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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720
®$
Digitized by tine Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
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m.m'.n
of Saroni' Major &}&im 449Sroidwa
AFTER ICEBERGS
WITH A PAINTER
SUMMER VOYAGE TO LABRADOR AND AROUND
NEWFOUNDLAND.
BY
KEV. LOUIS L. NOBLE,
AUTUOE OF TUB "HFE OP COLE," " POEMS," ETC.
NEW YORK :
APPLETON AND COMPANY,
443 & 445 BKOADWAY.
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.
M.DCCC.LXI.
Enteeed, according to Act of Congi-css, In the year 1861,
By D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for tho Southern
District of New York.
E. U. 3? -A. IL. M: E R,
THE SCULPTOE,
THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY
Jubitatetr.
r /I26
PREFACE
The title-page alone would serve for a preface
to the present volume. It is the record of a
voyage, during the summer of 1859, in company
with a distinguished landscape painter, along the
north-eastern coast of British America, for the pur-
pose of studying and sketching icebergs.
It was thought, at first, that the shores in the
neighborhood of St. Johns, Newfoundland, upon
which many bergs are often floated in, would afford
all facilities. It was found, however, upon ex-
periment, that they did not. Icebergs were too
few for the requisite variety ; too scattered to be
reached conveniently ; and too distant to be mi-
nutely examined from land. One needed to be in
the midst of them, where he could command
SRIITSS
VI PEEFACE.
views, near or remote, of all sides of them, at all
hours of the day and evening.
For that purpose a small vessel was hired to
take us to Labrador. Favoring circumstances di-
rected us to Battle Harbor, near Cape St. Louis, in
the waters of which icebergs, and all facilities for
sketching them, abounded.
To diversify the journey, we returned through
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, coasting the west of
Newfoundland, and the shores of Cape Breton, and
concluding with a ride across the island, and
through Nova Scotia to the Bay of Fundy.
If the writer has succeeded in picturing to his
reader, with some freshness, w^hat he saw and felt,
then will the purpose of the book, made from notes
pencilled rapidly, have been accomplished.
L. L. K
Hudson, New Jersey,
March, 1861.
COl^TEITTS.
CHAPTER I.
Cool and Novel,
CHAPTEE IL
On the Edge of the Gulf-Stream, .
The Painter's Story,
Halifax,
The Merlin,
CHAPTER VI.
Sydney. — Cape Breton. — ^The Ocean,
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
The first Icebergs,
Newfoundland. — St. Johns, .
CHAPTER VIL
CHAPTER VIIL
• •
PAOB
1
• •
8
16
. 19
23
. 27
Vm CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX. PAGE
An English Inn. — The Governor and Bishop. — Signal Hill, . . 33
CHAPTEE X.
The Ride to Torbay.— The lost Sailor.— The Newfoundland Dog, . 38
CHAPTER XI.
Torbay. — Flakes and Fish-houses. — The Fishing-barge. — The Cliffs. —
The Retreat to Flat Rock Harbor. — ^William Waterman, the fisher-
man, ........ 41
CHAPTER XII.
The Whales. — The Iceberg. — The Return, and the Ride to St. Johns
by Starlight, ....... 52
CHAPTER XIII.
St. Mary's Church.~The Ride to Petty Harbor, . . . .60
CHAPTER XIV.
Petty Harbor. — The Mountain River. — Cod-liver Oil. — The Evening
Ride back to St. Johns, . . . . . 65
CHAPTER XV.
The Church Ship. — The Hero of Ears. — The Missionary of Labrador, '71
CHAPTER XVI.
Sunday Evening at the Bishop's.— The Rev. Mr. Wood's Talk about
Icebergs, ......•• '74
CHAPTER XVII.
Our Vessel for Labrador.— Wreck of the Argc— The Fisherman's
Funeral, . , . .♦ . . . .16
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Our First Evening at Sea,
PACE
80
CHAPTER XIX.
Icebergs of the Open Sea. — The Ocean Chase. — The Retreat to Cat
Harbor, ........ 82
^ CHAPTER XX.
Cat Harbor. — ^Evening Service in Church. — The Fisherman's Fire. — ^The
Return at Midnight, . . . . . . 89
CHAPTER XXI.
ifter Icebergs again. — ^Among the Sea-Fowl, . . . .93
CHAPTER XXII.
Notre Dame Bay. — ^Fogo Island and the Three Hundred Isles. — ^The
Freedom of the Seas. — The Iceberg of the Sunset, and the Flight
into Twillingate, ...... 96
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Sunday in Twillingate. — ^The Morning of the Fourth,
. 103
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Iceberg of Twillingate,
106
CHAPTER XXV.
The Freedom of the Seas once more. — A Bumper to the Queen and
President, ........ 112
CHAPTER XXVI.
Gull Island. — ^The Icebergs of Cape St. John,
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Splendid Icebergs of Cape St. John,
115
121
X CONTENTS.
CIIAPTErw XXVIII. PAGE
The Seal Fields. — Seals and Sealing. — Captain Knight's Shipwreck, 129
I*
CHAPTER XXIX.
Belle Isle and the Coast. — After-dinner Discussion. — First View of
Labrador. — Icebergs. — The Ocean and the Sunset, . .135
CHAPTEE XXX.
The Midnight Look-out Forward. — A Stormy Night. — The Comedy in
the Cabin, ....... 143
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Cape and Bay of St. Louis. — ^The Iceberg. — Cariboo Island. —
Battle Harbor and Island. — The Anchorage. — The Missionaries, 149
CHAPTER XXXII.
Battle Island and its Scenery, . . . . , .155
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Mosses, Odors, and Flowers. — A Dinner Party, . . .161
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Our Boat for the Icebergs. — After the Alpine Berg. — Study of its
Western Face, . . . . . . .166
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Alpine Berg. — Studies of its Southern Front. — Frightful Explosion
and Fall of Ice. — Studies of the Western Side. — Our Play with the
Moose Horns. — Splendor of the Berg at Sunset, . . 169
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Ramble among the Flowers of Battle Island. — A Visit to the Fisher-
men.— ^Walk amoncr the Hills of Cariboo, . . . 1*79
CONTENTS.
XI
CHAPTER XXXVII. page
After the Bay St. Louis Iceberg. — Windsor Castle Iceberg. — Founders
Suddenly. — A Brilliant Spectacle, . . . . 181
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Sunday in Labrador. — Evening Walk to the Graveyard. — The Rocky
Ocean Shore, . . . . . . .188
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Sail to Fox Harbor. — A Day with the Esquimaux, and our Return, 192
CHAPTER XL.
A Morning Ramble over Cariboo. — Excursion on the Bay, and the Tea-
drinking at the Solitary Fisherman's, . . . .196
CHAPTER XLI.
Painting the Cavern of Great Island, and our Sail Homeward in a Gale, 200
CHAPTER XLIL
After the Iceberg of Belle Isle.— The Retreat to Cartwright's Tickle.—
Bridget Kennedy's Cottage, and the Lonely Stroll over Cariboo, 204
CHAPTER XLIII.
The Iceberg of the Figure-head. — The Glory and the Music of the Sea
at Evening, ....... 210
CHAPTER XLIV.
Cape St. Charles.- The Rip Van Winkle Berg.— The Great Castle
Berg. — Studies of its Different Fronts, .... 214
CHxiPTER XLV.
The Sail for St. Charles Mountain.— The Salmon Fishers. — The Cavern
of St. Charles Mountain. — Burton's Cottage. — Magnificent Scene
Xll CONTENTS.
PAGE
from St. Charles Mountain.— The Painting of the Rip Van Winkle
•Berg. — The Ice-vase, and the Return by Moonlight, . . 219
CHAPTEE XLVI.
After our Last Iceberg. — The Isles. — Twilight Beauties of Icebergs. —
Midnight Illumination, ...... 228
CHAPTEE XLVII.
Farewell to Battle Harbor. — The Straits of Belle Isle. — Labrador Land-
scapes.— ^The Wreck of the Fishermen, . . . 236
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Sketching the Passing Bergs. — The Story of an Iceberg, . . 241
CHAPTEE XLIX.
Drifting in the Straits. — Retreat to Temple Bay. — Picturesque Scenery.
— ^Voyager's Saturday Night, ..... 264
CHAPTEE L.
Sunday in Temple Bay. — Religious Services. — The Fisherman's Dinner
and Conversation. — Chateau. — The Wreck. — ^Winters in Labrador.
— Icebergs in the Winter. — The French Officers' Frolic with an
Iceberg. — Theory of Icebergs. — Currents of the Strait. — The Red
Indians. — The Return to the Vessel, .... 267
CHAPTEE LI.
Evening Walk to Temple Bay Mountain. — The Little Iceberg. —
Troubles of the Night, and Pleasures of the Morning. — Up the
Straits.— The Pinnacle of the Last Iceberg. — Gulf of St.
Lawrence, ....... 274
CHAPTEE LII.
Coast Scenery. — Farewell to Labrador, . . . .279
•
CONTENTS.
xm
CHAPTER LIII. PAGE
Western Newfoundland. — The Bay, the Islands, and the Highlands of
St. John. — Ingornachoix Bay, ..... 28-i
CHAPTEFw LIV.
Slow Sailing by the Bay of Islands. — The River Humber. — St. George's
River, Cape, and Bay. — A BriUiant Sunset, . . .28*7
CHAPTER LV.
Foul Weather.-— Cape AnguiUe.— The Clearing Off.— The Frolic of the
Porpoises.— The New Cooks.— The Ship's Cat, . . 290
CHAPTER LVI.
Paul's Island. — Cape North. — Coast of Cape Breton. — Sydney
Light and Harbor. — The End of our Voyage to Labrador, and
around Newfoundland, ...... 298
CHAPTER LVII.
Farewell to Captain Knight. — On our way across Cape Breton. — A
Merry Ride, and the Rustic Lover, .... 301
CHAPTER LVIII.
Evening Ride to Mrs. Kelly's Tavern. — The Supper and the Lodging, 806
CHAPTER LIX.
Sunday at David Murdoch's. — Scenery of Bras d'Or, .
314
CHAPTER LX.
Off for the Strait of Canso.— St. Peters, and the Country.— David Mur-
doch's Horses, and his Driving. — Plaster Cove,
318
CHAPTER LXI.
Adieu to David and Cape Breton.— The Strait of Canso.— Our Nova
Scotia Coach.— St. George's Bay.— The Ride into Antigonish, . 322
XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER LXII. page
New Glasgow. — ^Thc Ride to Truro. — Railway Ride to Halifax. — Part-
ing with the Painter, ...... 326
CHAPTER LXIII.
Coach Ride from Halifax to Windsor. — The Prince Edward's Man, and
the Gentleman from Newfoundland, . . . . 329
CHAPTER LXIV.
Windsor. — The Avon, and the Tide. — Steamer for St. Johns, New
Brunswick. — Mines Basin. — Coast Scenery. — The Scene of Evan-
geline.— Parsboro. — The Bay of Fundy.' — Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick Shores. — St. Johns. — The Maine Coast. — Island of
Grand Manan, . . , ... . . 332
ILLUSTEATIONS
PAGE
r. 1.— VIGNETTE— ICEBERGS AT SUNSET, ... 1
No. 2.— A LARGE ICEBERG IN THE FORENOON LIGHT
NEAR THE INTEGRITY, 119
No. 8.— AN ARCHED ICEBERG IN THE AFTERNOON LIGHT, 136
No. 4.— ICE FALLING FROM A LOFTY BERG, . .173
No. [>.— ICEBERG IN THE MORNING MIST— WHALE-BOAT, 214
No. G.— ICEBERG IN THE STRAIT OF BELLE ISLE, . . 241
AFTER ICEBEEGS WITH A PAINTER.
CHAPTER I.
COOL AND NOVEL.
" After icebergs ! " exclaims a prudent, but imagi-
nary person, as I pencil tbe title on the front leaf of my
note-book.
" Why, after deer and trout among the Adirondack
Mountains with John Cheeney, the Leather-stocking of
those wilds, who kills his moose and panther with a
pistol ; or after salmon on the Jaques Cartier and
Saguenay, is thought to be quite enough for your sum-
mer tourist.
"After buffalo is almost too much for any not at
home in the great unfenced, Uncle Sam's continental
parks, where he pastures his herds, and waters them in
'2 COOL AND NOVEL.
the Platte and Colorado, and walls out the Pacific with
the Kocky Mountains. He is rather a fast hunter who
indulges in the chase in those fair fields. It is no boy's
play to commit yourself to mule and horse, the yawls of
the prairie, riding yourself sore and thirsty over the grace-
fully roUing, never-breaking swells, the green seas spark-
ling with dewy flowers, but never coming ashore. The
ocean done up in sohd land is weary voyaging to one
whose youthful footsteps were over the fields, to the sound
of sabbath bells.
" After ostriches, with the ship of the desert, although
rather a hot chase for John and Jonathan over broad
sands, yellow with the sunshine of centuries, and the bird
speeding on legs swift as the spokes of the rapid wheels,
is, nevertheless, a pleasure enjoyed now and then.
" But after icebergs is certainly a cool, if not a
novel and perilous adventure. A few climb to the ices
of the Andes ; but after the ices of Greenland, except
by leave of government or your merchant prince, is
entirely another thing.
" You will do well to recollect, that nature works in
other ways in the high north than in the high Cordilleras
and Alps, and especially in the latter, where she carefully
slides her mer-de-glace into the warm valley, and gently
melts it off, letting it run merrily and freely to the sea.
COOL AND NOVEL.
every crystal fetter broken into silvery foam. But in
Greenland she heaves her mile-wide glacier^ in all its
flinty hardness, into the great deep bodily, and sends it,
both a glory and a terror, to flourish or perish as the cur-
rents of the solemn main move it to wintry or to sum-
mer climes. After icebergs ! Weigh well the perils and
the pleasures of this new summer hunting."
" We have weighed them, I confess, not very care-
fully ; only ^ hefting ' them a little, just enough to help
us to a guess that both are somewhat heavier than the
ordinary delights and dangers of sporting nearer home.
But, Prudens, my good friend, consider the ancient saw,
B ^ Nothing venture nothing have.' Not in the least weary
of the old, we would yet have something new, altogether
B new. You shall seek the beauties of scales and of
plumage, and the graces of motion and the wild music
of voices, among the creatures of the brooks and wood-
lands. Our game, for once, is the wandering alp of the
waves ; our wilderness, the ocean ; our steed, the winged
vessel ; our arms, the pencil and the pen ; our game-
bags, the portfolio, painting-box, and note-book, all harm-
less instruments, you perceive, with mild report. It is
seldom that they are heard at any distance, although, at
intervals, the sound has gone out as far as the guns of
B the battle-field.
m
4 AFTER ICEBERGS.
" Should we have the sport we anticipate, you may
see the rarest specimen of our luck preserved in oil and
colors, a method peculiar to those few, who intend their
articles less for the market than for immortality, as men
call the dim glimmering of things in the dusky reaches
of the past.
'^But you shall hear from us, from time to time, if
possible, how we speed in our grand hunt, and how the
pleasures and the risks make the scale of our experience
vibrate. Within a few minutes, we shall be on our way
to Boston, darting across grassy New England, regardless
as the riders of the steeple-chase of cliff and gulf, fence,
wall and river, with a velocity of wheels that would set
the coach on fire, did not ingenuity stand over the axles
putting out the flame with oil.
" This evening, we meet a choice few in one of those
bowery spots of Brookline, where intelligence dwells with
taste and virtue, and talk of our excursion.
" To-morrow, amid leave-takings, smiles and tears,
and the waving of handkerchiefs, of which we shall be
only quiet spectators, with the odor of our first sea-dinner
seasoning the brief excitement of the scene, and all
handsomely rounded off with the quick thunder of the
parting gun, we sail, at noon, in the America."
CHAPTEK II.
ON THE EDGE OP THE GULF-STEEAM.
Friday Moening, June 17, 1859. Here we are on
the edge of the Gfulf-Stream, loitering in a fog that would
seem to drape the whole Atlantic in its chilly, dismal
shroud. We are as impatient as children before the
drop-curtain of a country show, and in momentary ex-
pectation that this unlucky mist will rise and exhibit
Halifax, where we leave the steamer, and take a small
coasting -vessel for Cape Breton and Newfoundland.
As we anticipated, both of us have been sea-sick con-
tinually. I had hoped that we should have the pleasure
of one dinner at least, with that good appetite so com-
mon upon coming off into the salt air. But before the
soup was fairly off there came over me the old qualm,
b ON THE EDGE OF THE GULF-STREAM.
the herald of those dreadful impulses that drive the un-
happy victim either to the side of the vessel, or down into
its interior, where he lays himself out, pale and trembling,
on his appointed shelf, and awaits in gloomy silence the
final issue. It is needless to record, that, with that un-
lucky attempt to enjoy the luxuries of the table, perished,
not only the power, but the wish to eat.
