As the _Hawk_ was to stay two or three days in port in order to take on supplies, they went ashore together, and the three were full of curiosity when they entered, for the first time, the town of which they had heard so much. Boston had already made such impress upon the imagination that all the English colonists were generally known to the French in Canada as Bostonnais. In England it had a great name, and there were often apprehensions about it. It was the heart and soul of the expedition when the New Englanders surprised the world by taking the great French fortress of Louisbourg, and it had an individuality and a personality which it has never lost. "I don't know how I'm going to like it," said Captain Whyte, as they left the sloop. "I hear that they're very superior here, and consider us English a rather backward lot. Don't you think you'd better reconsider, Lennox, and go on with us to Louisbourg?" Robert laughed. "I'm not afraid of the Bostonians," he said. "I met some very competent ones on the shores of Lake George. There was one Elihu Strong, a colonel of Massachusetts infantry, whom I like to remember. In truth, Captain, what I see here arouses my admiration. You noticed the amount of shipping in the port. The Bostonians are very keen traders, and they say there are sharp differences in character between them and the people of our southern provinces, but as I come from a middle province, New York, I am, in a sense, neutral. The New Englanders have a great stake in the present war. Their country has been ravaged for more than a century by French and Indians from Canada, and this province of Massachusetts is sending to it nearly every man, and nearly every dollar it has." "We know of their valor and tenacity in England," said Captain Whyte, "but we know also that they're men of their own minds." "Why shouldn't they be? That's why they're English." "Since you put it that way, you're right. But here we are." The town, about the size of New York, looked like a great city to Robert. He had come from a land that contained only one inhabitant, himself, and it was hard for him now to realize there were so many people in the world. The contrast put crowds everywhere, and, at times, it was very confusing, though it was always interesting. The men were mostly tall, thin, and with keen but composed eyes. They were of purer British blood than those in New York, but it seemed to Robert that they had departed something from type. They were more strenuous than the English of Old England, and the New Yorkers, in character if not in blood and appearance, were more nearly English than the Bostonians. He also thought, and he was not judging now so much from a glimpse of Boston as from the New England men whom he had met, that they were critical both of themselves and others, and that they were a people who meant to have their way at any cost.