A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
any case, if he looked no farther than Quebec, they would appear to have
planted themselves in Canada only as they have in Spain at Gibraltar;
and he who plants upon a rock cannot expect much increase. The novel
sights and sounds by the water-side made me think of such ports as
Boulogne, Dieppe, Rouen, and Havre de Grace, which I have never seen;
but I have no doubt that they present similar scenes. I was much amused
from first to last with the sounds made by the charette and caleche
drivers. It was that part of their foreign language that you heard the
most of,—the French they talked to their horses,—and which they talked
the loudest. It was a more novel sound to me than the French of
conversation. The streets resounded with the cries, _“Qui donc!_”
“_March tôt!_” I suspect that many of our horses which came from Canada
would prick up their ears at these sounds. Of the shops, I was most
attracted by those where furs and Indian works were sold, as containing
articles of genuine Canadian manufacture. I have been told that two
townsmen of mine, who were interested in horticulture, travelling once
in Canada, and being in Quebec, thought it would be a good opportunity
to obtain seeds of the real Canada crook-neck squash. So they went into
a shop where such things were advertised, and inquired for the same. The
shopkeeper had the very thing they wanted. “But are you sure,” they
asked, “that these are the genuine Canada crook-neck?” “O yes,
gentlemen,” answered he, “they are a lot which I have received directly
from Boston.” I resolved that my Canada crook-neck seeds should be such
as had grown in Canada.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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