If the distance traversed by a locomotive
in an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need a
line nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of the
earth in the same time. But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gait
without a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an express
train. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincial
steamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from Port
Hawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters by
him.
In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and by
breakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, and
making for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something in
the nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but it
had so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that I
thought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highly
developed provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengers
had the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towards
each other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive to
uninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies'
shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with each
other's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the company
health.
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