Yesterday, when I came on deck, I found C con-
versing with Agassiz. Although so familiar with the Al-
pine glaciers, and all that appertains to them, he had never
seen an iceberg, and almost envied us the dehght and ex-
citement of hunting them. But not even the presence
and the fine talk of the great naturalist could lay the
spirit of sea-sickness. Like a very adder lurking under
the doorstone of appetite, it refused to hear the voice of
the charmer. Out it glided, repulsive reptile ! and away
we stole, creeping down into our state-room, there to bur-
row in damp sheets, taciturn and melancholy " wretches,
with thoughts concentred all in self." An occasion?!
remark, either sad or laughable, broke the sameness of
the literally rolling hours. By what particular process
of mind, I shall not trouble myself to explain, the Paint-
er, who occupied the lower berth, all at once gave signs
that he had come upon the borders of a capital story, and
with the spirit to carry even a dull listener to the further
ON THE EDGE OF THE GULF-STKEAM.
side of it, and keep him thoroughly amused. It was a
traveller's tale, a story of his own first ride over the
mountains of New Granada, accompanied by a friend, on
his way to the Andes.
CHAPTER III.
THE PAINTEE'S S T 0 E Y.
Twenty days, and most of them days of intense heat
and sea-sicknesSj were spent on a brig from New York to
the mouth of the Magdalena. In twenty minutes all that
tedious voyage was sailed over again, and he was in the
best humor possible for the next nine days in a steam-
boat up the river, a mighty stream, whose forests appear
like hills of verdure ranging along its almost endless
banks.
After the steamboat, came a tiresome time in a canoe,
followed by a dark and fireless night in the great woods,
where tl^ey were stung by the ants, and startled by the
hootings and bowlings, and all the strange voices and
noises of a tropical forest.
Then the tale kept pace with the mules all day, jogging
THE PAINTER S STORY.
on slowly, an all-day story that pictured to the listener's
mind all the passing scenery and incidents, the people
and the travellers themselves, even the ears of the self-
willed, ever-curious mules. Towards sunset, the way-
farers found themselves journeying along the slope of a
mountain, willing to turn in for the night at almost any
dwelling that appeared at the road-side. The guide and
the baggage were behind, and suggested the propriety of
an early halt. But each place, to which they looked for-
y ward, seemed sufficiently repulsive, upon coming up, to
make them venture on to the next. They ventured, with-
out knowing it, beyond the very last, and got benighted
where it was difficult enough in the broad day. After a
weary ride up and up, until it did appear that they would
never go down again in that direction, they stopped and
consulted, but finally concluded to continue on, although
the darkness was almost total, trusting to the mules to
keep the path. At length it was evident that they were
at the top of the mountain, and passing over upon its
opposite side. Very soon, the road, a mere bridle-path,
became steep and rugged, leading along the edges of pre-
cipices, and down rocky, zigzag steps, that nothing but
the bold, sure-footed mule would or could descend. The
fact was, they were going down a fearfully dangerous
mountain-road, on one of the darkest nights. And, won-
1*
10 THE painter's STORY.
derful to tell, they went down safely, coming out of the
forest into a level vale beset with thickets and vine-cov-
ered trees, a horrible perplexity, in which they became
heated, scratched, and vexed beyond all endurance. At
last, they lost the way and came to a dead halt. Here#
C got off, and leaving the mule with F , plunged
into the bushes to feel for the path, pausing occasionally
to shout and to wait for an answer. No path, however,
could be found. In his discouragement, he climbed a
tree with the hope of seeing a light. He climbed it to the
very top, and gazed around in all directions into the wide,
unbroken night. There was a star or two in the black
vault, but no gleam of human dwelling to be seen below.
Extremes do indeed meet, even the dreadful and the
ridiculous. And so it was with C in the tree-top.
From almost desperation, he passed into a frolicsome
mood, and began to talk and shout, at the top of his voice,
in about the only Spanish he could then speak, that he
would give cinco pesos, cinco pesos, — five dollars, five dol-
lars, to any one that would come and help them. From
five he rose to ten. But being scant of Spanish, he could
express the ten in no other way than by doubling the
cinco — cinco cinco pesos, cinco cinco pesos. Fruitless
effort ! A thousand pounds would have evoked no
friendly voice from the inhospitable solitude.
I
THE painter's STORY. 11
The airing, though, was refreshing, and he clambered
down and attempted his way back, shouting as usual,
but now, to his surprise, getting no reply. What could
it mean ? Where was F ? Had he got tired of wait-
ing, and gone off ? With redoubled energy C pushed
on through the interminable brush to see. He was in a
perfect blaze of heat, and dripping with perspiration. A
thousand vines tripped him, a thousand branches whipped
him in the face. When he stopped to listen, his ears
rung with the beating of his own heart, and he made the
night ring too with his loud hallooing. But no one an-
swered, and no mules could be found. Nothing was left
but to push forward, and he did it, with a still increasing
energy. Instantly, with a crack and crash he pitched
headlong down quite a high bank into a broad brook.
For a moment he was frightened, but finding himself
sound, and safely seated on the soft bottom of the brook,
he concluded to enjoy himself, moving up and down,
with the warm water nearly to his neck, till he had
enough of it ; when he got up, and felt his way to the op-
posite bank, which, unfortunately for him, was some
seven or eight feet of steep, wet clay. Again and again
did he crawl nearly to the top, and slip back into the
water — a treadmill operation that was no joke. A suc-
cessful attempt at scaling this muddy barrier was made.
12 THE painter's STORY.
at length, through the kindly intervention of some
vines.
But how was all that ? Where was he ? He never
crossed a stream in going to the tree. He must be lost.
He must have become turned at the tree, and gone in a
wrong direction. And yet he could not relinquish the
notion that all was right. He decided to continue for-
ward, pausing more frequently to halloo. To his exceed-
ing joy, he presently heard a faint, and no very distant re-
ply. He quickly heard it again^-close at hand — " C ,
come here ! — come here ! " He hastened forward. F
was sitting on the mule. He said, in a low tone of voice,
" Come here, and help me off. I am very sick." He
was alarmingly sick. C helped him down, and laid
him on the ground. The only thing to be done was to
make a rough bed of the saddles and blankets, secure the
mules, and wait for daylight. While engaged in this,
one of the mules suddenly broke away, and with a perilous
flourish of heels about C 's head, dashed off through
the thickets, and was seen no more. To crown their
troubles, a ferocious kind of ant attacked them at all
points, and kept up their assault during the remainder
of the miserable night. They had made their bed upon
a large ant-hill. In the morning, there they were, they
knew not where, with but one mule, trappings for two.
THE painter's STORY.
13
I
and F too indisposed to proceed. C mounted the
mule and set off for relief. A short ride brought him out
upon the path, which soon led down to the border of a wide
marsh. The crossing of the marsh was terrible. The poor
animal sank into the mire to the girth, reared, plunged and
rolled, plastering himself and rider all over and over again
^vith the foulest mud. When they reached the solid ground,
and trotted along towards some natives coming abroad to
their labor, the appearance of our traveller, in quest of
the subUme and beautiful, was certainly not imposing.
He told his story to the staring Indians in the best way
his ingenuity could invent, none of which they could be
made to comprehend. He inquired the way to the
town, the very name of which they seemed never to have
heard. He asked the distance to any place, — the near-
est,— no matter what. It was just as far as he was
pleased to make it.
" Was it two leagues ? "
" Si, Senor.'^
" Was it five leagues .^ "
" Si, Senor."
"Was it eight, nine, ten leagues .^ ''
" Si, Senor."
" For how much money would they guide him to the
town .? "
14 THE painter's STORY.
Ah. ! that was a different thing ; they had more intel-
ligence on that subject. They would guide him for a
great deal. In fact, they would do it for about ten times
its value. He spurred his muddy mule, galloped out of
sight and hearing, more amused than vexed, and went
ahead at a venture. The venture was lucky. In the
course of the morning he made his entrance into the
city, succeeded in finding out the residence of the person
to whom he had letters of introduction, presented himself
to the gentleman of the house, an American, and had
both a welcome and a breakfast. Before the day was
past, F — — and himself were comfortably settled, and,
with their kind host, were making merry over their first
ride on the mountains of South America. I am sure I
was made merry at the quiet recital. Lying as I was in
my berth, rolled in cloak and blanket, and looking neither
at the face nor motions of the speaker, but only at the
blank beams and boards close above, I laughed till the
tears ran copiously, and I forgot that I was miserable
and sea-sick.
CHAPTER IV.
HALIFAX.
We have now been lying for hours off Halifax. The
fog appears to be in a profound slumber. Whistle, bell
and big guns have no power to wake it up. The waves
themselves have gone to sleep under the fleecy covering.
Old Ocean lazily breathes and dreams. The top-mast,
lofty and slim, marks and flourishes on the misty sky, as
an idler marks the sand with his cane. Pricked on by
our impatience, back and forth we step the deck, about as
purposeless as leopards step their cage. They are letting
off the steam. It is flowing up from the great fountains,
a deep and solemn voice, a grand ventriloquism, that
muffles in its breadth and fulness all the smaller sounds,
as the mighty roar dampens the noisy dashings of the
tct. What a sublime translation of human skill
I
16 HALIFAX.
iron ! How splendid are its polished limbs ! What
power in all those easy motions ! What execution in
those still and oily manoeuvres !
Among the ladies there is one of more than ordinary
beauty. Luxuriant, dark hair, a fair complexion with
the bloom of health, a head and neck that would attract
a sculptor, and surpassingly fine, black eyes. There is a
power in beauty. Why has not God given it to us all ?
You shall answer me that in heaven. There is indeed a
power in beauty. It goes forth from this young woman
on all sides, like rays from some central light. I have
called her a New England girl, but she turns out to be
Welsh.
How like magic is the work of this fog ! Instantly
almost it is pulled apart like a fleece of wool, and lo !
the heavens, the ocean, and the rugged shores. A pilot
comes aboard from a fishing-boat, looking as rough and
craggy as if he had been, toad-like, blasted out of the
rocks of his flinty country, so brown and warty is his
skin, so shaggy are his beard and hair, so sail-like and
tarry is his raiment. The ancient mariner for all the
world ! His skinny hand touches no common mortal.
His glittering eye looks right on, as he moves with silent
importance to the place where shine the gilded buttons
of the captain.
HALIFAX.
This is a wild northern scene. Hills, bony with rock
and bristling with pointed firs, slope down to the sea.
But yet how beautiful is any land looking off upon the
barren deeps of ocean. Distant is the city on a hill-side,
glittering at a thousand points, while on either hand, as
we move in at the entrance of the harbor, are the pleas-
ant woods and the white dwellings, country steeples and
cultivated grounds. As the comfortless mist rolls away,
and the golden light follows after, warming the wet and
chilly landscape, I feel that there are bliss and beauty
in Nova Scotia.
Grandly as we parade ourselves, in the presence of
the country and the town, I prefer the more modest,
back-street entrance of the railroad. The fact is, I am
afraid of your great steamer on the main, and for the
reason given by a friend of mine : if you have a smash-
up on the land, why, there you are ; if, on the sea, where
are you ?
I have been talking with the fair lady of Wales. She
was all spirit. " There was much,'' she said, " that was
fine, in America ; but Wales was most beautiful of all.
Had I ever been in Wales ? " One could well have felt
sorry he was not then on his way to Wales. We parted
where we met, probably to meet no more, and I went for-
ward to gaze upon the crowded wharf, which we were
18 HALIFAX.
then approaching. A few hasty adieus to some newly-
formed acquaintances, and we passed ashore to seek the
steamer for Cape Breton. It was waiting for us just be-
hind the storehouse where we landed, and soon followed
the America with a speed not exactly in proportion to
the noise and effort.
CHAPTER V.
THE MERLIN.
I
Be it known that the Merlin, the name in which our
vessel delights, is a small propeller, with a screw wheel,
and a crazy mess of machinery in the middle, which go
far towards making one deaf and dumb by day, but very
wakeful and talkative by night ; so thoroughly are the
rumbling, thumping and clanking disseminated through
all those parts appointed for the passengers. The Merlin
has not only her peculiar noises, but her own peculiar
ways and motions ; motions half wallowing and half pro-
gressive ; a compound motion very difficult to describe,
f at the time, mainly on account of a disagreeable con-
fusion in the brain and stomach.
B The arrangements in the Merlin for going to repose
H are better than those for quitting it. No chestnut lies
20 THE MERLIN.
more snugly in the burr than your passenger in his berth.
If he happen to be short and slender, it is sure to fit him
all the better. But when he gets out of it, he is pushed
forward into company immediately, and washes in the
one bowl, and looks at the one glass. On board the Mer-
lin, one feels disposed to give the harshest words of his
vocabulary a frequent airing. He sees how it is, and he
says to himself : I have the secret of this Merlin ; she is
intended to put a stop to travel ; to hinder people from
leaving Halifax for Sydney and St. Johns. Wait you
eight and forty hours after this ungenerous soliloquy, and
speak out then. What do you say ? The Merlin is the
thing !
Away in this dusky comer of the world Peril spins her
web. High and wide and deep she stretches her subtle
lines : cliffs, reefs and banks, ice, currents, mists and
winds. But the Merlin is no moth, no feeble insect to get
entangled in this terrible snare. Dark-winged dragon-
fly of the sea, she cuts right through them all. Your
grand ocean steamer, with commander of repute, plays
the tragic actress quite too frequently in the presence of
these dread capes. But the Merlin, with Captain Samp-
son's tread upon the deck, in the night and in the light,
with his look ahead and his eye aloft, and his plummet
in the deep sea, trips along her billowy path as lightly as
THE MERLIN.
a lady trips among her flowers. A blessing upon Captain
Sampson who sails the little Merlin from Nova Scotia to
Newfoundland. He deserves to sail an Adriatic.
Here we are again in that same bad fog, that smoth-
ered much of our pleasure, and some of our good luck, in
the America. It is gloomy midnight, and the sea is up.
A pale, blue flame crowns the smoke-stack, and sheds a
dreary light upon the sooty, brown sails. The breeze
plays its wild music in the tight rigging, while the swells
beat the bass on the hollow bow. To a landsman, how
frightfully the Merlin rolls ! But we are dashing along
through this awful wilderness, right steadily. Every hour
carries us ten miles nearer port. Ye wandering barks, on
this dark, uncertain highway, do hear the mournful clang
of our bell, and turn out in time as the law of nature
directs ! Ye patient, watchful mariners that keep the
look-out forward, pierce the black mist with your keen
sight, and spy the iceberg, that white sepulchre of the
careless sailor. Just here there is a mountain in the
deep, and we are crossing its summit, which accounts for
the sharp, rough sea, the captain tells me. The vessel
now turns into the wind, the loose sails roar and crack,
■ and bound in their strong harness, like frightened horses ;
■ loud voices cut through the uproar, rapid footsteps
22 THE MERLIN.
is a momentary lull : they heave the lead. The moun-
tain top is under us, say, ^yq hundred feet. All is
right. Captain Sampson puts off into wider waters, and
I, chilly and damp, creep into my berth, full of hope
and sleep.
CHAPTEK VI.
EY.-CAPE BEETON.— THE OCEAN.
Monday, June 19, 1859. We are still rising and
sinking on the misty ocean, and somewhere on those
great currents flowing from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Yesterday, at an early hour^ we were entering Sydney
Harbor, Cape Breton, with a tide from sea, and a flood
of brightness from the sun. The lively waters, the grassy
fields dotted with white dwellings, and the dark green
woodlands were bathed in splendor. A few clouds, that
might have floated away from the cotton-fields of Ala-
bama, kept Sunday in the quiet heavens. We went
ashore with some thought of attending church, but found
the time would not permit. A short walk to some In-
dian huts, with the smoke curling up from their peaks
like the pictures of volcanoes, a cup of tea of our own
making, some toast and fresh eggs in the village tavern,
24 SYDNEY. CAPE BRETON. — THE OCEAN.
with the comfort of sitting to enjoy them at a steady
table on firm land, gave an agreeable seasoning to the
hour we lingered in Sydney, and braced us for the long
stretch across to Newfoundland.
As you enter Sydney Bay, you see northward some
remarkable cliffs, fan-like in shape as they rise from the
sea. In the clear and brilliant morning air, they had a
roseate and almost flame-like hue, which made them ap-
pear very beautiful. I thought of them as some gigantic
sea-shells placed upon the brim of the blue main. When
they set in the waves, along in the afternoon, the pic-
turesque coast of Cape Breton was lost to view, and we
became, to all appearance, a fixture in the centre of the
circle made by the sky and the sea. How wearisome it
grew ! Always moving forward, — yet never getting further
from the line behind, — never getting nearer to the line be-
fore,— ever in the centre of the circle. The azure dome was
over us, its pearl-colored eaves all around us. Oh ! that
some power would lift its edge, all dripping with the
brine of centuries, out of the ocean, and let the eye peep
under 1 But all is changeless. We were under the cen-
tre of the dome, and on the hub of the great wheel, run
out upon its long spokes as rapidly and persistently as
we would. Our stiff ship was dashing, breast-deep,
through the green and purple banks that old Neptune
SYDNEY. — CAPE BRETON. THE OCEAN.
heaved up across our path. Bank after bank he rolled
up before us, and our strong bows burst them all, striking
foam, snowy foam, out of them by day, and liquid jewelry
out of them by night. The circle was still around us, the
tip of the dome above. We were leaving half a world of
things, and approaching half a world of things, and yet
we were that same fixture. Our brave motions, after
all, turned out to be a kind of writhing on a point,
in the middle of the mighty ring, under the key-stone of
the marvellous vault. The comfort of the weary time
was, that we sailed away from the niorning, passed under
the noon, and came up with, and cut through the evening.
