The Portland daily press., 1865-08-14
MA1Nn AND THE wEsT-AeA1r.

Joyed by us over them. On the great scale,
apprehend, the beam will be found much
more equally poised than many people seem
to suppose But if we add to the natural adj
yantages, the improvements which have been
accomplished by the application of art and
science amongst us, and the benefits which
have accrued to individuals from the common
stock of intelligence and social order around
them, must believe the balance viii be found
decidedly in our favor, SO that, on the whole,
residence here is sure of greater amount of
advantages in the aggregate, than it is there
recollect that the late Dr. Smith, of Connecticut,
a distinguished lecturer in most of the colleges
and universities of the United States remarked
in his last visit to Maine, filling the Professori-
al Chair of Bowdoin College, that he had been
in all the States of the American Union, and
had lectured in most of them,-that he had
endeavored to be a careful and candid observer
of the relative advantages and disadvantages
of the several sections of our widely extended
territory, and that now, if he had family of
sons to seek location for life and for lifes
great aims, he should on the whole sooner
recommend them to settle in Maine than any
other State orTerritory. The observation and
the cool judgement of such mana man
whose name will always be venerated in the
medical and literary annals of our country
are entitled to the highest consideration.
L know that those who have turned their
backs upon Maine, and upon all the sacred en-
dearments of home and kindred, to find a land
OF promise in southern or western States,-I
mean such of them as do not or cannot re-
turn, ARE very anxious to persuade us that
Do,cn East is no place to live in, and that there
the very heavens drop fairness, and that
the earth yields an abundance till the eye
tires in surveying it. Doubtless in many
of their representations they are correct, and if
we could carry New England intelligence and
habits, New England health and morals thither,
and Eeep them there, so that they should not
fade and degenerate under the favored idleness
which seems to be one of the peculiar glories
of the land, the far South and West might be
more desirable than our rocky hills and cold
winters. But it is not in the order of Provi-
eence that it should be so. .sa.ag
Irecollect some summers ago, an intelligent
gentleman from Arkansas, who had left his
native home in Maine few years before, and
located himself in that fertile State, visited me
at my own Maine fireside. He was very elo-
quent in his attempts to satisfy me that the
country where he had settled was very supe-
rior to this State which he had left. At my
T Col
I'VE agreed to open an account currentof the
relative advantages and disadvantages Of the
two regions. He began, first to credit the
State of Arkansas with no winters-a great
saving of fuel, clothing and in the expenses Of
building houses that would be a comfortable
protection against the cold weather. Then
succeeded the fertility of the soil, the no need
of manure, the little labor required to till the
land, the benefits of slave service, the ease of
fattening large herds of swine upon the nuts
of the forest, &c. Then followed a list Of
debts against the State of Maine; first the
necessity of hard and constant labor borne by
| whites in person and not turned off on to
black men and women; second the severity
and duration of our winters; third, the liabil-
ity of our people to that fatal disease, consump-
ton. The account was carried out in relative
per centage, and pretty forcible column, in
deed, did he foot up against us. a3-l
In Offset, 1 was prepared to make few
charges against his boosted Ell Dorado; first,
its remoteness from the great primary depots
of commerce and manufactures, and the i'm
possibility that it should ever enjoy these adj
yantages; its impure water; its pestilential
malarias its liability to chills and fever, chol-
era, yellow fever and other plaques; its fright
full reptiles and its still more frightful and de-
basing system of human slavery this, of
course, was before the slave power had COM
the price of the products of the earth at home,
and the expense of getting them to market
whether our farmers could not raise double,
treble, quadruple the number of bushels of po-
tatoes ON an acre of ground in Maine that he
could grow Of corn in Arkansas; and wheth-
er, when raised, they would not, in gross,
bring nearly four fold as much as his corn p
1 was prepared to credit our State with the
sounder health and longer life, generally, Of
its people, and for its various means of minis
tering to the comfort and independence of its
inhabitants. But / chose to begin, first, by
charging the whole of that country with an
absence of the free schools of New England
and all the intellectual and moral blessings
connected with our institutions. 1 had nei-
Their the opportunity nor occasion to 90 far
Their; for as soon as l had filed this item and
referred him to the thickly-pointed church
spires and school houses and lyceum halls Of
@Down East"-''There," said he, as the coon
said to Davy Crockett, "don't fire that charge
Pl come right down." He manfully and
frankly exclaimed, that had offered an adj
vantage that is more than an offset to his
whole account. "The idea" said he, "of spend
ing ones days there, and bringing up family
of children in such condition of society, is
absolutely appalling" No, New England, and
Maine as a most worthy portion of it, is the
glory of our glorious Republic, and
s'Where'er 1 roam, whatever lands l see.
My heart, untravelled, still returns to thee"
1t was but two summers afterwards. that
this enterprising Yankee, signing for Maine
home, converted all his effects into gold, which
for security as he journied in that country, he
/ girt about his person, and undertook return
to the State of his birth. Whilst passing on a
Western steamer upon the Mississippi where
there is no Maine Law,-homeward, the boiler
of the boat burst, and sent hundreds of pas
sengers suddenly into eternity, one of whom
was the gentleman alluded to. If his body
was ever found, the treasure found upon it at
forded sufficient motive for the finder to
place it in everlasting concealment; and to
this day neither the gold, nor the body of my
friend has been heard of by his afflicted rela-
tives amongst us. TRAxI.