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Ships' officers working the vast French-Atlantic trade circuit would have used maps like this one to chart their courses. (Carte reduite de 1’Ocean Occidental; 1766[4th ed.]; navigational map of the Atlantic Ocean by Jacques-Nicolas Beilin; THNOC, 1999.52.9)
7/ e were already quite far along , y r in the Carnival season without having had the least bit of fun or entertainment, which made me miss France a great deal. The Sunday before Mardi Gras, upon returning from hunting, where I had gone to try and dissipate my boredom, I found a friend waiting for me in order to invite me to a supper he was giving for a few people. He told me that I would have all the diversions there that one could partake of in the city. Indeed, that very evening, I began to savor the first pleasures in the colony, where I had already been for a few months. We spent not only an evening but the whole night, too, singing and dancing. When I returned home, I was certain that those would be the last pleasures I would partake of during the Carnival season, since it was already quite
An excerpt from A Company Man
near the end, but, no matter the sadness one feels, it seems that those days are dedicated to pleasures and to having fun. The next day, which was Lundi Gras, I went to the office, where 1 found my associates, who were bored to death. I proposed to them that we form a party of maskers and go to Bayou Saint John, where I knew that a ladv friend of my friends was marrying off one of her daughters.1 They accepted, but the difficulty of finding appropriate clothes made us just talk about it. However, since I myself was desirous of finding out how people would have fun at this wedding party, I proposed this excursion for a second time, that evening at supper. But, upon seeing that no one wanted to come along, I got up from the table and said that I was going to find some others who would go, and I left.
4 Volume XXX, Number 2 — Spring 2013