🚀 go-pugleaf

Try to imagine...
The year is 1860. 
You're on a steamer travelling from Britain and coming into St John's
harbour for the first time. The Narrows have towered above the ship,
making it seem suddenly small. The ship passes through and you get your
very first view of Signal Hill.

What do you see? Would you still see 'typical...traditional square,
flat-roofed wooden houses painted in different colours' (Baedecker).
How early in the year could it be? Would you be looking on Newfoundland
in the late months of winter or, in that year, would you have to wait
for the first steamer to take you there in the spring or even later>

What building would dominate the skyline? Would it be the
fortifications? If so, what do they look like?

Would the harbour be packed with a thousand different fishing boats,
steamers and troop ships, or would it seem large and empty, or small and
empty, or too small to have more than a few dozen ships and boats?

Where in the harbour would the ship dock?
What would the crew, the passengers, the dockhands, the fishers be
wearing?

You disembark. Where do you go? What paperwork is necessary and where is
it dealt with? If you spend your first night in this new country in a
hotel, what sort of hotel would you stay in? If you are rich? An office
clerk? A displaced farmer? A displaced labourer? One of the crew?
At what time would people be expected to retire into their homes and
lodgings?
When you are in your room, what does it look like?

What entertainments would you seek? What beggars might assault you, what
street entertainers might you view, who would be hawking their wares,
where, and what would they be selling?

As you roam the new (to you) town, what are the streets like that you
walk? How cold is it, and how much do you have to muffle yourself from
the damp? What smells dominate? What sounds are you likely to hear, and
where?

Which are the rich parts of the town, where and in what direction?
Where, conversly, are the rougher parts? How rough are they?

Who are the notables in the city? The great and the famous? Who are the
popular entertainers of the day? Where do they perform, and what?

Do the cannon thump to signal noon? If so, now's a good time for lunch.
Where do you go eat eat? If you are rich? Middle class? Poor? What food
would you enjoy? What food would be a local speciality?

Thanks. I'm still struggling to get answers to real-life questions from
the books the library can get me. I can get any amount on the political
movements, the struggles and balances between liberalism and
conservatism, the push for reforms in Canada and the reluctance of
Newfoundland to be railroaded into a confederation. I can get some
information on exports and imports and innovations of the day: the
telegraph cable soon to be laid at Heart's Content, the new mail
starting back in britain.
I can get average summer and winter temperatures for the island as a
whole and general climate (wet).

What I can't get is what it would be like to visit the town of St John's
as a stranger, in 1860. I'm hoping for help from either people who know
the place today and can extrapolate back or people who now the then and
can extrapolate there, or, joy of joys, both (I can hope!).

Cordially,
-- 
Supermouse
A wandering Rodent I, 
A mouse of cheese and crackers,
Of whisker sniffs and scratches...