Читать книгу The Story of the American Merchant Marine - John Randolph Spears - Страница 6

An Early View of Charleston Harbor

From a print in the possession of the Lenox Library

Comparisons, though sometimes odious, may be excused when instructive. The conditions of life in Canada led the French to devote themselves to furs only. The Dutch at Manhattan Island were absorbed in furs and the trade of the West India Company. The Virginians and the English West Indians devoted themselves almost exclusively to producing tobacco and sugar by means of slave labor.

Under the conditions of life in New England, the people became perforce farmers, growing their own food; loggers, cutting timber in the near-by forest for use in building houses, fishing smacks, and ships; fishermen, going afloat in the smacks and then curing the catch on the beach; seamen, who, blow high or blow low, carried the catch in their own ships direct to the consumer; traders, meeting the competition of the keenest merchants in the world; inventors, who, when unable to do their work by methods already in use, promptly improvised something new that would serve the purpose.