also been made at raising flax and hemp.

The settlement at Maugerville was visited by Hon. Charles Morris, the
surveyor general of Nova Scotia, in 1767, and it is not improbable the
census taken by order of Lieut. Governor Franklin was made under his
supervision. Mr. Morris was evidently much surprised at the progress
the settlers had made, for in a letter of the 25th January, 1768, he
says:--

"Opposite to Oromocto River, upon the northerly side of the River St.
John's, is the English settlement of disbanded soldiers from New
England, consisting of about eighty families, who have made great
Improvements, and are like to make an established Settlement there.
And by some tryals they have made of hemp upon the intervale it
succeeded beyond their expectation. I measured myself Hemp that was
nine feet high, that had not come to its full growth in the latter end
of July. They generally have about twenty bushels of Maze and about
twenty bushels of Wheat from an acre of land, that was only cleared of
its woods and harrowed without ever having a Plow in it. When I was on
the River last year, I saw myself eighty bushes of Indian Corn raised
from one acre of land that had been ploughed and properly managed. I
would observe that the Corn raised on this River is not the same kind
as the Corn in New England; neither the climate or soil would be
suitable to it; they get their seed from Canada and they sow it in
rows about three feet distant as we do Pease in our gardens; it takes
about a bushel to sow an acre; the ears grow close to the ground as
thick as they can stick one by another, pointing outwards like a
Cheveaux de Frise upon each side of the rows; the richness of the
soil, the manner of sowing it and of its growing, may account very
easily for its producing so much to the acre. Some of the old French
Inhabitants of the River have informed me that they have raised, in a
seasonable year, near one hundred bushels of Indian Corn per acre."

The alluvial character of the soil of Maugerville, its freedom
from stone and from dense forest growth, no doubt attracted the
first English settlers and decided the choice of their location,
just as the same features attracted the brothers d'Amours and
others of the French nearly a century before. The French, too,
recorded as the principal drawback of the location, the losses and
annoyances consequent upon the inundation of their fields and
premises by the spring freshets.[60] A short ex