When we caught up with the evening yesterday, and
saw the sun set fire to, and burn off that everlasting ring,
we were sitting quietly on deck, touched with the sweet
solemnities of the hallowed hour. The night, with all
that it would bring us, was coming out of the east, mov-
ing up its stupendous shadow over the ocean ; the day,
with all it had been to us, was leaving us, going off into
the west over the great continent. We were crossing the
twilight, that narrow, lonesome, neutral ground, where
gloom and splendor interlock and wrestle. The little
petrel piped his feeble notes, and flew close up, following
under the very feathers of the ship, now skimming the
glassy hollow of the swells, and then tiptoe on the crest.
2
26 SYDNEY. — CAPE BRETON. THE OCEAN.
The wind was strengthening, tuning every cord and
straining every sail, winnowing the fiery chaff, and sowing
the sparkling grain forward on the furrowed waters.
We had a vessel full of wind ; and so vessel, wind and
sparks together, went away across the sea as if they were
seeking some grand rendezvous. Far and wide the
waves all hastened in the same direction, rolling, leaping,
crumbling into foam, bristling the snowy feathers on neck
and breast as they skipped and flew upon each other in
their play and passion. And so we all sped forward with
one will, and with one step, keeping time to the music of
the mighty band : clouds, winds and billows, seabirds,
sails and sparkling smoke, and Merlin with her men ; all
moving forward, as some grand army moves onward to a
battle-field. When there is really nothing to describe,
why should not one record the conceits and fancies born
of an evening at sea ? So I thought, last evening, when
I was a little sea-sick, and sick of the monotony of the
scene, and a little home-sick, and felt that this was
pleasure rather dearly bought. Still if one would see the
planet upon which he has taken his passage round the
sun, and through the spaces of the universe, he must be
brave and patient, hopeful and good-tempered. Be this,
or turn back, at the first view of salt-water, and go home
to toil, to contentment and self-possession.
CHAPTEK VII.
THE FIPwST ICEBERGS.
Newfoundland seems to be wreathed with fogs for-
ever. As a dwelling-place, this world certainly appears
far from complete, — an argument for a better country.
But yonder is the blue sky peeping through the mist, an
intimation of that better country. A solitary bird sits
upon a stick floating by, looking back curiously as it
grows less and less. Now it merely dots the gleaming
wave, and now it is quite wiped away. Thus float off
into the past the winged pleasures of the hour.
Again we are at blindman's-bufi" in the fog. The
whistle and the bell remind us of the perils of this play.
The gloom of evening deepens, and we go below with the
hope of rounding Cape Kace, and of wheeling down the
northern sea direct for port, before daylight. Down the
northern sea ! — This calling north doion instead of up.
28 THE FIRST ICEBERGS.
appears to me to be reversing the right order of things.
It is against the stream, which, inshore, sets from Baffin's
Bay south ; and, in respect of latitude, it is up-hill : the
nearer the pole, the higher the latitude. And besides,
it is up on the map, and was up all through my boyhood,
when geography was a favorite study. But as down
seems to be the direction settled upon in common par-
lance, doivn it shall be in all these pages.
Icebergs ! Icebergs ! — The cry brought us upon deck
at sunrise. There they were, two of them, a large one
and a smaller : the latter pitched upon the dark and
misty desert of the sea like an Arab's tent ; and the
larger like a domed mosque in marble of a greenish white.
The vaporous atmosphere veiled its sharp outlines, and
gave it a softened, dreamy and mysterious character.
Distant and dim, it was yet very grand and impressive.
Enthroned on the deep in lonely majesty, the dread of
mariners, and the wonder of the traveller, it was one of
those imperial creations of nature that awaken powerful
emotions, and illumine the imagination. Wonderful
structure ! Fashioned by those fingers that wrought the
glittering fabrics of the upper deep, and launched upon
those adamantine ways into Arctic seas, how beautiful,
how strong and terrible ! A glacier slipped into the
ocean, and henceforth a wandering cape, a restless head-
THE FIRST ICEBERi
land, a revolving island, to compromise the security of the
world's broad highway. No chart, no sounding, no
knowledge of latitude avails to ^x thy whereabout, thou
roving Ishmael of the sea. No look-out, and no friendly
hail or authoritative warning can cope with thy secrecy
or thy silence. Mist and darkness are thy work-day
raiment. Though the watchman lay his ear to the water,
he may not hear thy coming footsteps.
We gazed at the great ark of nature's Ijuilding with
steady, silent eyes. Motionless and solemn as a tomb, it
seemed to look back over the waves as we sped forward
into its grand presence. The captain changed the course
of the steamer a few points so as to pass it as closely as
possible. C was quietly making preparation to sketch
it. The interest was momentarily increasing. We were
on our way to hunt icebergs, and had unexpectedly come
up with the game. We fancied it was growing colder,
and felt delighted at the chilly air, as if it had been so
milch breath fresh from the living ice. To our regret, I
may say, to our grief, the fog suddenly closed the view.
^ No drop-curtain could have shut out the spectacle more
H quickly and more completely. The steamer was at once
^m put on her true course, and the icebergs were left to pur-
^1 sue their solitary way along the misty Atlantic.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEWFOUNDLAND. -St. JOHNS.
When the mist dispersed, the rocky shores of New-
foundland were close upon our left,— lofty cliffs, red and
gray, terribly beaten by the waves of the broad ocean.
We amused ourselves, as we passed abreast the bays and
headlands and rugged islands, with gazing at the v/ild
scene, and searching out the beauty timidly reposing
among the bleak and desolate. On the whole, Newfound-
land, to the voyager from the States, is a lean and bony
land, in thin, ragged clothes, with the smallest amount
of ornament. Along the sides of the dull, brown mountains
there is a suspicion of verdure, spotted and striped here
and there with meagre woods of birch and fir. The glory
of this hard region is its coast : a wonderful perplexity of
fiords, bays and creeks, islands, peninsulas and capes,
endlessly picturesque, and very often magnificently grand.
Nothing can well exceed the headlands and precipices.
FNDLAND. — ST. JOHNS.
honey-combed, shattered, and hollowed out into vast cav-
erns, and given up to the thunders and the fury of the
deep-sea billows. Kead the Pirate of Scott again, and
Sumburg Head will picture for you numbers of heads, of
which it is not important to mention the name. The
brooks that flow from the highlands, and fall over cliffs
of great elevation into the very surf, and that would be
counted features of grandeur in some countries, are bere
the merest trifles, a kind of jewelry on the hem of the
landscape.
The harbor of St. Johns is certainly one of the most
remarkable for bold and effective scenery on the Atlantic
shore. The pictures of it, which of late abound, and are
quite truthful as miniature portraits, fail entirely to sug-
gest the grand expression and strong character of the
coast. We were moving spiritedly forward over a bright
and lively sea, watching the stern headlands receding in
the south, and starting out to view in the north, when we
passed Cape Spear, a lofty promontory, crowned with a
light-house and a signal-shaft, upon which was floating the
^P meteor-flag of England, and at once found ourselves
abreast the bay in front of St. Johns. Not a vestige,
though, of any thing like a city was in sight, except au-
^fe other flag flitting on a distant pinnacle of rock. Like a
32 NEWFOUNDLAND. — 8T. JOHNS.
water of this outer bay, into which the full power of the
ocean let itself under every wind except the westerly.
Eight towards the coast where it gathered itself up into
the greatest massiveness, and tied itself into a very Gor-
dian knot, we cut across, curious to behold when and
where the rugged adamant was going to split and let us
through. At length it opened, and we looked through,
and presently glided through a kind of mountain-pass,
with all the lonely grandeur of the Franconia Notch.
Above us, and close above, the rugged, brown cliffs rose
to a fine height, armed at certain points with cannon, and
before us, to all appearance, opened out a most beautiful
mountain lake, with a little city looking down from the
mountain side, and a swamp of shipping along its shores.
We were in the harbor, and before St. Johns. As we
bade adieu to the sea, and hailed the land with our
plucky little gun, the echoes rolled among the hills^ and
rattled along the rocky galleries of the mountains in the
finest style. We were quite delighted. So fresh and
novel was the prospect, so unexpected were the peculiar
sentiment and character of the scene, one could hardly
realize that it was old to the experience of tens of thou-
sands. I could scarcely help feeling, there was stupidity
somewhere, that more had not been said about what had
been seen by so many for so long a time.
CHAPTER IX.
AN ENGLISH INN.-GOYEKNOE AND BISHOP.— SIGNAL HILL.
Wednesday, June 22, 1859. — We are at Warring-
ton's, a genuine English inn, with nice rooms and a home-
like quiet, where the finest salmon, with other luxuries,
can be had at moderate prices. Every thing is English
hut ourselves. I feel that the Yankee in me is about as
prominent as the bowsprit of the Great Republic, the
queen ship of the metropolis of yankeedom, the renowned
port from which we sailed, and through the scholarly air
of which my thoughts wing their flight home.
Among other qualities foremost at this moment, (and
for which I discover the Bull family is certainly pre-emi-
nent,) is appetite, the measure of which, at table, is time,
not quantity. My chief solicitude at breakfast, dinner,
tea and supper, is not so much about what I am to eat,
as about liow I shall eat, so as not to distinguish myself.
2*
34 AN ENGLISH INN.
who is looked upon as one of the immortals, and I,
in his wake, perhaps as his private chaplain, may be re-
garded as representative people from the States. We
would, therefore, avoid signalizing ourselves at the
trencher. The method adopted on these frequent occa-
sions, is to be on hand early, to expend small energy in
useless conversation, and to retire modestly, though late,
from the entertainment. It is surprising how well we
acquit ourselves without exciting admiration. I am
hopeful that the impression in the house is, that we are
small eaters and talkers, persons slightly diffident, who
eat chiefly in order to live, and prosper on our voyage.
Under this cover, it is wonderful what an amount of spoil
we bear away, over which merriment applauds in the
privacy of our rooms.
When the gray morning light stole at the same time
into my chamber and my dreams, it was raining heavily,
a seasonable hindrance to early excursions, affording
ample time to arrange those plans which we are now car-
rying out. In company with Mr. Newman, our consul,
to whom we are indebted for unremitting attentions and
hospitalities, we first called on the Bishop of JSTewfound-
land.
The visitation of his large diocese, which embraces
both the island and Labrador, together with the distant
THE GOVERNOR AND BISHOP. 35
isle of Bermuda, has given him a thorough knowledge of
the shores and ices of these northern seas. An hour's
conversation, illustrated with maps and drawings, seems
to have put us in possession of nearly all the facts neces-
sary in order to a pleasant and successful expedition. At
the close of our interview, during which the Bishop
informed us that he was just setting off upon an exten-
sive coast visitation, he very kindly invited us to join his
party for the summer, and take our passage in the Hawk,
his " Church Ship/' It was a most tempting offer, and
would have been accepted with delight had the voyage
been shorter. There was no certainty of the vessel's re-
turn before September, a time too long for my purposes.
To be left in any port, in those out-of-the-way waters,
with the expectation of a chance return, was not to be
thought of We declined the generous offer of the
Bishop, but with real regret. To have made the tour of
Newfoundland and Labrador, with a Christian gentleman
and scholar so accomplished, would have been a privilege
indeed. From the house of the Bishop, a neat residence
near his cathedral, we climbed the hill upon which stands
the palace of the Governor, Sir Alexander Bannerman,
commanding a fine prospect of the town and harbor, the
B ocean and adjacent country. As we passed up the broad
H avenue, shaded by the poplar, birch and fir, instead of
I
36 SIGNAL HILL.
those patricians of the wood, the ma2)le, oak and elm ;
the flag, waving in the cool sea-breeze, and the brown-
coated soldier, pacing to and fro, reminded one of the
presence of English power. His Excellency, a stately
and venerable man, to whom we had come purposely to
pay our respects, received us in a spacious room with an-
tique furniture. During the conversation, he expressed
much pleasure that a painter of distinction had come to
visit the scenery of Newfoundland, and kindly offered such
assistance as would facilitate sketching in the neighbor-
hood. A soldier should watch for icebergs, on Signal
Hill, a lofty peak that overlooks the sea ; a boat should
be at his command, the moment one was needed. Upon
leaving, he gave us for perusal Sir Kichard Bonnycastle's
Newfoundland. From the western front of the house, we
overlooked a broad vale, dotted with farmhouses, and, in
its June dress of grass and dandelions, quite New-Eng-
land-like. We continued our walk to Quidy Viddy, a
pretty lake, and returned in time to call upon Mr. Am-
brose Shea, Speaker of the Assembly, to whom C had
letters of introduction.
After dinner we set off for Signal Hill, the grand
observatory of the country, both by nature and art. Be-
fore we were half-way up, we found that June was June,
even in Newfoundland. But there is something in a
SIGNAL HILL.
37
mountain ramble that pays for all warmth and fatigue.
Little rills rattled by, paths wound among rocky notches
and grassy chasms, and led out to dizzy " over-looks "
and " short-offs." The town with its thousand smokes
sat in a kind of amphitheatre, and seemed to enjoy the
spectacle of sails and colors in the harbor. Below us
were the fishing-flakes, a kind of thousand- legged shelves,
made of poles, and covered with spruce boughs, for drying
fish, the local term for cod, and placed like terraces or
large steps one above another on the rocky slopes. We
struck into a fine military road, and passed spacious stone
barracks, soldiers and soldiers' families, goats and little
gardens.
From the observatory, situated on the craggy pinna-
cle, both the rugged interior and the expanse of ocean
were before us. Far oif at sea a cloud of canvas was
shining in the afternoon sun, a kind of golden white,
while down the northern coast, distant several miles, was
an iceberg. It was glittering in the sunshine like a
mighty crystal. The work and play of to-morrow were
resolved upon immediately, and we descended at our
leisure, plucking the wild flowers among the moss and
herbage, and gazing quietly at the hues and features of
the extended prospect.
CHAPTEK X.
THE EIDE TO TOEBAY.— THE LOST SAILOE.— THE NEWFOUND-
LAND DOG.
Thuksday, June 23. We were stirring betimes,
making preparations for our first venture after an iceberg.
Unluckily, it was a Komish holiday, and every vehicle in
town seemed to be busy carrying people about, by the
time we thought it necessary to engage one for ourselves.
We succeeded at length in securing a hard- riding wag-
on, driven by a young Englishman, and were soon on
our way, trundling along at a good pace over the smooth
road leading from St. Johns to Torbay, the nearest water
to our berg, and distant some eight or nine miles. The
morning was fine, the sunshine cheering, the air cool and
bracing, and all went promisingly. The adjacent coun-
try is an elevated kind of barren, clothed with brush-
wood, spruce and birch, crossed by numerous little trout
brooks, and spotted with ponds and wet meadows, with
THE RIDE TO TORBAY. THE LOST SAILOR. 39
here and there a lonely-looking hut. But there were the
songs of birds, the tinkling of cow-bells, and the odor of
evergreens and flowers. A characteristic of the coast is
its elevation above the country lying behind. Instead of
descending, the lands rise, as you approach the ocean,
into craggy domes, walls and towers, breaking off pre-
cipitously, and affording from the eminences of our road
prospects of sparkling sea. Our hearts were full of music,
and our minds and conversation were a kind of reflection of
the solitary scene. For months, our young man tells us, the
snow lies so deeply along this fine road as to render it im-
passable for sleighs, except when sufficiently hard to bear
a horse. The snow-shoe is then in general use. One
of the pests of early summer is the black fly, as we have
already experienced. A few years ago, a sailor ran away
from his vessel, at St. Johns, and took to these bushy
wilds, in which, at length, he got lost, and finally per-
ished from the bites of this pestilent fly. He was found
accidentally, and in a state of insensibility, being covered
with them, and so nearly" devoured that he died within a
few hours after his discovery.
Speaking of the !N'ewfoundland dog, he told us that
one of pure, original blood, was scarcely to be found. I
had supposed, and had good reason for it, from what I had
read in the papers, about the time of the visit to St.
40 THE EIDE TO TORBAY. — THE LOST SAILOR.
Johns, upon the laying of the Atlantic Cable, that any
person could for a small sum purchase numbers of the
finest dogs. I think a certain correspondent of some
New York daily, told us that several gentlemen supplied
themselves with these animals upon their departure. If
such was the case, then they took away with them about
the last of the real breed, and must have paid for them
such prices as they would not like to own. Scarcely a
splendid dog is now to be seen, and ^Ye, ten, and everi
twenty pounds sterling might be refused for him. We
have not seen the first animal that compares with those
which trot up and down Broadway nearly every week ;
and they are not the pure-blooded creature, either, by
a good deal. It is to be regretted, that dogs of such
strength, beauty and sagacity should have been permitted
to become almost extinct in their native country.
CHAPTEK XI.
