Saint-Nazaire

“ You, too, were then English citizens. You welcomed the arms of Cromwell to Jamaica. Your hearts thrilled at the tidings of Blenheim and Ramillies, and exulted in the thunders of Chatham. You shared the laurels and the conquests of Wolfe. For you and with you we overthrew France and Spain upon this continent, and made America the land of the Anglo-Saxon race. Halifax will share the destinies of the North-American confederation,—destinies, as I said before, not alien to yours. Nassau is an appendage to our West-Indian possessions. ”

“ NASSAU. Nassau looked very green and pleasant to us after our voyage;—the eyes enjoy a little fresh provision after so long a course of salt food. The first view of land is little more than "the feeling of the thing,"—it is matter of faith, rather than of sight. You are shown a dark and distant line, near the horizon, without color or features. ”

“ There are 56,712 human habitations in the duchy of Nassau, and 355,815 human beings to live in them. Of these, 188,244 are Protestants, 161,535 are Catholics; there are 191 Mennonitens or dissenters; and scattered among these bleak hills, just as their race is mysteriously scattered over the face of the globe, there are 5845 Jews. The Duke of Nassau is the cacique, king, emperor, or commander-in-chief of the province; and people here are everlastingly talking of the Duke, as in England they talk of the sun, the moon, or any other luminary of which there exists only one in our system. ”

“ In normal peace times the inhabitants numbered approximately 40,000, whereas a conservative estimate of the permanent population located in St. Nazaire and its environs during the war, was 85,000.
Just west of the city a large camp accommodating 12,000 soldiers was built. This was only used for concentration purposes, however, for both the American and British troops. The Americans later built numerous camps about the city, holding from 400 to 2000 men each. Montoir, a near-by point, should properly be included in the St. Nazaire area. ”

“ At Coblentz we pass the river on a pendulum boat, and the road to Nassau is over tremendous hills, on which is here and there a little corn, more vines, but mostly barren. In some of these barrens are forests of beach and oak, tolerably large, but crooked and knotty; the undergrowth beach brush, broom, and moss. The soil of the plains, and of the hills where they are cultivable, is reddish. Nassau is a village the whole rents of which should not amount to more than a hundred or two guineas. Yet it gives the title of Prince to the house of Orange to which it belongs. ”

“ On the 15th of February we arrived off the west coast of France and disembarked at St. Nazaire. Our life now took on fresh interest. Everything about us was new and strange. As a Quebecer I felt quite at home in a French town. A good sleep in a comfortable hotel was a great refreshment after the voyage. In the afternoon of the following day we entrained for the front. I spread out my Wolesley sleeping bag on the straw in a box car in which there were several other officers. ”

“ How often those quiet moonlit streets must have roared with brutal revelry, and the fierce clamour of pistol-belted scoundrels round the wine-casks have gone up into the still, tropic night.
But those heroic days are gone, and Nassau is given up to a sleepy trade in sponges and tortoise-shell, and peace is no name for the drowsy tenor of the days under the palm trees and the scarlet poincianas. ”

“ How many thousands and hundreds of thousands of English, with their mouths, eyes, and purses wide open, have followed each other, in mournful succession, up and down the Rhine; and yet, though Nassau has stood absolutely in their path, I believe I may assert that not twenty families have taken up their abode at Langen-Schwalbach or Schlangenbad in the course of the last twenty years; and yet there is no country on earth that could turn out annually more consumptive, rheumatic, and dyspeptic patients than old England! ”

“ The island of New Providence, of which Nassau is the only town, is a barren limestone rock, producing only some coarse grass, a few stunted trees, a few pine-apples and oranges, and a great many sand-crabs and “fiddlers.” Before the war, it was the rendezvous of a few wreckers and fishermen. Commerce it had none, except such as might grow out of the sponge-trade, and the shipment of green turtle and conch-shells. The American war which has brought woe and wretchedness to so many of our States, was the wind which blew prosperity to Nassau. ”

“ Niagara belongs to no particular nation or people. It is an inheritance bequeathed by the great Author to all mankind,--an altar raised by his own almighty hand, at which all true worshippers must bow the knee in solemn adoration. I trust that these free glad waters will assert their own rights, and dash into mist and spray any attempt made to infringe their glorious liberty. ”

“ We made Nassau at twelve o'clock, on the sixth day from our departure, counting the first as one. The earliest feature discernible was a group of tall cocoa-nut trees, with which the island is bounteously feathered;—the second was a group of negroes in a small boat, steering towards us with open-mouthed and white-toothed wonder. Nothing makes its simple impression upon the mind sophisticated by education. ”

“ The moonlight nights at Nassau, although marvellously beautiful, are not a little dangerous to fresh arrivals, on account of the heavy dews. I remember one evening we all went out to see the ruins of the fort built in 1788 by the Earl of Dunmore, memorably connected with the American Revolution. It certainly was a lovely sight, and the old grey walls and tower looked as well as any ruin on Rhine or Nile by that argentine radiance, approaching sunlight in its tropical brilliance, which renders things more or less romantic, be they ever so commonplace. ”

“ The story of Fort Niagara is peculiarly the story of the fur trade and the strife for commercial monopoly; and it is, too, in considerable measure, the story of our neighbor, the magnificent colony of Canada, herself worthy of full sisterhood among the nations. It is a story replete with incident of battle and siege, of Indian cruelty, of patriot captivity, of white man's duplicity, of famine, disease and death,—of all the varied forms of misery and wretchedness of a frontier post, which we in days of ease are wont to call picturesque and romantic. ”

