"Yes," chimed in a Boston sea-captain, who had been our fellow-passenger
from Europe, and prided himself upon being a "thorough-going down-easter,"
"it takes as long for a Blue Nose to put on his hat as for one of our free
and enlightened citizens to go from Bosting to New _Orleens_. If we don't
whip all creation it's a pity! Why, stranger, if you were to go to
Connecticut, and tell 'em what you've been telling this ere child, they'd
guess you'd been with _Colonel Crockett_."

"Well, I proceeded, in answer to another question from the New-
Brunswicker," if you wish to go to the north of your own province, you
require to go round Nova Scotia by sea. I understand that a railway to the
Bay of Chaleur has been talked about, but I suppose it has ended where it
began; and, for want of a railway to Halifax, even the Canadian traffic
has been diverted to Portland."

"We want to invest some of our surplus revenue," said the captain. "It'll
be a good spec when Congress buys these colonies; some of our ten-horse
power chaps will come down, and, before you could whistle 'Yankee Doodle,'
we'll have a canal to Bay Varte, with a town as big as Newhaven at each
end. The Blue Noses will look kinder streaked then, I guess." The New-
Brunswicker retorted, with some fierceness, that the handful of British
troops at Fredericton could "chaw up" the whole American army; and the
conversation continued for some time longer in the same boastful and
exaggerated strain on each side, but the above is a specimen of colonial
arrogance and American conceit.

The population of New Brunswick in 1851 was 193,800; but it is now over
210,000, and will likely increase rapidly, should the contemplated
extension of the railway system to the province ever take place; as in