Acadia: or, A Month with the Blue NosesCozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout)
History
Acadia: or, A Month with the Blue Noses
Cozzens, Frederic S. (Frederic Swartwout)
Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
It may seem absurd and trifling to dwell upon such slight particulars in
this itinerary of a month among the Blue Noses (as our brothers of Nova
Scotia are called); but to give a correct idea of this rarely-visited part
of the world, one must notice the salient points that present themselves
in the course of the survey. Louisburgh would speedly become rich from its
fisheries, if there were sufficient capital invested there and properly
used. Halifax is now the only point of contact between it and the outside
world; Halifax supplies it with all the necessary articles of life, and
Halifax buys all the produce of its fisheries. Therefore, Halifax reaps
all the profits on either side, both of buying and selling, in all not
amounting to much--as the matter now stands. But insomuch as the sluggish
blood of the colonies will never move without some quickening impulse from
exterior sources, and as Louisburgh is only ten days' sail, under canvas,
from New York, and as the fisheries there would rapidly grow by kindly
nurture into importance, it does seem as if a moderate amount of capital
diverted in that direction, would be a fortunate investment, both for the
investor and hardy fishermen of the old French town.
I have alluded before to the long Acadian twilights, the tender and loving
leave-takings between the day and his earth; just as two fond and foolish
young people separate sometimes, or as the quaint old poet in Britannia's
Pastorals describes it:
"Look as a lover, with a lingering kiss,
About to part with the best half that's his:
Fain would he stay, but that he fears to do it,
And curseth time for so fast hastening to it:
Now takes his leave, and yet begins anew
To make less vows than are esteemed true:
Then says, he must be gone, and then doth find
Something he should have spoke that's out of mind:
_And while he stands to look for't in her eyes,
Their sad, sweet glance so ties his faculties
To think from what he parts that he is now
As far from leaving her, or knowing how,
As when he came_; begins his former strain,
To kiss, to vow, and take his leave again;
Then turns, comes back, sighs, pants, and yet doth go,
Fain to retire, and loth to leave her so."
Even so these fond and foolish old institutions part company in northern
regions, and, at the early hour of two o'clock in the morning, the amorous
twilight reappears in his foggy mantle, to look at the fair face of his
ancient sweetheart in the month of June.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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