TOEBAT.— FLAKES AND FISH - HOUSES.— THE FISHING BAEGE.— THE
CLIFFS.— THE KETKEAT TO FLAT KOCK HAEBOE.— WILLIAM WATEE-
MAN, THE FISHEEMAN.
ToRBAY, finely described in a recent novel by the Rev.
R. T. S. Lowell, is an arm of the sea, a short, strong arm
H with a slim hand and finger, reaching into the rocky land,
and touching the waterfalls and rapids of a pretty brook.
Here is a little village, with Eomich and Protestant
K steeples, and the dwellings of fishermen, with the uni-
versal appendages of fishing-house^, boats and flakes.
One seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and
wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully
clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the
spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region,
^H crossed with footpaths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and
42 FLAKES AND FISH-HOUSES.
the sea, you will allow, when once you have scented the
fish-offal perpetually dropping from the evergreen fish-
house ahove. These little buildings on the flakes are
conspicuous features, and look as fresh and wild as if
they had just wandered away from the woodlands.
There they stand, on the edge of the lofty pole-shelf,
or upon the extreme end of that part of it which runs off
frequently over the water like a wharf, an assemblage of
huts and halls, bowers and arbors, a curious huddle made
of poles and sweet-smelling branches and sheets of birch-
bark. A kind of evening haunts these rooms of spruce, at
noonday, while at night a hanging lamp, like those we
see in old pictures of crypts and dungeons, is to the
stranger only a kind of buoy by which he is to steer his
way through the darkness. To come off then without
pitching headlong, and soiling your hands and coat, is the
merest chance. Strange ! one is continually allured into
these piscatory bowers whenever he comes near them.
In spite of the chilly, salt air, and the repulsive smells
about the tables where they dress the fish, I have a fancy
for these queer structures. Their front door opens upon
the sea, and their steps are a mammoth ladder, leading
down to the swells and the boats. There is a charm also
about fine fishes, fresh from the net and the hook, — the
salmon, for example, whose pink and yellow flesh has
PISHING BARGE.
given a name to one of tlie most delicate hues of Art or
Nature.
But where was the iceberg ? We were not a little
disappointed when all Torhay was before us, and nothing
^^ but dark water to be seen. To our surprise^ no one
had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off 'Flat Kock
Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed
^ with the supposition that the berg must lie below, and
B made speedy preparations to pursue, by securing the only
boat to be had in the village, — a "substantial fishing-
barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at least a
^g cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a mo-
tive power, as it turned out, none too large for the occa-
sion. We embarked at the foot of a fish-house ladder,
being carefully handed down by the kind-hearted men,
K and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck. All
ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars,
with the skill and deliberation of life-long practice, and
we moved out upon the broad, glassy swells of the bay
towards the open sea, not indeed with the rapidity of a
Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable steadiness,
and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores,
f which, under the afternoon sun, were made brilliant with
lights and shadows.
We were presently met by a breeze, which increased
44 THE CLIFFS.
the swell, and made it easier to fall in close under the
northern shore, a line of stupendous precipices, to which
the ocean goes deep home. The ride beneath these
mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my life.
While they do not eq[ual the rocks of the Saguenay, yet,
with all their appendages of extent, structure, complex-
ion and adjacent sea, they are sufficiently lofty to pro-
duce an almost appalling sense of sublimity. The surges
lave them at a great height, sliding from angle to angle,
and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the
face of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two
hundred feet, and rise perpendicularly two, three, and
four hundred feet from the water. Their stratifications
are up and down, and of different shades of light and
dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the
the effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the
surface.
At one point, where the rocks advance from the
main front, and form a kind of headland, the strata, six
and eight feet thick, assume the form of a pyramid, from
a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to
meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly
fallen out, and left the resemblance of an enormous tent
with cavernous recesses and halls, in which the shades of
evening were already lurking, and the surf was sounding
mournfully. . Occasionally it was musical, pealing forth
like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity.
Now and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was
broken by the crash of a billow far within, when the re-
verberations were like the slamming of great doors.
After passing this grand specimen of the architecture
of the sea, there appeared long rocky reaches, like Egyp-
tian temples, old dead cliffs of yellowish gray, checked
off by lines and seams into squares, and having the re-
semblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean, of
doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone.
Presently we came to a break, where there were grassy
slopes and crags intermingled, and a flock of goats skip-
ping about, or ruminating in the warm sunshine. A
knot of kids — the reckless little creatures ! — were sport-
ing along the edge of the precipice in a manner almost
painful to witness. The pleasure of leaping from point
to point, where a single mis-step would have dropped
them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in proportion to the
danger. The sight of some women, who were after the
goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which oc-
curred here only a few days before : a lad playing about
the steep, fell into the sea, and was drowned.
We were now close upon the point just behind which
we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweep-
46 RETREAT TO FLAT ROCK HARBOR.
ing the black reef, that flanked the small cape, in the
finest style, — a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling
white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us
forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the
ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an ex-
citement of expectation. " There it is ! " one exclaimed.
An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the next
headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming
down upon us from the broad waters, and covering the
very tract where the berg was expected to be seen. Fur-
ther and further out the long, strong sweep of the great
oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between us
and the next headland was in full view. It may appear
almost too trifling a matter over which to have had any
feeling worth mentioning or remembering, but I shall not
soon forget the disappointment, when from the deck of
our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells, we
stood up and looked around, and saw that if the ice-
berg, over which our very hearts had been beating with
delight for twenty-four hours, was anywhere, it was some-
where in the depths of that untoward fog. It might as
well have been in the depths of the ocean.
While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing
left for us but to wait patiently where we were, or retreat.
We chose the latter. 0 gave the word to pull for the
I
I
RETREAT TO FLAT ROCK HARBOR.
settlement, at the head of the little bay just mentioned,
and SO they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we
turned away for the second time, when the game, as we
had thought, was fairly ours. Even the hardy fishermen,
no lovers of " islands-of-ice," as they call the bergs, felt
for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not
to say a little vexation. While on our passage in, we
filled a half-hour with questions and discussions about
that iceberg.
" We certainly saw it yesterday evening ; and a sol-
dier of Signal Hill told us that it had been close in at
Torbay for several days. And you, my man there, say
that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How hap-
pens it to be away just now ? Where do you think
it is ?"
" Indeed, sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or
over. ^ De'il a bit can a man look after a thing in a fog
more nor into a snow-bank. Maybe, sir, he's foundered ;
or he might be gone off to sea altogether, as they some-
times does."
"Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these
bergs are, they escape very easily under their old cover.
No sooner do we think we have them, than they are gone.
No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no pilot-fish
to his shark, than the fosr to its ber£>:. We will run in
48 WILLIAM WATEKMAF^
yonder and inquire about it. We may get the exact
bearing, and reach it yet, even in the fog/'
The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached
a fishery-ladder, which we now knew very well how to
climb, and wound our " dim and perilous way " through
the evergreen labyrinth of fish-bowers, emerging on the
solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman's house.
Here lives and works and wears himself out, William
Waterman, a deep-voiced, broad-chested, round-shoul-
dered wight, dressed, not in cloth of gold, but of oil, with
the foxy remnant of a last winter's fur cap clinging to his
large, bony head, a little in the style of a piece of turf to
a stone. You seldom look into a more kindly, patient
face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light
out of a large, warm heart. His countenance is one sober
shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by a true
and guileless smile. William Waterman has seen the
" island-of-ice." "It lies off there, two miles or more,
grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water."
It was nearly six o'clock ; and yet, as there were
signs of the fog clearing away, we thought it prudent to
wait. A duU, long hour passed by, and still the sun was
high in the north-west. That heavy cod- seine, a hundred
fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply,
and made it row heavily. For all that, there was time
THE FISHERMAN.
enough yet, if we could only use it. The fog still came
^fe in masses from the sea, sweeping across the promontory
between us and Torbay, and fading into air nearly as soon
H as it was over the land. In the mean time, we sa^t upon
the rocks — upon the wood-pile — stood around and talked
H — looked out into the endless mist — looked at the fisher-
men's houses — their children — their fowls and dogs. A
couple of young women, that might have been teachers
of the village school, had there been a school, belles of
the place, rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely
combed, tripped shyly by, each with an arm about the
other's waist, and very merry until abreast of us, when
they were as silent and downcast as if they had been
j)assing by their sovereign queen, or the Great Mogul.
Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amus-
ing. We speculated upon the astonishment that would
have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts, had they
beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city fashionables in
^ full bloom.
H At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the
house, and sat, not under the good-man's roof, but under
his chimney, a species of large funnel, into which nearly
I one end of the house resolved itself. Here we sat upon
some box-Hke benches before a wood fire, and warmed
ourselves, chatting with the family. While we were
50 THE FISHERMAN.
making ourselves comfortable and agreeable, we made the
novel, and rather funny discovery of a hen sitting on her
nest just under the bench, with her red comb at our
fingers' ends. A large griddle hung suspended in the
more smoky regions of the chimney, ready to be lowered
for the baking of cakes or frying fish. Having tarred my
hand, the fisherman's wife, kind woman, insisted upon
washing it herself After rubbing it with a little grease,
she first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then fin-
ished with soap and water and a good wiping with a
a coarse towel. I begged that she would spare herself
the trouble, and allow me to help myself. But it was no
trouble at all for her, and the greatest pleasure. And
what should I know about washing off tar ?
They were members of the Church of England, and
seemed pleased when they found that I was a clergyman
of the Episcopal Church. They had a pastor, who visited
them and others in the village occasionally, and held
divine service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended,
going in boats in summer, and over the hills on snow-
shoes in the winter. The woman told me, in an under-
tone, that the family relations were not all agreed in
their religious faith, and that they could not stop there
any longer, but had gone to " America," which they liked
much better. It was a hard country, any way, no mat-
THE FISHERMAN.
51
I
ter whether one were Protestant or Papist. Three
months were all their summer, and nearly all their time
for getting ready for the long, cold winter. To be sure,
they had codfish and potatoes, flour and butter, tea and
sugar ; but then it took a deal of hard work to make
ends meet. The winter was not as cold as we thought,
perhaps ; but then it was so long and snowy ! The
snow lay ^ve, six, and seven feet deep. Wood was a
great trouble. There was a plenty of it, but they could
not keep cattle or horses to draw it home. Dogs were
their only teams, and they could fetch but small loads at
a time. In the mean while, a chubby little boy, with
cheeks like a red apple, had ventured from behind his
young mother, where he had kept dodging as she moved
about the house, and edged himself up near enough to be
patted on the head, and rewarded for his little liberties
with a half-dime.
CHAPTEK XII.
THE WHALES.--TnE ICEBEEG.— THE RETURN, AND THE EIDE TO
St. JOHNS BY STARLIGHT.
The STinsliine was now streaming in at a bit of a win-
dow, and I went out to see what prospect of success.
C , who had left some little time before, was nowhere
to be seen. The fog seemed to be in sufficient motion to
disclose the berg down some of the avenues of clear air that
were opened occasionally. They all ended, however, with
fog instead of ice. I made it convenient to walk to the
boat, and pocket a few cakes, brought along as a kind of
scattering lunch. C was descried, at length, climbing
the broad, rocky ridge the eastern point of which we had
doubled on our passage from Torbay. Making haste up
the crags by a short cut, I joined him on the verge of the
promontory, pretty well heated and out of breath.
The effort was richly rewarded. The mist was dis-
THE WHALES. ^^^^ 53
persing in the sunny air around us ; the ocean was clear-
ing off ; the surge was breaking with a pleasant sound
below. At the foot of the precipice were four or five
whales, from thirty to fifty feet in length, apparently.
We could have tossed a pebble upon them. At times
abreast, and then in single file, round and round they
went, now rising with a puff followed by a wisp of vapor,
then plunging into the deep again. There was something
in their large movements very imposing, and yet very
graceless. There seemed to be no muscular effort, no
exertion of any force from within, and no more flexibility
in their motions than if they had been built of timber.
They appeared to move very much as a wooden whale
might be supposed to move down a mighty rapid, rolling
and plunging and borne along irresistibly by the current.
As they rose, we could see their mouths occasionally, and
the lighter colors of the skin below. As they went un-
der, their huge, black tails, great winged things not un-
like the screw-wheel of a propeller, tipped up above the
waves. Now and then one would give the water a good
round slap, the noise of which smote sharply upon the
ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel
sight to watch them in their play, or labor rather ; for
they were feeding upon the capelin, pretty little fishes
that swarm along these shores at this particular season.
54 THE ICEBEKG.
We could track them beneath the surface about as well
as upon it. In the sunshine, and in contrast with the
fog, the sea was a very dark blue or deep purple. Above
the whales the water was green, a darker green as they
descended, a lighter green as they came up. Large oval
spots of changeable green water, moving silently and
shadow-like along, in strong contrast with the surround-
ing dark, marked the places where the monsters were
gliding below. When their broad, blackish backs were
above the waves, there was frequently a ring or ruffle of
snowy surf, formed by the breaking of the swell, around
the edges of the fish. The review of whales, the only re-
view we had witnessed in Her Majesty's dominions, was,
on the whole, an imposing spectacle. We turned from
it to witness another, of a more brilliant character.
To the north and east, the ocean, dark and sparkling,
was, by the magic action of the wind, entirely clear of
fog ; and there, about two miles distant, stood revealed
the iceberg in all its cold and solitary glory. It was of a
greenish white, and of the Greek- temple form, seeming
to be over a hundred feet high. We gazed some minutes
with silent delight on the splendid and impressive object,
and then hastened down to the boat, and pulled away
with an speed to reach it, if possible, before the fog should
cover it again, and in time for C to paint it. The
THE ICEBERG.
55
moderation of the oarsmen and the slowness of our progress
were quite provoking. I watched the sun, the distant
fog, the wind and waves, the increasing motion of the
boat, and the seemingly retreating berg. A good half-
hour's toil had carried us into broad waters, and yet, to
all appearance, very little nearer. The wind was freshen-
ing from the south, the sea was rising, thin mists — a
species of scout from the main body of fog lying off in the
east— were scudding across our track. James Goss, our
captain, threw out a hint of a little difficulty in getting
back. But Yankee energy was indomitable : C quiet-
ly arranged his painting-apparatus ; and I, wrapped in my
cloak more snugly, crept out forward on the little deck, — a
sort of look-out. To be honest, I began to wish ourselves
on our way back, as the black, angry-looking swells
chased us up, and flung the foam upon the bow and
stern. All at once, huge squadrons of fog swept in, and
swamped the whole of us, boat and berg, in their thin,
white obscurity. For a moment we thought ourselves
foiled again. But still the word was On ! And on
they pulled, the hard-handed fishermen, now flushed
and moist with rowing. Again the ice was visible, but
dimly, in his misty drapery. There was no time to be lost.
Now, or not at all. And so C began. For half an
hour, pausing occasionally for passing flocks of fog, he
56 THE ICEBERG.
plied the brash with a rapidity not usual, and under disad-
vantages that would have mastered a less experienced hand.
We were getting close down upon the berg, and
in fearfully rough water. In their curiosity to catch
glimpses of the advancing sketch, the men pulled with
little regularity, and trimmed the boat veiy badly. We
were rolHng frightfully to a landsman. C begged of
them to keep their seats, and hold the barge just there as
near as possible. To amuse them, I passed an opera-
glass around among them, with which they examined the
iceberg and the coast. They turned out to be excellent
good fellows, and entered into the spirit of the thing in a
way that pleased us. I am sure they would have held on
willingly till dark, if : G had only said the word,
so much interest did they feel in the attempt to paint
the " island-of-ice." The hope was to linger about it
until sunset, for its colors, lights and shadows. That,
however, was suddenly extinguished. Heavy fog came
on, and we retreated, not with the satisfaction of a con-
quest, nor with the disappointment of a defeat, but
cheered with the hope of complete success, perhaps the
next day, when C thought that we could return upon
our game in a little steamer, and so secure it beyond the
possibility of escape.
The seine was now hauled from the stem to the cen-
THE am
tre of the barge ; and the men puUed away for Torbay^ a
long six miles, rough and chilly. For my part, I was
trembling with cold, and found it necessary to lend a
hand at the oars, an exercise which soon made the
weather feel several degrees warmer, and rendered me
quite comfortable. After a little, the wind lulled, the
fog dispersed again, and the iceberg seemed to contem-
plate our slow departure with complacent serenity. We
regretted that the hour forbade a return. It would have
been pleasant to play around that Parthenon of the sea
in the twilight. The best that was left us, was to look
back and watch the effects of light, which were wonder-
fully fine, and had the charm of entire novelty. The
last view was the very finest. All the east front was a
most tender blue ; the fissures on the southern face, from
which we were rowing directly away, were glittering
green ; the western front glowed in the yellow sunlight ;
around were the dark waters, and above, one of the most
beautiful of skies.
