Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/321

This page has been validated.
THE VALLEY OF THE ST. JOHN
267

tive at least in the moose yards and on the sovereign streams accessible by rail from St. Leonards. The New Brunswick forests are especially rich in hemlock, hackmatack, spruce, maple, elm, oak, birch, beech and ash, of which exports to the value of $5,000,000 are annually shipped from the province. About 300,000,000 feet of lumber is cut in a year. A modest proportion of the total output is retained for the domestic manufacture of wood pulp, shingles, laths, boards, blinds, doors, sashes. On main rivers there are numerous saw-mills which are fed by branching streams that carry the felled trees swiftly, with the aid of agile "drivers," to the place of their dismemberment. Each log bears its owner's brand on the butt so that little confusion arises at the "sorting" when individual rafts are assembled to be towed down navigable currents by tugs.

The hotel at St. Leonards is quite surprisingly modern in its appointments, the proprietor having had consideration for the trend of sporting traffic from the United States over the Boston and Albany and Canadian Pacific Roads into the heart of the New Brunswick woods. The new International Bridge crosses the St. John from St. Leonards to Van Buren, Maine, where connection is made with the Bangor and Aroostook Railway.

The route northwest of St. Leonards bears through an Acadian farm country to Edmunds-