It was a French boat, owned by a French company, and seemed to
be officered by Frenchmen throughout; certainly, as our tourists in the
joy of their good appetites affirmed, the cook was of that culinarily
delightful nation.
The boat was almost as large as those of the Hudson, but it was not so
lavishly splendid, though it had everything that could minister to the
comfort and self-respect of the passengers. These were of all nations,
but chiefly Americans, with some French Canadians. The former gathered on
the forward promenade, enjoying what little of the landscape the growing
night left visible, and the latter made society after their manner in the
saloon. They were plain-looking men and women, mostly, and provincial, it
was evident, to their inmost hearts; provincial in origin, provincial by
inheritance, by all their circumstances, social and political. Their
relation with France was not a proud one, but it was not like submersion
by the slip-slop of English colonial loyalty; yet they seem to be
troubled by no memories of their hundred years' dominion of the land that
they rescued from, the wilderness, and that was wrested from them by war.
It is a strange fate for any people thus to have been cut off from the
parent-country, and abandoned to whatever destiny their conquerors chose
to reserve for them; and if each of the race wore the sadness and
strangeness of that fate in his countenance it would not be wonderful.
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