A Few 'cute Enterprising Yankees Would Soon Metamorphose
The Aspect Of This City.
As an arrogant American once observed to me, "It
would take a 'Blue Nose' (a Nova-Scotian) as long to put on his hat as for
one of our free and enlightened citizens to go from Bosting to New
Orleens." The appearance of the town was very repulsive.
A fall of snow
had thawed, and mixing with the dust, store-sweepings, cabbage-stalks,
oyster-shells, and other rubbish, had formed a soft and peculiarly
penetrating mixture from three to seven inches deep.
Eighteen passengers joined the America at Halifax, and among them I was
delighted to welcome my cousins, a party of seven, en route from Prince
Edward Island to England. The two babies which accompanied them were
rather dreaded in prospect, but I believe that their behaviour gained them
general approbation. As dogs are not allowed on the poop or in the saloon,
a well-conditioned baby is rather a favourite in a ship; gentlemen of
amiable dispositions give it plenty of nursing and tossing, and stewards
regard it with benignant smiles, and occasionally offer it "titbits"
purloined from dinner.
Among the passengers who joined us at Halifax were Captain Leitch, and
three of the wrecked officers of the steamship City of Philadelphia,
which was lost on Cape Race three months before. Captain Leitch is a
remarkable-looking man, very like the portraits of the Count of Monte
Christo. His heroism and presence of mind on the occasion of that terrible
disaster were the means of saving the lives of six hundred people, many of
whom were women and children. When the ship struck, the panic among this
large number of persons was of course awful; but so perfect was the
discipline of the crew, and so great their attachment to their commander,
that not a cabin-boy left the ship in that season of apprehension without
his permission. Captain Leitch said that he would be the last man to quit
the ship, and he kept his word; but the excitement, anxiety, and
subsequent exposure to cold and fatigue, more especially in his search
after the survivors of the ill-fated Arctic, brought on a malady from
which he was severely suffering.
We had only sixty passengers on board, and the party was a remarkably
quiet one. There was a gentleman going to Paris as American consul, a
daily, animated, and untiring advocate of slavery; a Jesuit missionary, of
agreeable manners and cultivated mind, on his way to Rome to receive an
episcopal hat; two Jesuit brethren; five lively French people; and the
usual number of commercial travellers, agents, and storekeepers,
principally from Canada. There were very few ladies, and only three
besides our own party appeared in the saloon. For a few days after leaving
Halifax we had a calm sea and fair winds, accompanied with rain; and with
the exception of six unhappy passengers who never came upstairs during the
whole voyage, all seemed well enough to make the best of things.
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