chants sprawl with their backs to the wall quite indifferent to a customer's eye. Whereupon the onlooker is perchance reminded of dewy dawns on the Brussels Place where white-capped Flemish dames were wont to invest with a stir of rivalry and wrangle of sous the smallest purchase from eggs to chicory. A lackadaisical affair indeed would the Green Market have been voted in Flanders. Racially the market attendants are more interesting than are their wares or methods of trafficking. The black men and women are children of the plantation slaves brought north during the War of 1812 and settled at Preston. It is said that among them are descendants of the Maroons who came from Jamaica a few years before. The progenitors of the brown men who proffer toys and tourist souvenirs were Indian warriors who abetted the French in campaigns against English troops and colonists. The French market-folk are descended from returned Acadians who settled on the shores of Bedford Basin a century ago.
On Granville Street, overlooking the north yard of the Province Building, are the offices of the American Consulate. The post was established in 1815. In the archives is the complete correspondence concerning the encounter between the Chesapeake and the Shannon. Guns taken from the deck of Captain Lawrence's command are the centre of an annual and enthusiastic celebration in the yard beneath the Consular windows.
