After A Fruitless Pilgrimage To Three Hotels,
We Were At Length Received At Waverley House, Having Accomplished A
Journey Of One Hundred Miles In Twenty Hours!
On ringing my bell, it was
answered by a rough porter, and I soon found that waiting chambermaids
are not essential at Transatlantic hotels; and the female servants, or
rather helps, are of a very superior class.
A friend of mine, on leaving
an hotel at Niagara, offered a douceur in the shape of half a dollar to
one of these, but she drew herself up, and proudly replied, "American
ladies do not receive money from gentlemen." Having left my keys at the
Bend, I found my valise a useless incumbrance, rather annoying after a
week of travelling.
We spent the Sunday at St. John, and, the opportune arrival of my keys
enabling me to don some habiliments suited to the day, I went to the
church, where the service, with the exception of the sermon, was very well
performed. A solemn thanksgiving for the removal of the cholera was read,
and was rendered very impressive by the fact that most of the congregation
were in new mourning. The Angel of Death had long hovered over the doomed
city, which lost rather more than a tenth of its population from a disease
which in the hot summer of America is nearly as fatal and terrible as the
plague. All who could leave the town fled; but many carried the disease
with them, and died upon the road. The hotels, shipyards, and stores were
closed, bodies rudely nailed up in boards were hurried about the streets,
and met with hasty burial outside the city, before vital warmth had fled;
the holy ties of natural affection were disregarded, and the dying were
left alone to meet the King of Terrors, none remaining to close their
eyes; the ominous clang of the death-bell was heard both night and day,
and a dense brown fog was supposed to brood over the city, which for five
weeks was the abode of the dying and the dead.
A temporary regard for religion was produced among the inhabitants of St.
John by the visit of the pestilence; it was scarcely possible for the most
sceptical not to recognise the overruling providence of God: and I have
seldom seen more external respect for the Sabbath and the ordinances of
religion than in this city.
The preponderance of the rougher sex was very strongly marked at Waverley
House. Fifty gentlemen sat down to dinner, and only three ladies,
inclusive of the landlady. Fifty-three cups of tea graced the table, which
was likewise ornamented with six boiled legs of mutton, numerous dishes of
splendid potatoes, and corn-cobs, squash, and pumpkin-pie, in true
colonial abundance.
I cannot forbear giving a conversation which took place at a meal at this
inn, as it is very characteristic of the style of persons whom one
continually meets with in travelling in these colonies: "I guess you're
from the Old Country?" commenced my vis-à-vis; to which recognition of
my nationality I humbly bowed. "What do you think of us here d own east?"
"I have been so short a time in these provinces, that I cannot form any
just opinion." "Oh, but you must have formed some; we like to know what
Old Country folks think of us." Thus asked, I could not avoid making some
reply, and said, "I think there is a great want of systematic enterprise
in these colonies; you do not avail yourselves of the great natural
advantages which you possess." "Well, the fact is, old father Jackey Bull
ought to help us, or let us go off on our own hook right entirely." "You
have responsible government, and, to use your own phrase, you are on 'your
own hook' in all but the name." "Well, I guess as we are; we're a long
chalk above the Yankees, though them is fellers as thinks nobody's got
their eye teeth cut but themselves."
The self-complacent ignorance with which this remark was made was
ludicrous in the extreme. He began again: "What do you think of Nova
Scotia and the 'Blue Noses'? Halifax is a grand place, surely!" "At
Halifax I found the best inn such a one as no respectable American would
condescend to sleep at, and a town of shingles, with scarcely any
sidewalks. The people were talking largely of railways and steamers, yet I
travelled by the mail to Truro and Pictou in a conveyance that would
scarcely have been tolerated in England two centuries ago. The people of
Halifax possess the finest harbour in North America, yet they have no
docks, and scarcely any shipping. The Nova-Scotians, it is known, have
iron, coal, slate, limestone, and freestone, and their shores swarm with
fish, yet they spend their time in talking about railways, docks, and the
House of Assembly, and end by walking about doing nothing."
"Yes," chimed in a Boston sea-captain, who had been our fellow-passenger
from Europe, and prided himself upon being a "thorough-going down-easter,"
"it takes as long for a Blue Nose to put on his hat as for one of our free
and enlightened citizens to go from Bosting to New Orleens. If we don't
whip all creation it's a pity! Why, stranger, if you were to go to
Connecticut, and tell 'em what you've been telling this ere child, they'd
guess you'd been with Colonel Crockett."
"Well, I proceeded, in answer to another question from the New-
Brunswicker," if you wish to go to the north of your own province, you
require to go round Nova Scotia by sea. I understand that a railway to the
Bay of Chaleur has been talked about, but I suppose it has ended where it
began; and, for want of a railway to Halifax, even the Canadian traffic
has been diverted to Portland."
"We want to invest some of our surplus revenue," said the captain.
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