He Consoles Himself With The Hope That Something
Will Turn Up To Alter The Apparent Certainty Of His Exile; And In
This Hope, With His Mind Ever Fixed Upon His Return, He Does
Nothing For Posterity In The Colony.
He rarely even plants a
fruit tree, hoping that his stay will not allow him to gather
from it.
This accounts for the poverty of the gardens and
enclosures around the houses of the English inhabitants, and the
general dearth of any fruits worth eating.
How different is the appearance of French colonies, and how
different are the feelings of the settler! The word "adieu" once
spoken, he sighs an eternal farewell to the shores of "La belle
France," and, with the natural light-heartedness of the nation,
he settles cheerfully in a colony as his adopted country. He
lays out his grounds with taste, and plants groves of exquisite
fruit trees, whose produce will, he hopes, be tasted by his
children and grandchildren. Accordingly, in a French colony
there is a tropical beauty in the cultivated trees and flowers
which is seldom seen in our possessions. The fruits are brought
to perfection, as there is the same care taken in pruning and
grafting the finest kinds as in our gardens in England.
A Frenchman is necessarily a better settler; everything is
arranged for permanency, from the building of a house to the
cultivation of an estate. He does not distress his land for
immediate profit, but from the very commencement he adopts a
system of the highest cultivation.
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