We fell under the land presently, and passed near the
northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red
sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the sum-
mit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The sun, at last,
was really setting. There was the old magnificence of
the king of day, — airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl,
3*
58 THE KETUEN.
stained with scarlets and crimsons^ and striped with
living gold. A blaze of white light, deepening into the
richest orange, crowned the distant ridge behind which
the sun was vanishing. A vapory splendoar, rose-color
and purple, was dissolving in the atmosphere ; and every
wave of the ocean, a dark violet, nearly black, was " a
flash of golden fire." Bathed with this almost supernatu-
ral glory, the headland, in itself richly complexioned with
red, brown and green, was at once a spectacle of singular
grandeur and solemnity. I have no remembrance of more
brilliant effects of light and color. The view filled us
with emotions of delight. We shot from beneath the
great cliff into Flat-Kock Bay, rounding, at length, the
breakers and the cape into the smoother waters of Tor-
bay. As the oars dipped regularly into the polished
swells, reflecting the heavens and the wonderful shores,
all lapsed into silence. In the gloom of evening the
rocks assumed an unusual height and sublimity. Gliding
quietly below them, we were saluted, every now and then,
by the billows thundering in some adjacent cavern. The
song of the sea in its old halls rung out in a style quite
unearthly. The slamming of the mighty doors seemed
far off in the chambers of the cliff, and the echoes trem-
bled themselves away, mujaied into stillness by the
stupendous masses.
^^m THE EIDE TO ST. JOHNS BY STARLIGHT. 59
Thus ended our first real hunting of an iceberg.
When we landed, we were thoroughly chilled. Our man
was waiting with his wagon, and so was a little supper in
a house near by, which we enjoyed with an appetite that
assumed several phases of keenness as we proceeded.
There was a tower of cold roast beef, flanked by bread
and butter and bowls of hot tea. The whole was carried
silently, without remark, at the point of knife and fork.
We were a forlorn-hope of two, and fell to, winning the
victory in the very breach. We drove back over the fine
gravel road at a round trot, watching the last edge of
day in the north-west and north, where it no sooner fades
than it buds again to bloom into morning. We lived the
new iceberg experience all over again, and planned for
the morrow. The stars gradually came out of the cool,
clear heavens, until they filled them with their sparkling
multitudes. For every star we seemed to have a lively
and pleasurable thought, which came out and ran among
our talk, a thread of light. When we looked at the
hour, as we sat fresh and wakeful, warming at our Eng-
lish inn, in St. Johns, it was after midnight.
CHAPTER XIII.
ST. MARY'S CIIUECII.— THE RIDE TO PETTY HARBOK.
Friday, June 24. Daylight, with the street noises,
surprised me in the very midst of the sweetest slumbers.
I had already learned that the summer daybreak, in these
more northern latitudes, was far enough ahead of breakfast,
and so I flattered myself back into one of those light and
dreamy sleeps that last, or seem to last, for several long
and pleasant hours. "When the bell aroused me, the
day appeared old and glittering enough for noon. But it
was only in good time for us, a little worn with the ex-
citement and toils of the day before, and in trini to enjoy
a good solid breakfast. All thought of revisiting the ice-
berg of Torbay was postponed, at least for the present,
and the day given up to previous invitations.
At eleven o'clock, I attended the consecration of St.
Mary's, a fine new church on the South Side, as the street
MARY'S CHURCH. 61
on the opposite shore of the harbor is called. As I
walked across the bridge, conducting to that side, the
sacred edifice, together with other buildings in the neigh-
borhood, adorned with numerous English flags, presented,
in contrast with the craggy mountain above, a lively and
picturesque appearance. I may mention, by the way, that
St. Johns might well be denominated the city of flags.
They are flying everywhere thick as butterflies and pop-
pies in a Yankee garden.
I was made acquainted with a number of clergymen,
some of them Cambridge and Oxford men, and invited to
take a part in the services. The sermon, preached by
Archdeacon Lower, was remarkable for its plainness, sim-
plicity and earnestness, a characteristic of all the sermons
I have heard from the clergy of Bishop Field, himself a
preacher of singular simplicity and earnestness. I could
not avoid drawing the contrast between the simple, prac-
tical character of this gospel preaching by accomplished
scholars, and the florid, pompous style of many half-
educated men in my own country. While the latter may,
at times, stir a popular audience more sensibly with the
fire that crackles among their brushwood of words, the
former are infinitely superior as sound, healthy, evan-
gehcal teachers.
On my return to the inn, I found C in his room,
62 THE RIDE TO PETTY HARBOR.
^
busily painting a duplicate of the berg of Torbay. Soon
after dinner we set off, in company with Mr. Shea, for
Petty Harbor, a small fishing port, nine or ten miles to
the south. The road — one of the finest I ever saw, an old-
fashioned English gravel road, smooth and hard almost as
iron, a very luxury for the wheels of a springless wagon —
keeps up the bank of a small river, a good-sized trout
stream, flowing from the inland valley into the harbor of
St. Johns. Contrasted with the bold regions that front
the ocean, these valleys are soft and fertile. We passed
smooth meadows, and sloping plough-lands, and green
pastures, and houses peeping out of pretty groves. One
might have called it a Canadian or New Hampshire vale.
At no great distance from the town, we crossed the
stream over such a bridge as one would be glad to find
more frequently upon the streams at home, and gradually
ascended to a shrubby, sterile country, with broad views
inland.
From the long, low hills of the western horizon, at no
great distance, Mr. Shea informed us that there were
prospects of Trinity Bay, of great beauty. Our road, at
length, carried us up among the bleak coast hills, winding
among them in a most agreeable manner, and bringing to
view numbers of small lakes, liquid gems set in black and
craggy banks, and which are all to be united by cuttings
THE EIDE TO PETTY HARBOR.
63
through the rocks, and then conducted to St. Johns, thus
forming one of the completest reservoirs.
The flowers by the wayside, mostly small and pale,
touched the air with delicate perfume. I looked for the
bees, but there were none abroad ; neither was there to be
heard the hum of insects nor warbling of birds. Now and
then a lonely bird piped a feeble strain. We continued
winding among the thinly- wooded hills, our wheels ringing
along the narrow gravel road for an hour. At last we
reached the height of land, and overlooked the ocean.
Here we rested a few moments, rose from the seats, and
looked around upon the majestic scene. Far out upon
the blue were many sails, white in the bright sun^ine as
the wings of doves. The fishing boats, little schooners
with raking masts, which swarm in these seas, were scud-
ding under their tan-colored canvas, in all directions,
looking like so many winged flies far down upon the
spangled plain, a most lively and agreeable contrast to
the desolate highlands, where you behold no dwelling, or
field, or sign of human work, except the road, which, I
cannot help repeating, lies among the rough hills, and
rocky masses, as cleanly cut, and smooth as a road in a
gentleman's park. What a token of greatness and refine-
ment is the perfect road ! No nation makes such roads
as these, in a land bristling with rugged difficulties, that
64 THE RIDE TO PETTY HARBOK.
has not wound its way up to the summit of power and
cultivation. The savage contents himself with a path
that is engineered and beaten by the wild beast.
The praise which an American, used to the rough
roads of home, is continually disposed to lavish upon
these admirable EngHsh roads of rugged Newfoundland,
must by no manner of means be shared by the carriages
that travel them, things at least one hundred years be-
hind the time. Such vehicles, on such roads, fit about as
well as a horseman on one of our city avenues dressed in
the iron clothes of a crusader. No Yankee rides in them
who does not have his laugh at their absurd strength and
clumsiQCSs. They are evidently intended to descend
from father to son ; and they are just as certain to do it
as they are to descend the hills, from which no common
horse and harness can prevent them, when tolerably
loaded. If the intelligence which designs, and executes,
and orders these wagons about, was not British intelli-
gence, one would not have a word to say. As it is, a little
ridicule is at least an innocent pastime. Take off the
box, the pleasure-box, and put upon the stalwart machine
anything you choose, stones, saw-logs, fire-engine, can-
non, and all wiU go safely. When you return, put on your
pleasure-box. again, and you are ready for an airing, wife
and daughters.
I
CHAPTER XIV.
PETTY HAEBOK.— THE MOUNTAIN EIVER.— COD-LIVE E OIL.-TnE
EVENING EIDE BACK TO ST. JOHNS.
To venture a geological remark : All these coast
liiglilands correspond with the summits of the AUeghanies,
and with those regions of the Cordilleras^ C tells me,
which are just below the snow-line. From the sea-line
up to the peak, they correspond with our mountains
above the upper belt of woods. Their icy pinnacles and
eternal snows are floating below in the form of icebergs.
Imagine all the mid-mountain region in the deep, and
you have the Andes here.
We descended in a zigzag way into a deep gorge, one
of those cuts through the shore mountains from inland
regions to the sea, which occasionally become fiords or
narrow bays. Along the rocky steps, resembling galle-
ries, were patches of grass and beds of flowering mosses,
66 THE MOUNTAIN RIVER.
with springs bubbling up in the spongy turf, and spin-
ning themselves out into snowy threads from the points
and edges of the crags. At the bottom is the little vil-
lage of Petty Harbor, where the river, a roaring torrent,
meets the salt tide. We alighted at a cottage. Swiss-
like among the rocks, before we were quite down, and
were pleased to hear Mr. Shea, whose guests we were,
making arrangements with a nice-looking woman for an
abundant supper, on our return. Mr. S., in company
with several persons who now joined us from St. Johns,
then proceeded to show us the lions of the place, or lion
rather, for every thing and everybody are run up into, and
knit into one body, the fishery.
In the first place, we were struck with the general
appearance of things. The fishing flakes completely floor
the river, and ascend in terraces for a short distance up
the sides of the vale. Beneath these wide, evergreen
floors, upon which was fish in all states, fresh from the
knife, and dry enough for packing, ran the river, a brawl-
ing stream at low tide, and deeper, silent water when the
tide was in. We could look up the dark stream, and see it
dancing in the mountain sunshine, and down through the
dim forest of slender props, and catch glances of the glit-
tering sea. Boats were gliding up out of the daylight
into the half-darkness, slowly sculled by brown fishermen,
THE MOUNTAIN EIVER. 67
and freighted with the browner cod, laced occasionally
with a salmon. In this wide and noiseless shade, these
cool, Lethean realms, sitting upon some well-washed
boulder, one might easily forget the heat and uproar of
all cities, and become absorbed in the contemplation of
merely present and momentary things. If one doubts it,
let him immerse himself for half an hour, in those still
and gloomy shadows, strongly seasoned with " ancient
and fish-like smells." Should he be able to reflect upon
the absent, or engage his thoughts upon any thing except
that which most immediately affects his senses, he will
possess a power of abstraction which a philosopher and a
Brahmin might envy.
In the course of our walk we visited a cod-liver oil
manufactory. The process of making this article is
quite simple. The livers, fresh from the fish, and nearly
white, are cleanly washed, and thrown into a cauldron
heated by steam instead of fire, where they gradually
dissolve into oil, which is dipped out hot and strained,
first through conical felt bags, and then through those
made of white moleskin, from which it runs pure and
sweet as table-oil. Wine-glasses were at hand, from
which we tasted it, and found it entirely agreeable. In
this state it is barrelled for market, and sold at an aver-
age price of one dollar and fifty cents per gallon. By
68 COD-LIVER OIL.
what process it is transmuted into that horrid stuff which
is sold at a high price, in small bottles, perhaps the drug-
gist can inform us. When I mentioned the character of
cod-liver oil in New York, a gentleman present, qualified
to decide, did not hesitate to say that it was adulterated
with some cheap, base oil. Near by a fish-house, there
is ordinarily seen a row of hogsheads open to the sun, and
breathing smells that none but a fisherman can abide.
A near approach discovers these casks to be filled with
cod livers in a state of fermentation. After a few days
in the sun, these corpulent and sweaty vessels yield a
rancid, nauseous fluid, of a nut-brown hue, at a much
less cost than the refined oil of the manufactory, and
which, I imagine, must have a flavor not unHke that
which the invalid finds lurking in those genteel flasks on
the apothecary's shelves. After all, our common whale-
oil, I suspect, after some cleansing and bleaching, and
slight seasoning with the pure, is bad enough for sick
people.
The catch, as the fisher terms the number of fish
taken, was small that day, and we encountered, here and
there, knots of idle men, smoking, chewing, whittHng
and talking. For the most part, they were a russet, tan-
gle-haired and shaggy-bearded set, shy and grum at first,
but presently talkative enough, and intelligent upon all
THE EVENING RIDE BACK TO ST. JOHNS. 69
matters in their own little world. Fish were so glutted
with capelin that they would not bite well. The seines
did better. Among the dwellings that we passed or en-
tered, was one of a young English woman, of such exceed-
ing neatness, that the painter could not forget it. That
fine-looking, healthy, young English woman, with her bit
of a house just as neat as wax, was often spoken of.
Upon our return to the cottage on the hill-side, where
we at first alighted, we sat down, with sharp appetite, to
a supper of fried capelin and cods' tongues, garnished
with cups of excellent tea. We ate and drank with the
relish of travellers, and talked of the continent from
Greenland to Cape Horn. After supper, we climbed out
of the valley, in advance of the wagons and our company,
to an eminence from which C sketched the surround-
ing scenery, more for the sake of comparison with some of
his Andean pencillings than for any thing really new. He
remarked that the wild and rocky prospect bore a strong
resemblance to the high regions of the Cordilleras.
While he was engaged with the pencil, I scrambled
to a high place, and looked at the Atlantic, touched
with long shafts of the light and shade of sunset. All
arrived at length, and we were fairly on our way back to
St. Johns. I buttoned my coat tightly, and wound my
-cloak around me with a pleasing sense of comfort in the
70 THE EVENING RIDE BACK TO ST. JOHNS.
clear and almost wintry air. All talked somewhat loudly,
and in the best possible good humor, our three wagons
keeping close company, and making a pleasant sound of
wheels, as we ran down our serpentine way among the
hills and lakes, now darkening in the dusk, and reflecting
the colored skies. Although there was not a water-fowl
in sight, the words came to memory spontaneously, and
I recited them to myself:
"Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way ? "
As we approached the town, we were much amused
with some boyish sports of a new kind. We saw what
appeared through the darkness to be balls of fire, chasing
each other down the craggy hill-side, but which turned
out to be a company of frolicsome boys with lighted
torches, bounding down the zigzag mountain road.
CHAPTER XY.
THE CHUEOn SHIP.-THE HEKO OP KAES.-THE MISSIONAEY OF
LABEADOE,
Saturday, June 25. This has been a quiet day,
mostly spent in making calls and social visits. At an
early hour, in company with Mr, Newman, the consul,
we visited the Church Ship, a pretty vessel of not more
than sixty tons, called the Hawk, a name suggested by
that line in the Odyssey, where the poet says, " the aus-
picious bird flew under the guidance of God." By an
ingenious arrangement, the cabin, which is a large part of
the vessel, can be changed, in a few minutes, from state-
rooms into a saloon, which, again, by a slight alteration,
becomes a chapel. In this, at once home and church, the
Bishop visits not only the harbors and islands of New-
foundland and Labrador, but the island of Bermuda. It
was the gift of the Rev. Robert Eden, a clergyman of
72 THE HERO OF KARS.
England, Bome twelve years ago, and has been employed
in that benevolent and sacred service ever since, with the
promise of the same for years to come. There are now
more than forty settled clergymen and missionaries along
those cold and rugged shores, who are visited from time
to time by their Bishop in this bold little ship, which I
shall dismiss for the present, for the reason that there
will be occasion to speak of it again.
From the Bishop's ship we went to his house, where
we had the honor of an introduction to General Williams,
the hero of Kars, and to Colonel Law, one of the few
now living who distinguished themselves at the battle of
Waterloo. In the presence of one who had mingled in
the grand scenes of Napoleon and the Duke of Welling-
ton, emotions of admiration were spontaneous. The hero
of Kars stands foremost among what are called fine-
looking military men,— a tall, commanding person, with
a most pleasing address.
We closed the day with the consul, who invited to
join us the Eev. George Hutchinson, a nephew of the
poet Wordsworth, and accustomed, in his youthful days,
to see at his uncle's such literary worthies as Lamb and
Southey. He talked much of Hartley Coleridge, of whose
abilities he had a high opinion. Southey, of all, seemed
to be his admiration. He was, all in all, indeed a won-
THE MISSIONARY OF LABRADOR.
73
derful man; a perfect Hercules in literary labors. A few
years ago, Mr. Hutchinson, moved by a religious spirit,
was induced to give up a pleasant living in Dorsetshire,
under the Malvern Hills, and devote himself to the toils
and privations of a missionary in Labrador. Upon the
death of his mother he went home, over a year ago, and
became possessed of a small property. He has returned
recently, and is now waiting for an opportunity to get
back to Labrador. This meeting and conversation with
the Kev. George Hutchinson, has turned out to be of more
than ordinary interest. C has determined to hire a
vessel for a month, and set the missionary down in the
midst of his people, without further trouble. We retired,
pleasantly excited with visions of icebergs and northern
coast scenery, and with thoughts of preparation for the
voyage.
CHAPTER XVI.
SUNDAY EVENING AT THE BISHOP'S.— THE EEV. ME. WOOD'S TALK
ABOUT ICEBERGS.
