North America — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about North America — Volume 1.

North America — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 503 pages of information about North America — Volume 1.

From Portland a line of railway, called as a whole by the name of the Canada Grand Trunk Line, runs across the State of Maine, through the northern parts of New Hampshire and Vermont, to Montreal, a branch striking from Richmond, a little within the limits of Canada, to Quebec, and down the St. Lawrence to Riviere du Loup.  The main line is continued from Montreal, through Upper Canada to Toronto, and from thence to Detroit in the State of Michigan.  The total distance thus traversed is, in a direct line, about 900 miles.  From Detroit there is railway communications through the immense Northwestern States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, than which perhaps the surface of the globe affords no finer districts for purposes of agriculture.  The produce of the two Canadas must be poured forth to the Eastern world, and the men of the Eastern world must throng into these lands by means of this railroad, and, as at present arranged, through the harbor of Portland.  At present the line has been opened, and they who have opened are sorely suffering in pocket for what they have done.  The question of the railway is rather one applying to Canada than to the State of Maine, and I will therefore leave it for the present.

But the Great Eastern has never been to Portland, and as far as I know has no intention of going there.  She was, I believe, built with that object.  At any rate, it was proclaimed during her building that such was her destiny, and the Portlanders believed it with a perfect faith.  They went to work and built wharves expressly for her; two wharves prepared to fit her two gangways, or ways of exit and entrance.  They built a huge hotel to receive her passengers.  They prepared for her advent with a full conviction that a millennium of trade was about to be wafted to their happy port.  “Sir, the town has expended two hundred thousand dollars in expectation of that ship, and that ship has deceived us.”  So was the matter spoken of to me by an intelligent Portlander.  I explained to that intelligent gentleman that two hundred thousand dollars would go a very little way toward making up the loss which the ill-fortuned vessel had occasioned on the other side of the water.  He did not in words express gratification at this information, but he looked it.  The matter was as it were a partnership without deed of contract between the Portlanders and the shareholders of the vessel, and the Portlanders, though they also have suffered their losses, have not had the worst of it.

But there are still good days in store for the town.  Though the Great Eastern has not gone there, other ships from Europe, more profitable if less in size, must eventually find their way thither.  At present the Canada line of packets runs to Portland only during those months in which it is shut out from the St. Lawrence and Quebec by ice.  But the St. Lawrence and Quebec cannot offer the advantages which Portland enjoys, and that big hotel and those new wharves will not have been built in vain.

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North America — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.