ven eleven dollars and board a month, while
wheat is selling at only three shillings, three shillings and six pence
or four shillings, and sometimes even still less. The returns are little
compared with the outlay on the land; nor does the land produce that
great abundance that men are apt to look for on newly cleared ground.
The returns of produce, however, must vary with the situation and
fertility of the soil, which is generally less productive in the
immediate vicinity of the lakes and rivers than a little further back
from them, the land being either swampy or ridgy, covered with pines and
beset with blocks of limestone and granite, the sub-soil poor and sandy.

This is the case on the small lakes and on the banks of the Otanabee;
the back lots are generally much finer in quality, producing hard wood,
such as bass-wood, maple, hickory, butter-nut, oak, beach, and iron-
wood; which trees always indicate a more productive soil than the pine
tribe.

In spite of the indifference of the soil the advantage of a water
frontage is considered a matter of great importance in the purchasing of
land; and, lots with water privileges usually fetch a much higher price
than those further removed from it. These lands are in general in the
possession of the higher class of settlers, who can afford to pay
something extra for a pretty situation, and the prospect of future
improvements when the country shall be under a higher state of
cultivation and more thickly settled.

We cannot help regarding with infinite satisfaction the few acres that
are cleared round the house and covered with crops. A space of this kind
in the midst of the dense forest imparts a cheerfulness to the mind, of
which those that live in an open country, or even a partially wooded
one, can form no idea. The bright sunbeams and the blue and cloudless
sky breaking in upon you, rejoices the eye and cheers the heart as much
as the cool shade of a palm-grove would the weary traveller on the sandy
wastes of Africa.

If we feel this so sensibly who enjoy the opening of a lake of full
three-quarters of a mile in breadth directly in front of our windows,
what must those do whose clearing is first opened in the depths of the
forest, hemmed in on every side by a thick wall of trees, through the
interminable shades of which the eye vainly endeavours to penetrate in
search of other objects and other scenes; but so dense is the growth of
timber, that all beyond the immediat