Tracadi, and Young's farm is a portion of this. The population in the neighbourhood is considerable, and almost entirely French. Of these people, we saw a large number employed on Young's farm, in taking up his excellent crop of potatoes.

This low coast is indented with large lagoons, protected from the waters of the Bay of St Lawrence by narrow stripes of land-sandbanks, I suppose, thrown up by the strong tides, though I had no opportunity of personally inspecting them. The Tracadi lagoon is one of these, of six or eight miles in length, and in some places a couple of miles in breadth, and is named from two small rivers, the Tracadi and the Little Tracadi, which fall into it. At the mouth of the Little Tracadi, near which we now were, it was a beautiful sheet of water, skirted with rich low land, which again was girt about behind with fine old trees of the hardwood forest, through which we found it a pleasure to ride, when the warmth of the bright sun began to beat upon us.

We ferried across the lagoon to the site of the village, the church, the school, and the presbytère ; and we paid a visit to a singular hospital for lepers, which has been established in this remote spot. The disease here called leprosy is confined almost exclusively to the French population, and to the north-eastern part of the province, between the mouth of the Miramichi and the Bay de Chaleur. It attacks all ages, is by some said to be either infectious or contagious—though others deny that it is either—and has prevailed for many years in this district, though public attention has been drawn to it only at a comparatively recent period. Nearly all the known cases are now collected in the small hospital at Tracadi, which has been established and is maintained at the expense of the Provincial Government. We found them to be thirty-five in number, including males and females, children and grown-up persons; and the picture

26

SINGULAR NATURE OF THIS LEPROSY.

of hopeless misery which they used to present to visitors was described to me by one of my companions as absolutely heart-rending.

The disease is described as commencing its attacks by discolouring the skin of the limbs, giving rise at times to excruciating pains, fixing itself more deeply upon the extremities, rendering insensible the feet and hands, stiffening the joints, and gradually, by a species of dry gangrene, causing the fingers and toes to drop off. It attacks the face also, discolouring it, causing the features to swell, and in some cases inducing a diseased and ulcerated appearance, which is really frightful to look upon. The origin of the disease is unknown, as is also the time of its first appearance in the colony; and as the penalty for being attacked by it is separation from all friends, and perpetual seclusion with fellow-sufferers, by order of the Provincial Government, it is believed by many to be much more widely spread among the French population than it is publicly known to be. Some years ago, in consequence of representations being made on the subject to the Provincial Legislature, a commission of the most eminent medical men in the province was appointed to report upon the nature of the disease, and the best means of curing or repressing it. The members of this commission did not arrive at a unanimous opinion as to the nature of the disease-some regarding it, I believe, as the true leprosy of the ancients, and others as of venereal origin. But that it was incurable, and might spread, was generally agreed; and, therefore, that the confinement of the affected in a secluded hospital was a measure demanded by the public weal. The establishment of this hospital at Tracadi, and the removal of the patients from an island in the Miramichi, where they had formerly been confined, was the consequence.

At the time of my visit, a little hope had been inspired into the minds of the unhappy patients, through the

NO LONGER CONSIDERED INCURABLE.

27

means of a French-born Canadian doctor, who had been permitted to test an opinion he had formed as to the nature of the disease, and was now residing at the hospital. He maintained that the disease was a chronic form of venereal, and that, by a judicious and prolonged use of the ordinary remedies for this disease, an alleviation, if not a perfect cure, might be effected. By the use of mercury, and prolonged, slowly induced, mild salivation, he had—if the patients themselves were to be believed-produced results of a remarkably beneficial kind. The colour of the skin had improved, swellings had subsided, ulcers had healed, pains in the limbs had disappeared, sensation had returned to the extremities, joints had lost their stiffness, and, what had no doubt aided the effects of his medicine, and was perhaps more valuable than all, hope and cheerfulness had entered and lightened the hearts of all. The possibility of a cure had driven despair from their minds, and the most cruelly affected had begun to dream of a return to their own homes, and to the society and affections of their kindred. Instead of the dull round of monotonous misery in which day used to succeed day, the fiddle, hanging from the wall of their sitting-room, showed that the music and dancing, in which the Acadians delight, brought now an occasional interval to their cares, and relieved the dull hours of their unhappy life. A visit to this house carried my mind back to the time when charitable men founded hospitals in England for the reception of patients, wretched, hopeless, and outcasts as these are ; and I could not help wishing that this Canadian quack, as some called him, might prove to be right, and that his anticipations of success might be fully realised. *

28

DARKNESS OF THE NIGHTS.

Leaving Little Tracadi, we drove for three miles through a pleasant hardwood forest, to the ferry of Big Tracadi, where we crossed another wide arm of the same lagoon. Thence to the mouth of the Tabusintac River, which falls into a similar large lagoon, we passed over twelve miles of a light sandy nearly barren surface, covered with scrub, or Prince's pine, (Pinus inops,) and sweet fern, (Comptonia asplenifolia.) Of the latter I have already spoken on several occasions. Both are eminently characteristic of the soils on which they grow— the sweet fern of a dry poor sandy soil, not altogether incapable of producing certain crops, and the scrub pine of a poor gravelly barren.

We were now travelling south-west, and had begun to round the mouth of the Miramichi Bay. Generally, along the coast-line at least, this is not a district which invites the attention of the European settler. After crossing the ferry of the Tabusintac, we rode for fifteen miles over poor and sandy land, till we came successively to the small rivers Naguac and Burnt Church, upon each of which we found small French settlements, and some land better than the generality of the country. We passed also through some miles of good unappropriated mixed hardwood land, forming an Indian reserve, of considerable value.

Dark night came upon us while still ten miles from Douglastown. We therefore gladly accepted the hospitable invitation of a Mr Davidson, who occupies a farm on the Miramichi River about this distance from Douglastown-and refreshed ourselves and horses by an hour's delay, in the hope that the thick darkness would pass away. This was not the case, however, and we started again, groping our way through the woods, and

to their homes. What is the happiest result of all, the disease is no longer considered incurable, and those who have it are not under the same inducements to conceal it.

MONEY EXPENDED ON ROADS.

29

reached Douglastown before midnight. I have on one occasion, in England, been out in an open carriage when it was found impossible to proceed on account of the darkness; but in our open country we cannot understand the utter blackness which descends upon a narrow road, bordered by a thick natural forest of lofty trees, when the short twilight of this season passes away, and clouds obscure the sky. Fortunately our road was good, and tolerably level, and the eyes of both our driver and his horses were more accustomed to such wood-travelling than myself; so that we crossed the Bartibog River in safety, and reached our destination before midnight without serious interruption.

One observation is due to the colony, that in this week's excursion I have found the roads everywhere surprisingly good for so remote a district of so thinly peopled a province. Indeed, for the large amount of their expenditure on roads and bridges, the provincial authorities are deserving of the highest commendation. In the province of New Brunswick there are at present upwards of 1270 miles of great or high roads, which are entirely constructed and maintained out of the provincial chest, and an indeterminate length of bye-roads, which are maintained by local assessment more or less aided, in the thinly-peopled districts, by legislative grants. The sums expended for these purposes by authority of the legislature, in the years 1847 and 1848 respectively, were as follows:

1847.

1848. Great roads,

£22,250 £24,622 Bye-roads,

16,111

13,753

£38,361 £38,375 If, as I have elsewhere said,* the roads are, in all countries, not only the most important agents in