Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
History
Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808
Pinkney, lieutenant-colonel (Ninian)
France -- Description and travel
It may be imagined, that though returning to my hammock, I did not
return to my repose. I lay in all the restlessness of expectation till
day-break, when the Captain summoned me upon deck by the grateful
intelligence that we were entering the port of Calais. Hurrying upon
deck, I beheld a spectacle which immediately dispelled all the uneasy
sensations attendant upon a sleepless night. It was one of the finest
mornings of the latter end of June; the sun had not risen, but the
heavens were already painted with his ascending glories. I repeated in a
kind of poetical rapture the inimitable metaphoric epithet of the Poet
of Nature; an epithet preserved so faithfully, and therefore with so
much genius, by his English translator, Pope. The rosy-fingered morn,
indeed, appeared in all her plenitude of natural beauty; and the Sun,
that he might not long lose the sight of his lovely spouse, followed her
steps very shortly, and exhibited himself just surmounting the hills to
the east of Calais.
The sea was unruffled, and we were sailing towards the pier with full
sail, and a gentle morning breeze. The land and town, at first faint,
became gradually more distinct and enlarged, till we at length saw the
people on shore hurrying down to the pier, so as to be present at our
anchoring and debarkation. The French in general are much earlier risers
than either the Americans or the English; and by the time we were off
the pier, about seven in the morning, half of the town of Calais were
out to receive and welcome us. The French, moreover, as on every
occasion of my intercourse with them I found them afterwards, appeared
to me to be equally prominently different from all nations in another
quality--a prompt and social nature, a natural benevolence, or habitual
civility, which leads them instinctively, and not unfrequently
impertinently, into acts of kindness and consideration. Let a stranger
land at an English or an American port, and he is truly a stranger; his
inquiries will scarcely obtain a civil answer; and any appearance of
strangeness and embarrassment will only bring the boys at his heels. On
the other hand, let him land in any French port, and almost every one
who shall meet him will salute him with the complacency of hospitality;
his inquiries, indeed, will not be answered, because the person of whom
he shall make them, will accompany him to the inn, or other object of
his question.
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