The unity that has been the chief cause of the strength of the New England influence is in some measure sprung from the fact that these six States are completely shut off from all America by the single State of New York, alien from them in political and moral life. Every Yankee feels his country bounded by the British, the Irish, and the sea. In addition to the homogeneousness of isolation, the New Englanders, like the Northern Scotch, have the advantages of a bad climate and a miserable soil. These have been the true agents in the development of the energy, the skill, and fortitude of the Yankee people. In the war, for instance, it was plain that the children of the poor and rugged Northeastern States were not the men to be beaten by the lotus-eaters of Louisiana when they were doing battle for what they believed to be a righteous cause. One effect of the poverty of soil with which New England is afflicted has been that her sons have wandered from end to end of the known world, engaging in every trade, and succeeding in all. Sometimes there is in their migrations a religious side. Mormonism, although it now draws its forces from Great Britain, was founded in New England. At Brindisi, on my way home, I met three Yankees returning from a Maine colony lately founded at Jaffa, in expectation of the fulfillment of prophecy, and destruction of the Mohammedan rule. For the moment they are intriguing for a firman from the very government upon the coming fall of which all their expectations have been based; and these fierce fanatics are making money by managing a hotel. One of them told me that the Jaffa colony is a “religio-commercial speculation.” New England Yankees are not always so filled with the Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means of money-making. Even the Massachusetts common schools and prim Connecticut meeting-houses turn out their black sheep into the world. At Center Harbor, in New Hampshire, I met with an example of the “Yankee spawn” in a Maine man--a shrewd, sailor-looking fellow. He was sitting next me at the ordinary, and asked me to take a glass of his champagne. I declined, but chatted, and let out that I was a Britisher. “I was subject to your government once for sixteen months,” my neighbor said. “Really! Where?” “Sierra Leone. I was a prisoner there. And very lucky, too.” “Why so?” I asked. “Because, if the American government had caught me, they would have hanged me for a pirate. But _I wasn‘t a pirate_.” With over-great energy I struck in, “Of course not.” _My Neighbor.--“No; I was a slaver.”_ * * * * *