Navigating the Lower Saint Lawrence in the 19th Century.
Quebec Mercury #54. Saturday, May 9, 1835. | ||
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| The Sailor. | ||
| There is in the perilous life of a sailor, an independence which springs from his absence from the land. The passions of men are left upon the shore. Between the world quitted and the world sought for, there is neither love nor country but on the element which bears us. No more duties to fulfil, no more visits to make, no more journals, no politics. Even the language of a sailor is not the ordinary language. It is a language such as the oceans and the heavens, the calm and the tempest speak. One inhabits a universe on the waters, among creatures whose clothing, whose tastes, whose manners and aspects resemble not the people of the earth; they have the roughness of the sea-wolf, and the lightness of the bird. Their fronts are marked by none of the cares of society. The wrinkles which traverse them resemble the folding of a diminutive soil, and they are less chiselled by age than by the wind and the waves. The skin of these creatures, impregnated by salt, is red and rigid, like the surface of the rock beaten by the billows. | ||
| Blackwood. | ||
| G.R. Bossé©1999-03. | Posted: Jan. 15, 2000. |
Updated: July 15, 2003. |
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