"
He looked like a man who felt that he had expressed himself so aptly
and so well, that anything additional would only weaken its effect;
he therefore changed the conversation immediately, by pointing to a
tree at some little distance from the house, and remarking that it
was the rock maple or sugar tree.
"It's a pretty tree," said he, "and a profitable one too to raise.
It will bear tapping for many years, tho' it gets exhausted at last.
This Province is like that 'ere tree, it is tapped till it begins
to die at the top, and if they don't drive in a spile and stop the
everlastin' flow of the sap, it will perish altogether. All the money
that's made here, all the interest that's paid in it, and a pretty
considerable portion of rent too, all goes abroad for investment, and
the rest is sent to us to buy bread. It's drained like a bog, it has
opened and covered trenches all through it, and then there's others
to the foot of the upland to cut off the springs.
"Now you may make even a bog too dry; you may take the moisture out
of it to that degree, that the very sile becomes dust and blows away.
The English funds, and our banks, railroads, and canals, are all
absorbing your capital like a sponge, and will lick it up as fast as
you can make it. That very bridge we heerd of at Windsor is owned in
New Brunswick, and will pay toll to that province.
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