Other Causes Also Produce Highly Distinctive Features In The Inhabitants.
In The Long-Settled Districts Bordering Upon The Atlantic, All
The
accompaniments and appliances of civilisation may be met with, and a
comparatively stationary, refined, and intellectual condition of society.
Travel for forty hours to the westward, and everything is in a transition
state: there are rough roads and unfinished railroads; foundations of
cities laid in soil scarcely cleared from the forest; splendid hotels
within sound of the hunter's rifle and the lumberer's axe; while the
elements of society are more chaotic than the features of the country.
Every year a tide of emigration rolls westward, not from Europe only, but
from the crowded eastern cities, forming a tangled web of races, manners,
and religions which the hasty observer cannot attempt to disentangle. Yet
there are many external features of uniformity which the traveller cannot
fail to lay hold of, and which go under the general name of Americanisms.
These are peculiarities of dress, manners, and phraseology, and, to some
extent, of opinion, and may be partly produced by the locomotive life
which the American leads, and the way in which all classes are brought
into contact in travelling. These peculiarities are not to be found among
the highest or the highly-educated classes, but they force themselves upon
the tourist to a remarkable, and frequently to a repulsive, extent; and it
is safer for him to narrate facts and comment upon externals, though in
doing so he presents a very partial and superficial view of the people,
than to present his readers with general inferences drawn from partial
premises, or with conclusions based upon imperfect, and often erroneous,
data.
An entire revolution had been effected in my way of looking at things
since I landed on the shores of the New World. I had ceased to look for
vestiges of the past, or for relics of ancient magnificence, and, in place
of these, I now contemplated vast resources in a state of progressive and
almost feverish development, and, having become accustomed to a general
absence of the picturesque, had learned to look at the practical and the
utilitarian with a high degree of interest and pleasure. The change from
the lethargy and feudalism of Lower Canada and the gaiety of Quebec, to
the activity of the New England population, was very startling. It was not
less so from the reposeful manners and gentlemanly appearance of the
English Canadians, and the vivacity and politeness of the French, to
Yankee dress, twang, and peculiarities.
These appeared, as the Americans say, in "full blast," during the few
hours which I spent on Lake Champlain. There were about a hundred
passengers, including a sprinkling of the fair sex. The amusements were
story-telling, whittling, and smoking. Fully half the stories told began
with, "There was a 'cute 'coon down east," and the burden of nearly all
was some clever act of cheating, "sucking a greenhorn," as the phrase is.
There were occasional anecdotes of "bustings-up" on the southern rivers,
"making tracks" from importunate creditors, of practical jokes, and
glaring impositions.
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