleys or hollows with which this part of Charlotte County abounds. Being impervious, it there forms cedar and alder swamps, with mixed scrub-pine and hacmatac. I found it also in the low flat patches of intervale which bound the river below St Stephens. No shells were visible in it; but it had much resemblance to the post-tertiary clays of the river St Lawrence, and is probably of the same age. This clay struck me as peculiar to this part of New Brunswick. The soil it forms is almost as difficult and untractable, and certainly requires more skill to manage VOL. II.

L

162

CLAY AND STONY SOILS.

it than the stonier surfaces that cover the mixed trap and metamorphic rocks of the county. Thorough-draining, liming, abundant gifts of vegetable matter, and much patient industry, will at a future time make them easily workable and productive in corn.

I found here prevalent an idea to which I have elsewhere alluded, that "the fervid suns of this climate do away with the necessity for thorough-drainage.' This is a mistake: they rather make such drainage more necessary. These fervid suns bake and harden clay soils, and make them not only difficult to work, but incapable of ministering to the growth of almost any of our crops; and it is one of the beneficial influences of this species of improvement that it brings the soil into a condition in which it does not bake, harden, crack, and yawn under a hot sun, and so permits the roots to descend further, beyond the reach of its burning rays, and to derive nourishment from the still moist and rich soil below.

On the rising-grounds and ridges, the subjacent clay is covered by drifted slate-gravel, more or less mixed with fine earth, which forms a dry, easily-worked, and manageable soil. Hence, the tops of the ridges are the seats of all the settlements in this part of Charlotte County. Nearly all the hill-tops are cleared and settled, while the slopes and bottoms are still in wilderness or in swamp. These slopes and bottoms are often very stony, and sometimes so much so as absolutely to defy the hand of industry to reclaim them. The boulders are chiefly granite; and the yellow clay is probably derived from the decay of a felspar rock.

The Mohannas Settlement, about five miles above St Stephens, is on such a ridge. I drove up to one of the farms, to satisfy myself by inspection of the reason why it occupied only the highest ground. I found it a gravelly soil of slate-drift of all sizes, evidently easy to

UPPER AND LOWER MILLTOWNS.

163

work, and well adapted for barley, turnip, and potato crops, though less suited to grass. The fields over which I walked were undulating and picturesquely situated, having a wide view along the river, and over the cold clay wilderness below. To a stranger, it seems at first very remarkable how, out of the continuous primeval forest which once covered the whole region, settlers should have been able to select for cultivation such rarely-occurring more available spots as these, from the midst of stony and stiff clay-barrens and prevailing swamps. It is only after he learns to understand the indications of the different species of trees which compose these forests that he begins to understand how, to the pioneer in the wilderness, the broad-leaved trees of various kinds speak an intelligible language, and beckon him to the sites on which they grow, as possessing the qualities he wishes for in the land upon which he would choose to settle.

About a mile and a half above St Stephens is Lower Milltown, which is a large thriving village-indeed two villages, as there is one on either side of the river; and four miles higher is Upper Milltown, where there are also two opposite villages. These villages are established on the falls of the river, where the mill-power exists. There are many nice houses in them and along the way-side, and evidences of much prosperity and of a large mill-trade on both banks of the river. Those on the New Brunswick appear quite as flourishing as those on the Maine side of the stream.

On crossing into Maine, and proceeding through the mist and drizzle back again towards Calais, my recollection is very vivid of the execrable condition of the roads. Nowhere in the two thousand miles I had travelled in New Brunswick had I seen the roads so difficult to travel on. Deep ruts, heavy mud, and large pools almost covering the road, compelled our willing horse to linger. To the wet weather, the clayey material of

164

FARMING IN MAINE.

which the roads were made, and the numerous lumbercarts which pass along them at this season of the year, were ascribed this scarcely-passable condition.

The farming in Maine appears no better than in New Brunswick, and I was sorry to learn that the farmers themselves were far from being in a prosperous condition. Two-thirds of them, I was told, were on the eve of bankruptcy. Like those of New Brunswick, I believe, many have engaged in lumbering; and, notwithstanding the supposed more favourable circumstances of the United States lumber-merchants, like them have suffered loss instead of making money by it. Had the day not been so impractically bad, it was my intention to have driven up to two or three of the farms we passed, with the view of learning more as to the condition of the rural proprietors, and more accurately from them than I could hope to do from persons belonging to the opposite side of the river.*

I have already mentioned that sheep and cattle from Nova Scotia supply the markets of St John, and that the shipping in that port are victualled with New England beef. On the St Croix River, the home produce from either side is unable to meet the demands of the shipping, and droves of cattle come from Massachusetts to make up the deficiency. The feeding of cattle, as I have already observed, is a branch of husbandry to which hitherto scarcely any attention has been paid in New Brunswick, though it is the basis of high and profitable farming.

At low-water, I walked along the flat intervale which skirts the river below St Stephens. This intervale, and the bed of the river itself, underneath the more recent mud, and as far across the channel as could be observed,