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As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony.

Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador.

Still New Bedford is a queer place.

Not at all.

But think not that this famous town has only harpooners, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors.

Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.

In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers.

Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport.

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one -- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy -- a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.

Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine* cloack. *Cotton fabric; the Indian city Bombay had become known for it.

He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife.

Look there! that chap strutting round the corner.

In some things you would think them but a few hours old.

Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came.

They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance.

There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery.

But, besides the Feejeeans, Tongatabooars, Erromangoans, Pannangians, and Brighgians,* and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. *Inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands.

It makes a stranger stare.

In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh.

But New Bedford beats all Water-street and Wapping.