Monday, June 27. We attended clmrcli, yesterday,
at the cathedral, where we heard practical sermons and
fine congregational singing. The evening was passed at
the Bishop's, when the conversation was about Ox-
ford, and Keble, English parsonages, and Christian art.
A few poems were read from Keble's Christian Year,
and commented upon by the Bishop, who is a personal
friend and admirer of the poet. Before the company
separated, all moved into a very beautiful private chapel,
and closed the evening with devotions.
This has been a bright day, and favorable for our
preparations. We took tea with the Consul, and had
the pleasure of meeting the Rev. Mr. Wood, the Rector
of St. Thomas', one of the city churches ; who has true
THE REV. MR. WOOD'S TALK ABOUT ICEBERGS. 75
feeling, and a thorougli appreciation of fine scenerj^, and
whose descriptive abilities are rare. He says that an ice-
berg is to him the most impressive of all objects. Most
beautiful in its life and changes, it is, next to an earth-
quake, most terrible and appalling, in the moment of its
destruction, to those who may happen to be near it.
Upon the falling of its peaks and precipices, waves and
thunders carry the intelligence across the waters. Lofty
as it frequently is, the head only, helmeted and plumed
with dazzling beauty, is above the sea. In its solemn
march along the blue main, how it steps upon the high
places of the deep, is all unseen. Around its mighty
form, far down its alabaster cliflfs and caverns, no eye plays
but that of the imagination. When it pauses in its last
repose, and perishes, at timesj as quickly as if it were
smitten by the lightning, you may stand in the distance
and gaze with awe, but never draw near to witness the
motions and sounds of its dissolution. After tea, we sat
by the windows, which face the east and command the
harbor, with its grand entrance from the Atlantic, and
enjoyed the scene, one of unusual splendor, every cliff
glowing with hues of reddish orange.
CHAPTEE XYII.
OUR VESSEL FOR LABRADOR.-WRECK OP THE ARGO-THE FISHER-
MAN'S FUNERAL.
Wednesday, June 29. We are far advanced in our
preparations for the voyage. Yesterday and to-day, we
have been busily engaged, and now see the way clear for
leaving to-morrow morning. Bishop Field, who, with
many others, is pleased that C has volunteered to take
Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Botwood, his associate, to Lab-
rador, sailed on the visitation of his extended diocese to-
day. The Church Ship, which we visited in the morning,
looked, in her perfect order and neatness, with her signal
guns and her colors flying, quite like a little man-of-war.
We shall follow for awhile in her track, but with no ex-
pectation of seeing her again.
Allow me now to take you to the wharf, and show
you the craft which C has selected for his novel, and
OUR VESSEL FOR LABRADOR.
77
somewliat perilous expedition. Here she lies, the Integ-
rity, of Sydney, Cape Breton, a pink-sterned schooner, of
only sixty-five tons, but reputed safe and a good sailer.
Her forecastle contains the skipper and mate, a young
man of twenty-two, the owner of the vessel, and three
men, the youngest an overgrown Scotch lad, who has been
serving, and will continue to serve us, in the capacity of
cook. Her cabin is for Captain Knight, the commander,
pro tem., with whom you will be made much better ac-
quainted. Just forward of the cabin, in the hold, there
has been a temporary cabin partitioned off, and furnished
with beds, bedding, chairs and table ; in short, with every
necessary article for the comfort and convenience of five
individuals. In this snug little room, and in the hold,
laden only with a light stone ballast, are stores and pro-
visions, of the very best quality, for two full months,
wood and water to be taken along shore as need shall re-
quire.
At C 's sole expense, and under his control, this
vessel is to cruise for a few weeks in the region of the ice-
bergs, setting down the missionaries by the way. The sheet
anchor and mainstay (I begin to speak the language of
the mariner) of our hopes of a pleasant and successful
trip, humanly speaking, is Captain Knight, a respected
citizen of St. Johns, and an accomplished sailor, whom
78 WEECK OF THE ARGO.
C has had the good fortune to secure as master,
pilot, and companion.
We have been startled by the intelligence, that the
Argo, of the Galway line of steamers, from New York to
Scotland, is ashore at St. Shotts, near Cape Kace. As
usual, a variety of reports have agitated the community,
and made people look with eagerness for the return of the
two small harbor steamers, which Mr. Shea, the agent for
that line, dispatched yesterday to the scene of distress.
One of the tugs, the Blue Jacket, has at length arrived
with a part of the passengers in sad plight. It is the old
story of shipwreck on these rocky coasts. Wrapped in
fogs, and borne forward by a powerful current, the ill-fated
ship struck the shore, a few moments after it was discov-
ered. Providentially, it was calm weather, and the sea
unusually quiet, or all had perished. As it was, all went
safely to land, and encamped in the woods. Numbers of
the passengers, saddened by the loss of trunks containing
clothing and other valuables, excited and fatigued, tell
bitter stories of carelessness and inefficiency.
While, with a crowd of people, we were at the pier,
awaiting the arrival of the Blue Jacket, a funeral pro-
cession of boats with little white flags, half pole, came
slowly rowing in from sea, and across the harbor, and
landed with the coffin near where we were standing. Not
THE FISHERMAN S FUNERAL.
79
only the relatives were dressed in mourning, but the
bearers. There were long flowing weeds of black crape
upon all their hats, and wide white cambric cuffs upon
the sleeves of their coats. They were of the fishing class,
from some village up or down the coast, and conducted
matters apparently with more dispatch than mournful-
ness. A hearse or black carriage, of very substantial
make, with a high top, and white fringe or valance de-
pending from its eaves instead of curtains, was waiting
on the wharf, attended by a man with a flag of white
linen attached to his hat.
Among our last calls to-day, was one of ceremony
upon Sir Alexander and Lady Bannerman, from whom
we had received an invitation to dine. Her ladyship, a
fine-looking person, of graceful and dignified manners and
pleasing conversation, talked with interest of C 's
excursion, and particularly of that part of it- relating to
his carrying Mr. Hutchinson to Labrador. After taking
our leave, we went with Mr. Newman to look after some
fireworks, which his Excellency has been pleased to order
for our amusement at night among the icebergs.
CHAPTER XVIII.
OUR FIEST EVENING AT SEA
Thursday evening, June 30. At sea. I am now
writing, for the first time to-day, by the candles on our
table in the main cabin of the Integrity. We are sailing
northward with a fair wind, but with fog and rather
rough water. But let me go back, and take the day
from the beginning, passing lightly over its labors and
vexations.
The morning opened upon us brilliantly, and all were
employed about those many little things which only can
be done at the last moment. Noon came and an early
dinner, before that all were in readiness and aboard. And
then, as if in retaliation for our delay during so many
lovely hours, the wind was not ready, and so we were
obliged to be towed by the Blue Jacket quite out into
broad water, where she left us with our colors quivering
OUR FIRST EVENING AT SEA.
in the sunshine, and all our canvas swelling in a mild
southerly breeze. The coast scenery, and the iceberg of
Torbay, and the last gleams of sunset upon land and
ocean, were the lions of the afternoon.
We have taken our first tea, counting, with a lad in
the charge of Mr. Hutchinson, six around the table, and
making, with the crew, eleven souls, quite a little congre-
gation, could all be spared to attend the short morning
and evening services. We are just beginning to feel the
effects of a small vessel with no lading beyond a light
ballast. She rolls excessively, rises with every swell, and
pitches into the succeeding hollow. This has already be-
gun to disperse our company to their berths, as the more
comfortable place for the random conversation which will
close the day.
4*
CHAPTER XIX.
ICEBEKGS OF THE OPEN SEA.-THE OCEAN CHASE.-TnE EETEEAT TO
CAT HAEBOE.
Friday, July 1. The fog is so dense that the rigging
drips as if it rained. In fact, if it be not the finest of
aU rain, then it is the thickest of aU mists. C and I
are sea-sick, almost as a matter of course, and look upon
aU preparations for breakfast with no peculiar satisfac-
tion. Our consolation is, that we are sailing forward,
although with only very moderate speed.
Delightful change ! It is clearing up. The noon-
day sun is showering the dark ocean, here and there,
with the whitest light. And lo ! an iceberg on our left.
Lo ! an iceberg on our right. An iceberg ahead ! Yes,
two of them ! — ^four ! — five — six ! — and there, a white
pinnacle just pricking above the horizon. Wonderful to
behold, there are no less than thirteen icebergs in fair
THE OCEAN CHASE. 83
view. We run forward, and then we run aft, and then
to this side, and that. We lean towards them over the
railing, and spring up into the shrouds, as if these hoyish
efforts brought us nearer, and made them plainer to our
delighted eyes. With a quiet energy, C betakes him-
self to painting, and I to my note-book. But can you tell
me why I pause, almost put up the pencil, and pocket
the book ? I am only a little sea-sick. The cold sweat
starts upon the forehead, and I feel pale. We bear away
now, such is the order, for the largest berg in sight. I
freshen again with the growing excitement of this novel
chase, and feel a pleasurable sense of freedom that I can
never describe. I could bound like a deer, and shout like
the wild Indian, for very joy. The vessel seems to sym-
pathize, and spring forward with new spirit. The words
leap out of the memory, and I give them a good strong
voice :
' O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free."
Indeed, there is a hearty pleasure in this freedom of the
ocean, when, as now with us, it is " all before you where
to choose." Tied to no task, fettered to no line of voyage,
to no scant time allowanced, the ship, the ocean and the
day, are ours. Like the poet's river, that " windeth at its
84 - THE OCEAN CHASE.
own sweet will/' our wishes flow down the meandering
channel of circumstances, and we go with the current.
And how lovely the prospect as we go ! That this is
all God's own world, which he holdeth in the hollow of
his hand, is manifest from the impartial bestowal of
beauty. 'No apple, peach or rose is more within one net-
work of sweet, living grace, than the round world. How
wonderful and precious a thing must this beauty be, that
it is thus all-pervading, and universal ! Here on these
bleak and barren shores, so rocky, rough and savage, is a
rich and delicate splendor that amazes. The pure azure
of the skies, and the deeply blue waters, one would think
were sufficient for rude and fruitless regions such as these.
But look, how they shine and scintillate ! The iron
cheeks of yonder headland blush with glory, and the
west is all magnificent. Gaze below into the everlasting
evening of the deep. Glassy, glittering things, like chan-
deliers dispersed, twinkle in the fluid darkness. The
very fishes, clad in purple and satin, silvery tissues and
cloth-of-gold, seem to move with colored lights. God
hath apparelled all his creatures, and we call it beauty.
As we approach the bergs, they assume a great variety
of forms. Indeed, their changes are quite wonderful. In
passing around a single one, we see as good as ten, so
protean is its character. I know of no object in all
THE OCEAN CHASE.
85
nature so marvelously sensitive to a steady gaze. Sit
motionless, and look at one, and, fixture as it appears, it
has its changes then. It marks with unerring faithful-
ness every condition of atmosphere, and every amount
of light and shadow. Thus manifold complexions trem-
ble over it, for which the careless observer may see no
reason, and many shapes, heights and distances swell and
shrink it, move it to and from, of which the mind may
not readily assign a cause.
The large iceberg, for which we bore away this morn-
ing, resembled, at one moment, a cluster of Chinese
buildings, then a Gothic cathedral, early style. It was
curious to see how all that mimicry of a grand religious
pile was soon transmuted into something like the Coliseum,
its vast interior now a delicate blue, and then a greenish
white. It was only necessary to run on half a mile to
find this icy theatre split asunder. An age of ruin ap-
peared to have passed over it, leaving only the two ex-
tremes, the inner cliffs of one a glistening white, of the
other, a blue, soft and airy as the July heavens.
In the neighborhood, were numbers of block-like bergs,
which, when thrown together by our perpetual change of
L position, resembled the ruins of a marble city. The play
of the light and shadows among its inequalities was
86 THE RETREAT TO CAT HARBOR.
myra of the waves, lay a berg closely resembling a huge
ship of war, with the stern submerged, over which the
surf was breaking finely, while the stem, sixty or seventy
feet aloft, with what the fancy easily shaped into a majes-
tic figure-head, looked with fixed serenity over the dis-
tant waters. As we ran athwart the bow, it changed in-
stantly into the appearance of some gigantic sculpture,
with broad surfaces as smooth as polished ivory, and with
salient points cut with wonderful perfection. The dash-
ing of the waves sounded like the dashing at the foot of
rocky clifis, indicative of the mass of ice below the sur-
face.
As the afternoon advances the breeze strengthens,
blowing sharply off to sea. We have the most brilliant
sunshine, with a clear, cold, exhilarating air. It very
nearly dispels all the nausea caused by this excessive
rolling. We are now beating up from the east toward
the land, and passing several of the bergs, in the chase
of which we have spent so many joyous hours. Every
few minutes we have new forms and new effects, new
thoughts and fresh emotions. The grand ruins of the
Oriental deserts, hunted on the fleetest coursers, would
awaken, I fancy, kindred feelings. Full of shadowy sub-
limities are these great broken masses, as we sweep
around them, fall away, tack and return again.
THE RETREAT TO CAT HARBOK.
87
I never could have felt, and so must not think of
making others feel through the medium of language, the
possibility of being so deceived in respect of the bulk of
these islands-of-ice, as our sailors always call them.
What seems, in the distance, a mere piece of ice, of good
snow-bank size only, is really a mass of such dimensions
as to require you to look up to it, as you sail around it,
and feel, as you gaze, a sense of grandeur. What you
might suppose could be run down as easily as a pile of
light cotton, would wreck the proudest clipper as effectu-
ally as the immovable adamant.
Between the great northern current, and the breeze
which plumes the innumerable waves with sparkliDg
white, our course has become rather more tortuous and
rough than is agreeable to landsmen who have only come
abroad upon the deep for pleasure and instruction. The
painter has cleaned his pallet, wiped his brushes, shut his
painting-box, and gone below. I am sitting here, near
the helm, close upon the deck, screened from the spray
that occasionally flies over, heavily coated, and cold at
that, making some almost illegible notes. Life, it is
often said, is a stormy ocean. It is 07i the ocean, cer-
tainly, that one feels the whole force of the comparison.
The wind, which is blowing strongly, is getting into
the north, dead ahead, and sweeping us away upon our
88 THE RETKEAT TO CAT HARBOE.
back track. We are too lightly ballasted to tack with
success, and hold our own. The bergs are retiring, and
appear like ruins and broken columns. We are now fairly
on the retreat, and flying under reefed sails to a little bay,
called Cat Harbor. All aloft has the tightness and the
ring of drums, and the whistling of a hundred fifes. The
voice of the master is quick, and to the point, and the
motions and the footsteps of the men, rapid. On our
bows are the explosion and the shock of swells, the re-
sounding knocks and calls of old Neptune, and upon the
deck such showers of his most brilliant flowers and
bouquets as I feel in no haste to gather. The sea-fowl
whirl in the gale like loose plumes and papers, pouring
out their wild complaints as they pass.
CHAPTEK XX.
CAT HAEBOE.— EVENING SEEVICE IN CnURCH.— THE FISHEEMAN'S
FIEE.— THE EETUEN AT MIDNIGHT.
At eight o'clock, our brave little pink-stern was lying
at anchor in her haven, as quietly as a babe in its cradle,
with the wind piping a pleasant lullaby in the rigging,
and the roar of the ocean nearly lost in the distance.
A few rude erections along the rocky shore, with a small
church, a store and warehouse, compose the town of Cat
Harbor, the life of which seems to be the water-craft
busy in the one common employment, some returning
with the catch of the day, others going for the catch of
the night. While C was painting a sketch of the
scene, the sun vanished behind the purple inland hills,
with unusual splendor, and left the distant icebergs in
such a white " as no fuller on earth can white them."
After dinner, notwithstanding the lateness of the
90 EVENING SERVICE IN CHURCH.
hour, Mr. Hutchinson, who knew that the clergyman in
charge was absent, resolved to go ashore, and invite the
people to attend divine service. As soon as we were
landed, he left us to make our way to the church, at our
leisure, while he ran from house to house to announce
himself, and to give notice of the intended services. Our
path, as usual in these coast hamlets, went in zigzag,
serpentine ways, among evergreen fishing-borwers, and
many-legged flakes and huts, and oddly-fenced potato-
patches. In the marshy field around the church, we had
some time to amuse ourselves with gathering slender bul-
rushes tipped with plumes of whitest down. They were
sprinkled all abroad like snow-flakes over the dusky green
ground, and we ran about with the eagerness of boys,
selecting the prettiest as specimens for home.
Twilight was already close upon the darkness. We
turned from the chase of our thistle-down toys, and
gazed upon the solemn magnificence around us — the
dark and lonesome land — the bay, reflecting the colored
heavens — the warm orange fading out into the cool pearl,
and the pearl finally lost in the broad blue above.
It was fully candle-light when the congregation,
about forty, assembled, and the service began. The mis-
sionary preached extempore a practical sermon adapted
to his hearers, and we sang, to the tune of Old Hundred,
THE FISHEEMAN'S FIRE. ' 91
the One Hundredth Psalm, making the dimly- lighted
sanctuary ring again. After church, our party were in-
vited to warm at one of the houses, which we did most
effectually before a broad and roaring fire, while mine
host recounted the toil and the pleasure of getting winter
wood over the deep snows with his team of dogs, and the
more perilous and exciting labors of the fish-harvest,
upon which life and all depend. At the mention of the
puff-pig, the local name for the common porpoise, we in-
dulged ourselves in a childish laugh. A more ludicrous,
and at the same time a more descriptive name could not
be hit upon.
