of the country, and are of the utmost advantage to the
inhabitants in transporting the products of the forests to the
seaports, as their chief trade consists in lumber and other bulky
articles. It likewise abounds in lakes, streams, springs, and rivulets,
so that there are few places unprovided with good mill seats or water
conveyance. It is diversified with beautiful acclivities, hills and
mountains, some of which will be noticed in the course of this work.

The appearance of the country along the Bay of Fundy is forbidding,
rugged and broken, and the soil indifferent. Advancing from the
sea-board into the interior the face of the country becomes more level,
being interspersed with gentle risings and vales, with large strips of
fertile intervals along the rivers, which being annually overflowed
produce excellent crops. In many places along the margin of the rivers,
the banks are high and abrupt, and to a stranger the land appears poor
and hard to cultivate; but after rising the banks, and advancing a
short distance from the water, the land becomes level, and the soil
rich; being covered with a thick black mould, produced by the
putrefaction of the leaves of the numerous trees with which the country
is covered. In other parts the land rises with a beautiful slope from
the water, offering many fine situations for buildings and seats. The
land in some parts being a second intervale, and in others a good
upland with a strong soil.

Most of the rivers have numbers of fine Islands interspersed in their
courses, which being chiefly formed by the washing of the currents,
consist of rich alluvial soil, producing grain, roots and grass in the
greatest luxuriance. These islands may be considered as the gardens of
the country, which they enrich and beautify. The rapidity of the
rivers, swoln by the melting of the snow in the spring, tears away the
soil in some parts, and deposits it in others; by which means their
courses are gradually altered; new Islands are formed, and alluvial
soil accumulated in some parts of the rivers, while it is washed away
in others; and this is more or less the case according to the looseness
of the soil, and the bends of the river: so that a man may have a
growing estate, or he may see his land diminishing from year to year
without the power to remedy it.

As most of the settlements are as yet confined to the margin of rivers
and streams, the country a little back is a continued forest, covered
with