Show him the industry, energy, skill and ingenuity of
these hardy people, who let not a rivulet run, nor a puff of wind blow,
without turning it to some account,--who mingle in every thing, speculate
in every thing, and dare every thing wherever a cent of money is to be
earned--whose lumbermen are found not only in the deepest woods of the
snowy and fearful wilds of Maine, throwing up sawmills on the lone
waterfalls, and making the woods ring with their hissing music--but
found, too, on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and coming also on mighty
rafts of deal from every eastern tributary of the wild St. John,
Meduxnekeag and Aroostook, streams whose names geographers hardly know.
And then too, as if this were not enough, they turn their enterprize and
form companies 'to log and lumber,' even on the Ocmulgee and Oconee of
the State of Georgia--and on this day they are actually found in the
Floridas, there planning similar schemes, and as there are no waterfalls,
making steam impel their saws. Show him the banks of the Penobscot, now
studded with superb villages--jewels of places, that have sprung up like
magic--the magnificent military road that leads to the United States'
garrison at Houlton, a fairy spot in the wilderness, but approached by
as excellent a road as the United States can boast of.
Show him the hundreds and hundreds of coasters that run up every creek
and inlet of tide-water there, at times left high and dry, as if the
ocean would never float them more: and then lift him above
considerations of a mercenary character, and show him how New-England
men are perpetuating their high character and holy love of liberty,--and
how, by neat and elegant churches, that adorn every village,--by
comfortable school-houses, that appear every two miles, or oftener, upon
almost every road, free for every body,--high-born, and low-born,--by
academies and colleges, that thicken even to an inconvenience; by
asylums and institutions, munificently endowed, for the benefit of the
poor:--and see, too, with what generous pride their bosoms swell when
they go within the consecrated walls of Faneuil Hall, or point out the
heights of Bunker Hill, or speak of Concord, or Lexington.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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