During the half-hour around the exhilarating July
fire, there dropped in, one by one, a room-full, curious to
see and hear the strangers from St. Johns and America,
as the United States are often called. We parted with a
general shaking of hands, and plenty of good wishes,
among which was one, " that we might have many igh
hicebergs." Some half dozen attended us to the shore,
and brought us off in handsome style over the calm and
phosphorescent waters. At every dip of the oars it was
like unraking the sparkling embers, so brilliant was that
beautiful light of the sea. The boatmen called it the burn-
ing of the water. " When the water burnt,'' they said,
" it was a sure sign of south wind and a plenty of fish."
92 THE RETURN AT MIDNIGHT.
It was one of those still and starry nights which re-
quire only an incident or so to make them too beautiful
ever to be forgotten. Those incidents were now present,
in a peculiarly plaintive murmur of the ocean, the kin-
dling waves, and a delicate play of the Aurora Borealis.
When we reached our vessel it was almost midnight, and
still there was sweet daylight in the far north- west, mov-
ing along the circle of the northern horizon to brighten
into morning before we were half through our light and
dreamy slumbers. Weary and drowsy, all have crept to
their berths ; and I will creep into mine when I have put
the period to the notes of this long and delightful day.
I hear the footfalls of the watch on deck. May God keep
us through the short, but most solitary night, and speed
us early on our northern voyage !
CHAPTEK XXI.
AFTER ICEBERGS AGAIN. — AMONG THE SEA-FOWL.
I
Satueday, July 2. It is ^yq o'clock, and the morn-
ing has kindled in the clouds its brightest fires. We are
moving off to sea gracefully before a fair, light wind.
The heart delights in this golden promise of a fine sum-
mer day, and the 'blue Atlantic all before us. As the
rising sun looks over it, the glittering waves seem to par-
ticipate in these joyful emotions. How marvelously
beautiful is this vast scene ! Give me the sea, I say,
now that I am on the sea. Give me the mountains, I
say, when I am on the mountains ! Henceforth, when
I am weary with the task of life, I will cry, Give me the
mountains and the sea.
The rugged islands, landward, have only an olive, not
the living green, and seem never to have rejoiced in the
blessing of a tree, or felt the delicious mercy of a leafy
94 AMONG THE SEA-FOWL.
shade. There blow the whales, and here is the edge of
an innumerable multitude of sea-birds feeding upon the
capelin, and flying to the right and left, thick as grass-
hoppers, as we advance among them. Poor things, they
are so glutted that they are obliged to disgorge before
they can gain the wing, and many of them merely scram-
ble aside a few yards, and become the mark of the
roguish sailors, especially of Sandy, our young Scotch
cook, who is in a perfect frolic, pelting them with stones.
They sprinkle the sea by the million, and present, with
their white breasts and perpetually arching wings, a
lively and novel appearance. On the roll of the swells,
as the sunlight glances on them, they flash out white
like water-lilies.
How the pages of a book fail to carry these scenes
into the heart ! I have been reading of them for years,
and, as I have thought, reading understandingly and
feelingly ; but I can now say that I have never known,
certainly never felt them until now. The living presence
of them has an originality, a taste and odor for the
imagination, which can never be expressed even by the
vivid and sensuous language of the painter, much less by
the more subtle, intellectual medium of written records.
It is so new and fresh to me, that I feel as if none had
ever seen this prospect before. Old and familiar as these
AMONG THE SEA-FOWL.
95
I
waters are, I am thrilled with emotions, kindred to those
of a discoverer, and remember and repeat the rhyme of
the Ancient Mariner :
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Silent sea ! This is any thing but that. The surf, which
leaps up with the lightness and rapidity of flames, for
many and many a white mile, roars among the sharp,
bleak crags of the islands and the coast like mighty
cataracts. Words of the Psalmist fall naturally upon
the tongue, and I speak them in low tones to myself :
Voices are heard among them.
Their sound is gone out into all lands.
" And so sail we," this glorious morning, after the ice-
bergs, several of which stand sentinel along our eastern
horizon ; but we do not turn aside for them, for the reason
that we confidently look for others more closely on our
proper track.
CHAPTER XXII.
NOTEE DAME BAY.— FOGO ISLAND AND THE THEEE HUNDRED
ISLES.— THE FEEEDOM OF THE SEAS.— THE ICEBEEG OF THE
SUNSET, AND THE FLIGHT INTO TWILLINGATE.
After noon, with the faintest breeze, and the sea
like a flowing mirror. We have sailed by the most east-
ern promontories, Cape Bonavista and Cape Freels, and
have now arrived at a point where the coast falls off far
to the west, and gives place to Notre Dame Bay, the
great Archipelago of Newfoundland, of which there is
comparatively little known. Our true course is nearly
north, and along the eastern or Atlantic side of Fogo,
which is now before us, the first and largest of some three
hundred islands. For the sake of the romantic scenery,
we conclude to take the inside route.
From the shores of Fogo, which are broken, and ex-
ceedingly picturesque further on, as Captain Knight in-
forms us, the land rises into moderate hills, thinly wooded
FOGO ISLAND AND THE THREE HUNDRED ISLES. 97
with evergreens, with here and there a little farm and
dwelling. Perhaps there are twenty rural smokes in
sight and a spire or two. Under the full-blown summer
all looks pleasant and inviting. What will not the glori-
ous sunshine bless and beautify ? A dark and dusty
garret wakes up to life and brightness, give it an open
window and the morning sun.
The western headlands of Fogo are exceedingly at-
tractive, lofty, finely broken, of a red and purplish brown,
tinted here and there with pale green. The painter
is busy with his colors. As we pass the bold prominences
and deep, narrow bays or fiords, they are continually
changing and surprising us with a new scenery. And
now the great sea-wall, on our right, opens and discloses
the harbor and village of Fogo, the chief place of the
island, gleaming in the setting sun as if there were flames
shining through the windows. Looking to the left, all
the western region is one fine -^gean, a sea filled with a
multitude of isles, of manifold forms and sizes, and of every
height, from mountain pyramids and crested ridges down
to rounded knolls and tables, rocky ruins split and shat-
tered, giant slabs sliding edgewise into the deep, columns
and grotesque masses ruffled with curling surf — the Cyc-
lades of the west. I climb the shrouds, and behold fields
and lanes of water, an endless and beautiful network, a
98 THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.
little Switzerland with her vales and gorges filled with
the purple sea.
After dinner, and nearly sunset. We are breaking
away from the isles into the open Atlantic, bearing
northerly for Cape St. John, where Captain Knight prom-
ises the very finest coast scenery. Far away on the blue,
floats a solitary pyramid of ice, while a few miles to the
east of us there stands the image of some grand Capitol,
in shining marble. Looking back upon the isles, as they
retire in the south and west, with the hues of sunset upon
their green and cloud-like blue, we behold, the painter
tells me, a likeness to some West-Indian views.
Once again the breeze swells every sail, and we are
speeding forward after the icebergs. All goes merrily.
It sings and cracks aloft, and roars around the prow. We
speed onward. The little ship, like a very falcon, flies
down the wind after the game, and promises to reach it
by the last of daylight. A long line of gilding. tracks the
violet sea, and expands in a lake of dazzling brightness
under the sun. Beneath all this press of sail, we ride on
fast and steadily, as a car over the prairies. We seem to
be all alive. This is fine, inexpressibly fine ! This is
freedom ! I lean forward and look over the bow, and,
like a rider in a race, feel a new delight and excitement.
Wonderful and beautiful ! Like the Arab on his sands,
THE ICEBERG OF THE SUNSET. 99
I say, almost involuntarily, God is great ! How soft is
the feeling of this breeze, and how balmy is the smell,
" like the smell of Lebanon,"- and yet how powerful to
bear us onward ! We rise and bow gracefully to the
passing swells, but keep right on. Fogo is sinking in the
south, a line of roseate heights, and fresh ice sparkles
like stars on the northern horizon.
We dart off a mile or more from our right path in
order to bring a small berg between us and the sun, that
we may look into his sunset beauties. A dull cloud, close
down upon the waves, may defeat this manoeuvre. We
shall conquer yet. There, he rises from the sea, a sphinx
of pure white against the glowing sky, and every man
aboard is as full of fine excitement as if we were to grap-
ple with, and chain him. We pass directly under the
great face, the upper line of which overlooks our top-
mast. Every curve, swell and depression have the finish
of the most exquisite sculpture, and all drips with silvery
water as if newly risen from the deep. In the pure,
white mass there is the suspicion of green. Every wave,
by contrast, and by some optical effect, nearly black as
it approaches, is instantly changed into the loveliest
green as it rolls up to the silvery bright ice. And all
the adjacent deep is a luminous pea-green. The eye
follows the ice into its awful depths, and is at once star-
100 THE ICEBERG OF THE SUNSET.
tied and delighted to find tliat the mighty crystal hangs
suspended in a vast transparency, or floats in an abyss of
liquid emerald.
We pass on the shadow side, soft and delicate as satin,
and changeable as costliest silk ; the white, the dove-
color and the green playing into each other with the sub-
tlety and fleetness of an Aurora-Borealis. As the light
streams over and around from the illuminated side, the
entire outline of the berg shines like newly-burnished sil-
ver in the blaze of noon. The painter is working with all
possible rapidity ; but we pass too quick to harvest all
this beauty : he can only glean some golden straws. A
few sharp words from the captain bring the vessel to, and
we pause long enough for some finishing touches. He
has them, and we are off again. An iceberg is an object
most difiicult to study, for which many facilities, much
time, and some danger are indispensable. The voyager,
passing at a safe distance, really knows little or nothing
of one.
Ten o'clock, and only twilight. We are now about
to put up note-book and painting-box, and join our Eng-
lish companions in a walk up and down our little deck.
Notwithstanding their familiarity with icebergs, they ap-
pear to enjoy them with as keen a zest as we, now that
they are brought into this familiar contact with them.
FLIGHT INTO TWILLINGATE.
101
After the walk, and by candle-light in the cabin. The
wind is strengthening, and promises a gale. The black
and jagged coast of Twillingate island, to the south,
frowns upon us, and the great pyramid berg of sunset
awaits us close at hand. For some time past, it has
borne the appearance of the cathedral of Milan, shorn of
all its pinnacles, but it now resumes its pyramidal form,
and towers, in the dusk of evening, to a great height.
After a brief consultation, we resolve to slip into the har-
bor of Twillingate, a safe retreat from the coming storm,
and there pass our first Sunday out .of St. Johns. To
dare this precipitous coast, haunted with icebergs, and a
gale blowing right on, in so light a craft as ours, would
be rash. Much as I wish to make the most of our time,
I am glad to find that we are making harbor, and intend
to rest, according to the law.
I cannot take my mind's eye from the brilliant spec-
tacle of the waves in conflict with the iceberg. I still
hear the surf in the blue chasms. But with all the power
of its charge, it is the merest toy to the great arctic mass,
a playful kitten on the paws of the lion.
After ten, and after prayer. We are rolling most un-
comfortably while we are beating towards our anchorage
between the headlands of the harbor. It is midnight
nearly, and yet I am not in the least sleepy. The day is
102 FLIGHT INTO TWILLINGATE.
SO lengthy, and we are so continually stimulated with the
grandeur and novelty of these scenes that it is quite
troublesome to sleep at all. A few hours of slumber, so
thin that the sounds on deck easily break through and
wake the mind, is about all I have. We are coming
about, and roll down almost upon the vessel's side. The
sails are loose, and roar in the breeze. The anchor drops,
home to its bed. The chain rattles and runs its length.
We repose in safe waters, and I turn in thankfully to my
berth.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SUNDAY IN TWILLING ATE. -THE MOENING OF THE FOURTH.
Monday Mokning, July 4, 1859. We were roused
from our slumbers very suddenly, yesterday morning, by
Mr. Hutchinson, in a loud and cheerful voice, telling us
the pleasing news that the Church Ship was at anchor
near by, and that he had exchanged salutations with the
Bishop. His vessel had lost a spar in the same squall
that drove us into Cat Harbor. To that accident we
owed the pleasure of meeting him in Twillingate, and of
passing a profitable and happy Lord's day. The wind
was blowing a perfect gale, and roared among the ever-
green woods on the surrounding hills. At half-past ten,
the Bishop's boat glided alongside, and bore us ashore,
from which we walked past the church, through the assem-
bling congregation, to the house of the Rector, the Rev.
Thomas Boone, where we joined the Bishop and two or
104 THE MOilNlNG OV THE FOUliTH.
three of the leading persons of the island. There were
the regular morning and evening serviceSj and a third
service at night, completed though by good strong day-
light. The house was filled, and the sermons plain and
practical, their burden being repentance, faith in Christ,
and obedience to his law. After supper, and a social
hour with the Kector and his family, we returned to our
vessels respectively, the north-western sky still white
with daylight, and the thunder of the ocean brealdng
with impressive grandeur upon the solemn repose, into
which all nature seemed gladly to have fallen after the
tempest.
I was up this morning at an early hour, and away
upon the hills with Mr. Hutchinson and Master William
Boone, a fine youth of fifteen, for our guide and compan-
ion. The main object was to get a view of the iceberg
of Saturday evening. To my surprise and disappoint-
ment, the ocean was one spotless blue. The berg had
foundered, or gone off to sea. It was barely possible that
it lay behind a lofty headland, beneath which we passed
in making the harbor. To settle a question, which in
some measure involved the pleasure of the day, we
climbed a rocky peak beset with brushwood, and descried
the berg close in upon the headland apparently, and, as
I supposed, rapidly diminishing, a lengthy procession of
THE MORNING OF THE FOURTH.
105
fragments moving up the coast. Looking south, there
was unrolled to view, spread out from east to west, the
splendid island scenery of Notre Dame Bay, already de-
scribed. A single reach of water, with islets and moun-
tainous shores, had a striking resemblance to Lake George.
At eight o'clock, we were again on board and ready
for the boat, which, by appointment, was to take our
party to the Hawk for a farewell breakfast with the
Bishop. It is needless to say that we were most kindly
and pleasantly entertained. The Bishop was pleased to
accompany us back to our vessel, and to give us his part-
ing blessing, on our own more humble deck. Just be-
fore sailing. Master Boone came off to us in a boat with
a gift of milk and eggs, and a nice, fat lamb. By ten
o'clock, both the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes
were waving on high in a south-west breeze, arid we
glided through the narrows toward the open sea, the
chasms of the precipices heavily charged with the last
winter's snow.
5*
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ICEBEKG OF TWILLINGATE.
Twelve o'clock. The day we celebrate. Three
cheers ! Now we are after the iceberg. Upon getting
near, we find it grounded in fifty fathoms of water, ap-
parently storm-worn, and much the worse for the terrible
buffeting of the recent gale. Masses of the huge, glassy
precipices seem to have been blasted off within the last
hour, and gone away in a lengthy line of white frag-
ments upon the mighty stream. "We are now bearing
down upon it, under full sail, intending to pass close
under it. Our good angels bear us company as we pass.
What an exquisite specimen of nature's handiwork
it looks to be, in the blaze of noon ! It shines like pol-
ished silver dripping with dews. The painter is all ready
with his colors, having sketched the outlines with lead.
The water streams down in all directions in little rills and
I
ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE.
falls, glistening in the light like molten glass. Veins
of gem-like transparency, blue as sapphire, obliquely
cross the opaque white of the prodigious mass, the pre-
cious beauty of which no language can picture. Frag-
ments lie upon the slopes, like bowlders, ready to be dis-
lodged at any moment, and launched into the waves.
Now we dash across his cool shadow, and take his breath.
There looks to be the permanency of adamant, while in
reality all is perishable as a cloud, and charged with
awful peril. Imagine the impressive grandeur and ter-
rific character of cliffs, broad and lofty cliffs, at once so
sohd, and yet so liable at any moment to burst asunder
into countless pieces. We all know the danger, and I
confess that I feel it painfully, and wish ourselves at a
safe distance.
The wind increases, and all is alive on deck. To my
relief, we have fallen off to leeward beyond all harm.
But we are on the back track, and mean to take him
again, and take the risques also of his terrible, but very
beautiful presence. Now we run. If he were a hostile
castle, he would open upon us his big guns, at this in-
stant. Bravely and busily the waves beat under the hol-
low of the long, straight water-line, rushing through the
low archways with a variety of noises, — roaring, hissing,
slapping, cracking, lashing the icy vaults, and polishing
108 THE ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE.
and mining away with a wild, joyous energy. Poor
Ishmael of the sea ! every hand and every force is against
him. If he move, he dashes a foot against the deep
down stones. While he reposes, the sun pierces his
gleaming helmet, and strikes through the joints of his
glassy armor.
In the seams and fissures the shadows are the softest
blue of the skies, and as plain and palpable as smoke.
