'Ye might have invented a new name,' rejoined the Irishman, with an offended air, 'an' not be mislading people. I thought it was one of the ould pike-gates where I used to have to pay fourpince for me, ass and car; an' throth, much as I hated it, I'd be a'most glad to see one of the sort here, just for company's sake. A mighty lonesome counthry ye have, to be sure!'
'Well, we can't be far from Greenock now; and I see a bit of a snake fence yonder.'
It was another clearing, on a more enterprising scale than the last described; the forest had been pushed back farther, and a good wooden house erected in the open space; zigzag rail fences enclosed a few fields almost clear of stumps, and an orchard was growing up behind. A man in a red shirt, who was engaged in underbrushing at a little distance, said that 'the town' was only a mile away—Greenock, on the Clyde.
Alas for nomenclature! The waggon scrambled down a rather steep declivity, towards a dozen houses scattered beside a stream: stumps stood erect in the single short street, and a ferry-boat was the only craft enlivening the shore. A Greenock without commerce or warehouses, a Clyde without wharves or ships, or the possibility of either—what mere travestie effected by a name!
'A nest of Scottish emigrants, I suppose,' said Robert Wynn, as he contemplated 'the town.'
'Yes, and they'll push their place up to something,' replied Sam Holt: 'if pluck and perseverance can do it, they will. Only one enemy can ruin a Scotchman here, and that's the "drap drink." Ten to one that in twenty years you find this ground covered with factories and thousands of houses; that solitary store is the germ of streets of shops, and the tavern will expand into half a score hotels. Sandy will do it all.'
'I'm afraid you could not speak so well of Irish progress.'
'Because the canker of their religion continues to produce its legitimate effects in most cases; and the influence of whisky—the great bane of social life in our colony—is even more predominant than over the lower class Scotch settlers. Still, they do infinitely better here than at home; and you'll meet with many a flourishing Hibernian in the backwoods and pioneer cities.'
'I presume this is a pioneer city?' looking round at the handful of wooden shanties.
'Don't despise it; Rome had as small a beginning, and was manned by no more indomitable hands and hearts than our frontier emigrants.'