Travels in Canada, and the United States, in 1816 and 1817

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Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1818 - Canada - 543 pages

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Page 459 - The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
Page 459 - The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is an imitative animal.
Page 347 - The passage of the^ Patowmac through the Blue ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea.
Page 348 - ... that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley ; that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression.
Page 370 - It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here; so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven! the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!
Page 348 - But the distant finishing which Nature has given to the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. ' For, the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon...
Page 358 - I took the boat this morning, and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was court day, and a large crowd of people was gathered about the door of the court-house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in, when my ears were assailed by the voice of singing ; and turning round to discover from what quarter it came, I saw a group of about thirty negroes, of different sizes and ages, following a rough-looking white man, who sat carelessly...
Page 370 - Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have resolution to walk to them, and look over into the abyss. You involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet, and peep over it.
Page 371 - Blue Ridge on the other, at the distance each of them of about five miles. This bridge is in the county of Rockbridge, to which it has given name, and affords a public and commodious passage over a valley which cannot be crossed elsewhere for a considerable distance. The stream passing under it is called Cedar creek. It is a water of James...
Page 432 - Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever...

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