You see a thousand boatmen, raftmen,
and millmen, some warping dingy scows, others loading huge square-sided
ships; busy
Gangs of men in fustian jackets, engaged in running off the
newly sawed timber; and the streets bustling with storekeepers, lumber-
merchants, and market-men; all combining to produce a chaos of activity
very uncommon in the towns of our North American colonies. But too often,
murky-looking wharfs, storehouses, and half-dismantled ships, are
enveloped in drizzling fog - the fog rendered yet more impenetrable by the
fumes of coal-tar and sawdust; and the lower streets swarm with a
demoralised population. Yet the people of St. John are so far beyond the
people of Halifax, that I heartily wish them success and a railroad.
The air was ringing with the clang of a thousand saws and hammers, when,
at seven on the morning of a brilliant August day, we walked through the
swarming streets bordering upon the harbour to the Ornevorg steamer,
belonging to the United States, built for Long Island Sound, but now used
as a coasting steamer. All my preconceived notions of a steamer were here
at fault. If it were like anything in nature, it was like Noah's ark, or,
to come to something post-diluvian, one of those covered hulks, or "ships
in ordinary," which are to be seen at Portsmouth and Devonport.
She was totally unlike an English ship, painted entirely white, without
masts, with two small black funnels alongside each other; and several
erections one above another for decks, containing multitudes of windows
about two feet square.
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