“ Nassau looked very pretty in the morning sunlight, with its pink and white houses nestling among palm trees and the masts of its sponging schooners, and soon we were abreast of the picturesque low-lying fort, Fort Montague, that Major Bruce, nearly two hundred years ago, had had such a time building as a protection against pirates entering from the east end of the harbour. ”

“ Those who would master the art of talking to the Nassau negro should first brush up on their Bibles; for a pious salutation might almost be said to be Nassau etiquette for opening a conversation. Of course, this applies mainly to negroes or those "conchs" in whom negro blood predominates. The average white man in Nassau must not be considered as implicated in this statement, for he seems to take his religion much as the average white man takes it in any other part of the world. ”

“ Old Nassau will never be what she was before the fire of '55. Those precious heirlooms of our day are sunk from sight forever, dear and mossy as they were,—swept down, like cobwebs, before the flame-besom. ”

“ For the charm of Zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, and a firm government under a benign [211] and gentle Sultan, they have done all of this without destroying one flash of its local color, or one throb of its barbaric life, which is the showy, sunshiny, and sumptuous life of the Far East. ”

“ We were{222} fortunate in meeting, in our drive, Louise, Princess of Nassau, in a very ordinary-looking turnout, and not prepossessing-looking herself, but our driver informed us that she is charitable and well-beloved by all. We, later, visited the palace of the Duke of Nassau. There is a pretty English church here, and a very beautiful Greek chapel, built by one of the Nassau dukes in memory of his Russian wife. A figure of the sleeping Duchess, in white marble, is lovely. These Greek chapels have always a gilded dome. The natural beauties of Wiesbaden are numerous and unusual. ”

“ She is at present the property of the king; but, as there is no war yet declared, you will have the commission and flag of the States, and act under their orders and laws. The Prince de Nassau will make the cruise with you. She is to be brought here under cover as a French merchantman, to be equipped and manned in France. We hope to exchange your prisoners for as many American sailors; but, if that fails, you have your present crew to be made up here with other nations and French. ”

“ It would be strange if there were not other impressionable Frenchmen who composed or quoted verses expressive of Niagara's grandeur, during the eighty-one years that elapsed between the French discovery of Niagara Falls and the English Conquest—a period of over three-quarters of a century during which earth's most magnificent cataract belonged to France. ”

“ New Orleans, the greatest city of the Confederacy, stands on the river's bank, only ninety miles from the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The Confederate authorities knew the value of this great city to their cause, and were careful not to let it go unprotected. Long before any thought of civil war disturbed the minds of the people of the United States, the Federal Government had built below the Crescent City two forts, that peered at each other across the swift, turbid tide of the Mississippi River. ”

“ Voluntarily enlisting into one of these marching regiments, I allowed myself to be carried along with it, I knew not where, until I found myself, with an empty stomach and a napkin on my knees, quietly seated at one of three immense long tables, in a room with above 250 people, all secretly as hungry as myself.
The quantity of food and attention bestowed upon me for one florin filled me with astonishment; “and certainly,” said I to myself, “a man may travel very far indeed, before he will find provisions and civility cheaper than in the duchy of Nassau!” ”

“ The slumberous old town of Niagara has also an air of calm repose. No vulgar din of trade disturbs its quiet grass-grown streets. The dismantled fort, the broken stockade, the empty fosse, and the crumbling ramparts, where wandering sheep crop the herbage and the swallows build their nests in the months of the overturned and rusty cannon, are all the evidence of the long reign of an unbroken peace. ”

“ Nassau: “Observe, these were distinctly prayers, appeals for mercy, agonising protests; but there was no praise, no love, no thanks, no confession of sin.” [23] He was speaking regarding utterances made down there in the face of great afflictions and sorrow; and there was no praise, because there was no love, I fancy; no thanks because what good was done to the human being was a mere boughten thing he had paid for. ”

“ That those not informed of the character of the citizens may the better comprehend it, a brief reference is made to its history.
When Canada, then a French colony, was conquered by Great Britain, many of the inhabitants of greatest influence and highest cultivation, in a spirit of loyalty to their flag, migrated to the wilds of Louisiana. Some of them established themselves in and about New Orleans, and their numerous descendants formed, down to a late period, the controlling element in the body-politic. ”

“ On the spur of the moment, therefore, I ordered a carriage; and, with my wallet lying by my side, having bidden adieu to a simple-hearted village, which, for the short remainder of my days, I believe, I shall remember with regard, I continued for some time gradually to ascend its eastern boundary, until I arrived nearly at the summit or pinnacle of the Taunus hills. The view from this point was very extensive indeed, and the park-like appearance of the whole of the lofty region or upper story of Nassau formed a prospect at once noble and pleasing. ”

“ South, as will result in convulsing us so far that the ills to which we fly, cannot, in our judgment, exceed those we bear; and thus will be put upon the people of the South the necessity, the painful, hard necessity, of a dissolution, a final separation. Now, sir, why do I take this view? In the first place, the meeting of the Nashville Convention is, upon its face, a step towards a separate and distinct organization of the Southern States. The very movement separates them for a time, in purposes and intent, from the great mass of the population of the country. ”

“ The government maintains one company of infantry, composed of black men, officered by whites. It must be admitted that they present a fine military appearance when on parade. Nassau has long been a popular resort for invalids who seek a soft, equable climate, and as it lies between the warm South Atlantic and the Gulf Stream it is characterized by the usual temperature of the tropics. ”

“ Men in Paris who knew little concerning the new world did not scruple to give away their country's title to vast lands. The French ceded Canada and all of La Salle's old province of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, to England. Soon afterward France, to outwit England, gave Spain New Orleans and her claim to the half of the Mississippi Valley west of the river to which the name Louisiana now came to be restricted. ”