ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. 147

there is nothing that the latter will produce but What will grow, With the same care and cultivation, in the former. The winters of Newfoundland are, it is true, colder, but in summer and autumn the weather is, for two or three months, so hot, as to bring many fruits to perfection that will not ripen in Scotland.

The sea-coast, from Fortune Bay to Cape Ray, is everywhere indented, like the south-east coast of Nova Scotia, which it resembles, with harbours ; but the lands, especially near the sea, are rocky, thinly wooded, and with scarcely any soil fit for cultivation. On the west coast, particularly at St George’s Bay, where there is a settlement, there are tracts of excel. lent land, with deep and fertile soils, and covered in many places with heavy timber. Coal, limestone, and gypsum, abound in great plenty in this part of the island.

At the heads of the bays, and along the rivers, there are many tracts of land formed of deposits washed from the hills; the soil of which tracts is of much the same quality as that of the savannas in the interior of America. These lands, should the increa- sing population render it desirable, might be con- verted into excellent meadows; and if drained, to carry off the water which covers them after the Snows dissolve, they would yield good barley, oats, &c. The rich pasturage which the island affords, adapts it, in an eminent degree, to the breeding and raising of cattle and sheep; and I believe that it might produce a sufficient quantity of beef to supply its fisheries.