It melts at every pore, and streams as if a perpetually
overflowing fountain were upon the summit, and flashes
and scintillates like one vast brilliant. Prongs and reefs
of ice jutting from the body of the berg below, and over
which we pass, give the water that emerald clearness so
lovely to the eye, and open to the view something like
the fanciful sea-green caves. We now lie to, under the
lee side, fearfully close, it seems to me, when I recollect
the warning of the Bishop, never, on any account, to ven-
ture near an iceberg. Its water-line, under which the
waves disappear in a lengthy, piazza-like cavern, with ex-
plosive sounds, is certainly a remarkable feature. Occa-
sional glimpses unfold the polish, the colors, and the
graceful winding of sea-shells. A strong current in con-
nection with the wind forces us, I am glad to say, to a
more safe and comfortable distance. The last ten min-
utes has given us a startling illustration of the dangers
THE ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE. 109
of which we have been forewarned : a crack like a field-
piece was followed by the falling of ice, on the opposite
side of the berg, attended with a sullen roar.
We round to, and take the breeze in our faces. The
ice is up the wind, square before us, and we must after it
by a tack or two. The stars and stripes yet float aloft,
and seem to tremble with delight as we sport through
these splendid hours of Freedom's holiday. The berg
with its dazzling white^ and dove-colored shadows, — the
electric breeze, — the dark sea with its draperies of spark-
ling foam, north, east, south, out to the pure azure of the
encircling sky, — the sunshine, that bright spirit and cease-
less miracle of the firmament, — the white-winged vessel
boxing the billow, now rolling on black and cloud-like,
now falling off with the spotless purity of a snow-drift, —
the battle of the surges and the solid cliffs, all conspire
to enliven and excite.
While the painter is busy, overlooked by Mr. Hutch-
inson, and I lean over the bow and scribble in my
note-book, a sailor comes forward and gazes upon the ice-
berg as if he, too, was looking at something new. He has
passed them by, time out of mind, either idly or with dis-
like, as things to be shunned, and not to be looked back
at when safely weathered. Now that his attention is
called, he finds that this useless mass, tumbling about in
110 THE ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE.
the path of mariners, is truly a most wonderful creation.
Like all the larger structures of nature, these crystalline
vessels are freighted with God's power and glory, and
must be reverently and thoughtfully studied, to " see into
the hfe of them/' The common clouds, which unnoticed
drop their shadows upon our dwellings, and spot the land-
scape, are found to be wonderful by those alone who
watch them patiently and thoughtfully. " The witchery
of the soft blue sky did never melt into the poet's heart ;
he never felt the witchery of the soft blue sky" but from
silent, loving study.
Captain Knight backs the sails, and we hold on near
enough to the ice to see the zone of emerald water, a
fearfully close proximity. Look up to those massy folds
and wreaths of icy drapery, all flashing in the sun ! See
that gigantic wing, not unlike the pictured wings of an-
gels, unfolded from one of the vast shoulders, and spread
upon the high air. As the wind sweeps over and falls
upon us, we feel an icy chilliness. Beyond a very short
distance, however, we are unable to perceive the smallest
influence.
We are now to the leeward, half a mile or so, and are
watching the Captain, who has gone with the boat and a
couple of men to gather ice out of the drift, which
stretches from the berg in a broken line for two miles or
THE ICEBERG OF TWILLINGATE.
Ill
more. Portions of this have fallen within the last hour,
keeping up a kind of artillery discharge, very agreeable
to hear at this distance, and quite in harmony with the
day at home. They have struck the ice, a mile off, and
the chips sparkle in the sunshine as they ply the axe.
As they return, we drop down the wind to meet them.
Here they come with a cart-load of the real arctic alabas-
ter, the very same, I have no question, that hung an hour
ago as one of the shining crags of the lofty ice-cliff. And
now, with all sail spread, and a spirited breeze, away to
the north-west for Cape St. John.
CHAPTEE XXV.
THE FEEEDOM OF THE SEAS ONCE MOEE.— A BUMPER TO THE QUEEN
AND PEESIDENT.
The waves are crisp with a snowy mane, and the
rocky shores of Twillingate are draped with splendid
lights and shadows. While the seams and surfaces of
the cliffs are strikingly plain in the sunlight, they are
dark as caverns in the shade. This gives the coast a
wonderfully broken, wild, and picturesque look.
Once more the sea " is all before us where to choose."
The joy of this freedom is utterly inexpressible, although,
in consideration of the day, we — we Yankees — occasion-
ally hurra right heartily. But no words can do justice
to the delightful emotions of moments such as these.
" Messmates, hear a brother sailor sing the dangers of the
sea,'' runs the old song. None that I have ever heard or
read express at all the real pleasure of its /reedom. The
THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS ONCE MORE. 113
reedom of the seas ! If any great city council would do
a man of feeling a noble pleasure, let them vote him that.
A lonely isle of crystalline brightness, all the way from
Melville Bay, most likely, gleams in the north-east.
Pale and solitary, like some marble mausoleum, the ice-
berg of Twillingate stands off in the southern waters.
After all, how feeble is man in the presence of these arc-
tic wonders ! With all his skill, intelligence and power,
he passes, either on the sunny or the shady side, closely
at his peril, only in safety at a distance too great to
satisfy his curiosity, and gazes at their greatness and
their splendor, and thinks and feels, records his thoughts
and feelings, draws their figure and paints their com-
plexion, but may no more lay his hand upon them than
the Jew of old might lay his hand upon the ark of the
covenant. He may do it and live, do it twice or thrice,
and then he may perish for his temerity. There now re-
poses, amid the currents and billows of the ocean, the
huge, polar structure, which has been to us an object of
the liveliest interest and wonder ; its bright foundations
fifty fathoms in the deep ; an erection suggestive of the
skill and strength of the Creator ; with a mystery en-
veloping its story, its conception, birth and growth, its
native land, the hour of its departure, its strange and
labyrinthine voyage. While the body of this building-
114 A BUMPEK TO THE QUEEN AND PRESIDENT.
of-the-elements sleeps below, and only its gables and
towers glow and melt in the brightness of these summer
days, yet is it as dissolvable as the clouds from which it
originally fell. It is but the clouds condensed and crys-
tallized. A column of vapor, mainly invisible, perpetu-
ally ascends into its native heavens, while the atmos-
phere, and the warm, briny currents melt and wear, at
every imaginable point of the vast surface. Pass a few
sunny weeks, and all wiU be melted, and, like a snow-
flake, lost in the immensity of waters.
Still the flags wave above. We fill our glasses with
iceberg-water, and drink with cheers to the Queen and
President. As the breeze dies away in the long, long
afternoon, and we roll lazily on the glassy swells, the
painter and I, the poorest of sailors, lapse into sea-sick-
ness, and go below.
I
CHAPTEE XXVI.
GULL ISLAND.— THE ICEBEEG3 OP CAPE BT. JOHN.
Tuesday, July 5. Off Cape St. John, with fog and
head winds. We are weary of this fruitless beating
about, and resolve to put into smooth water for the sake
of relief from sea-sickness. While our EngHsh guests
seem to enjoy the breakfast, we have gone no further than
to sip a little tea, take a few turns on deck in the chilly
morning air, and return to the cabin, where I pencil
these notes.
There is a dome-shaped berg before us in the mist,
but not of sufficient beauty in the dull gray atmosphere
to attract attention. Exclamations of our friends on
deck have brought me up to look at the ice as we pass it,
distant, it may be, five hundred yards. It bears a strange
resemblance to a balloon lying on its side in a collapsed
116 THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
condition. It has recently undergone some heavy dis-
ruptions, and rolled so far over as to bring its late water-
line, a deep and polished fissure, nearly across the top
of it.
There is a promise of clear weather. The clouds, to
our delight, are breaking, and giving us peeps of the sunny
azure far above. The Cape is in full view, a promontory
of shaggy precipices, suggestive of all the fiends of Pande-
monium, rather than the lovely Apostle, whose name has
been gibbeted on the black and dismal crags. The salt
of that saintly name cannot save it. Nay, it is better
fitted to spoil the saint. Cape St. John ! Better, Cape
" Moloch, Horrid King," or some other demon of those
that figure in the dark Miltonic scenes. It is terribly
awful and impressive. Our lamb, poor innocent, seems
to feel lonely under the frown of a coast so inhospitable
and savage, and comes bleating around us as if for sym-
pathy. The wind is cold and bracing, sweeping alike
the sea and the sky of all fog and clouds, and driving us
to heavy winter clothing.
As we bear down toward the Cape, we pass Gull Isle,
a mere pile of naked rocks delicately wreathed with lace-
like mists. Imagine the last hundred feet of Corway
Peak, the very finest of the New Hampshire mountain
tops, pricldng above the waves, and you will see this
I
I
THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN. 117
little outpost and breakwater of Cape St. John. All
things have their uses. Even this bone of the earth,
picked of all vegetable growth and beauty, and flung into
the deep, has the marrow of goodness in it to a degree
that invites a multitude of God's fair creatures to make
it their estate and dwelling-place. Gulls with cimetar-
like pinions, cut and slash the air in all directions.
Pretty little sea-pigeons fly to and fro, flying off with
whistling wings in straight lines, and flying back, full of
news, and full of alarm.
A grand iceberg is before us, remarkable, in this par-
ticular light, for its pure, white surface. A snow-drift,
with its icy enamel, after a silver thaw, might be taken
as a model of its complexion. This is a berg evidently
of more varied fortunes than any we have yet seen. It is
crossed and recrossed with old water-lines, every one of
which is cut at right angles with its own system of lines,
formed by the perpendicular dripping. It is ploughed
and fluted and scratched deeply in all possible directions.
At this very moment a new system of lines is rapidly
forming by the copiously descending drip, over-streaming
all those made when the berg had other perpendiculars.
Any large fall of ice, for example, from the opposite side,
would bow the berg toward us, sinking the present sea-
line on this side, and lifting it on the other. In nearly
118 THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
every case the berg, when it rolls, loses its old horizontal
position, and settles in a new one. Immediately a new
horizon-line, if it may so be called, with its countless ver-
tical ones, of course, instantly commences forming, to be
followed by a similar process, at each successive roll of
the berg, unto the end. There are draperies of white
sea-shell-like ice, with streaks of shadow in their great
folds, which rival the softest azure. Indicative of the
projections of the submarine ice, the light-green water
extends out in long, radiating points, a kind of eme-
rald spangle, with its bright central diamond on the pur-
ple sea.
It is a wonderfully magnificent sight to see an almost
black wave roll against an iceberg, and instantly change
in its entire length, hundreds of feet, into that delicate
green. Where the swell strikes obliquely, it reaches high,
and runs along the face, sweeping like a satellite of loveli-
ness in merry revolutions round its glittering orb. Like
cumulous clouds, icebergs are perpetually mimicking the
human face. This fine crystal creature, by a change in
our position, becomes a gigantic bust of poet or philoso-
pher, leaning back and gazing with a fixed placidity into
the skies. In the brilliant noon, portions of it glisten
like a glassy waterfall. The cold, dead white, the subtle
greens, the blues, shadows of the softest slate, all contrast
CVJ
THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN. 119
with the flashing brightness in a way most exquisite to
behold. True to all the forms of nature that swell to the
subHme, an iceberg grows upon the mind astonishingly.
On the boundless plains of water, of course, it is the
merest molehill : in itself, it has the lonely grandeur of a
broad precipice in the mountains.
Foremost of several bergs, now hovering about the
Cape, is one of greater magnitude than any we have pre-
viously met. It is, on this front, a broad and lofty pre-
cipice, very nearly resembling the finest statue-marble,
newly broken. It is losing its upper crags, every now
and then, and vibrating very grandly. At short intervals,
we hear sharp reports, like those of brass ordnance, fol-
lowed by the rough, rumbling crash of the descending
ice, and the dull roar of its final plunge into the ocean.
After this awful burial of its dead, with such grand
honors, a splendid regiment of waves retreats from the
mournful scene, in a series of concentric circles, rivalling
the finest surf that rolls in upon the sand. It is the very
flower of the ocean cavalry. Under its fierce and bril-
liant charge, an ordinary ship's boat would go down,
almost to a certainty. It is what we have been most
carefuUy warned to avoid. This fine iceberg presents, I
fancy, much the same appearance it had in the Greenland
waters. Its water-line, which is the only one visible, is
120 THE ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
not less than fifteen feet deep, and rises and falls, in
its ponderous rockings back and forth, not more than
twenty feet, so vast the bulk below. I have little doubt
that the Alpine slopes and summits are its primitive
surface.
CHAPTEK XXVII.
THE SPLENDID ICEBEEGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
We are making a round of calls on all the icebergs
of Cape St. John, painting, sketching, and pencilling as
we go. Our calls are cut short for the want of wind, and
we lie becalmed on the low, broad swells, majestically
rolling in upon the Cape, only a mile to the south-west.
Captain Knight is evidently unquiet at this proximity.
A powerful current is setting rapidly in, carrying us over
depths too great for our cables, up to the very cliffs. If
the adventurous mariner, who first sighted this bold and
H forward headland, was bent upon christening it by an
apostolic name, why did he not call it Cape St. Peter ?
All in all, it is certainly the finest coast scenery I have
ever seen ; and Captain Knight assures us it is the very
finest on the eastern shore of Newfoundland. It is a
black, jagged wall, often four, and even ^ve hundred feet
0
I
122 THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST." JOHN.
in height, with a five-mile front, and the deep sea close
in to the rock, without a beach, and almost without a
foothold. This stupendous, natural wharf stretches back
into the south-west toward the main . land, widening very-
little for twenty miles or more, dividing the large expanse
of White Bay on the west from the larger expanse of
Notre Dame Bay on the east and south, the fine ^gean,
before mentioned, with its multitudinous islands, of which
we get not the least notion from any of our popular maps.
Such is a kind of charcoal sketch of Cape St. John,
toward which, in spite of all we can yet do, we are slowly
drifting. Unless there be power in our boat, manned by
all the crew pulling across the current, with the Captain
on the bow cracking them up with his fine, firm voice,
I do not see why we are not in the greatest danger of
drifting ashore. It is possible that there is a breath of
wind under the cliffs, by which we might escape round
into still water. With all the quiet of the ocean, I see
the white surf spring up against the precipices. In the
strongest gales of the Atlantic, the surges here must be
perfectly terrific, and equal to any thing of the kind on
the globe. The great Baffin current, sweeping past with
force and velocitj^ makes this a point of singular danger.
To be wrecked here, with all gentleness, would be pretty
sure destruction. In a storm, the chance of escape would
THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN. 123
be about the same, as in the rapids of Niagara. After
all, there is a fine excitement in this rather perilous play
with the sublime and desolate. Would any believe it ?
I am actually sea-sick, and that in the full enjoyment of
this grandeur of adamant and ice. I find I am not alone.
The painter with his live colors falls to the same level of
suffering with the man of the dull lead-pencil and the
note-book. A slight breeze has relieved us of all anxiety,
and all necessity of further effort to row out of danger.
We are moving perceptibly up the wide current, and
propose to escape to the north as soon as the wind shaU
favor.
We have just passed a fragment of some one of the
surrounding icebergs that has amused us. It bore the
resemblance of a huge polar bear, reposing upon the base
of an inverted cone with a twist of a sea-shell, and whirl-
ing slowly round and round. The ever-attending green
water, with its aerial clearness, enabled us to see its
spiral folds and horns as they hung suspended in the deep.
The bear, a ten-foot mass in tolerable proportion, seemed
to be regularly beset by a pack of hungry little swells.
First, one would take him on the haunch, then whip back
into the sea over his tail and between his legs. Presently
a bolder swell would rise and pitch into his back with a
ferocity that threatened instant destruction. It only
124 THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST.' JOHN.
washed his satin fleece the whiter. While Bruin was
turning to look the daring assailant in the face, the rogue
had pitched himself back into his cave. No sooner that,
than a very buU-dog of a billow would attack him in the
face. The serenity with which the impertinent assault
was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery
dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Noth-
ing would be left of bull but a little froth of all the
foam displayed in the fierce onset. He too would turn
and scud into his hiding-place. Persistent little waves !
After a dash singly, all around, upon the common enemy,
as if by some silent agreement under water, they would
all rush on, at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest
foam, and overwhelm poor bear so completely, that noth-
ing less might be expected than to behold him broken
into his four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder.
Mistaken spectators ! Although, by his momentary roll-
ing and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither
Bruin nor his burrow were at all the worse for all the wear
and washing. The deep fluting, the wrinkled folds and
cavities, over and through which the green and silvery
water rushed back into the sea, rivalled the most exqui-
site sculpture. And nature not only gives her marbles,
with the finest lines, the most perfect lights and shades,
she colors them also. She is no monochromist, but poly-
THE SPLENDID ICEBEKGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN. 125
chi'oic, imparting such touches of dove-tints, emerald and
azure, as she bestows upon her gems and her skies.
We are bearing up under the big berg as closely as
we dare. To our delight, what we have been wishing,
and watching for, is actually taking place : loud explo-
sions with heavy falls of ice, followed by the cataract-like
roar, and the high, thin seas, wheeling away beautifully
crested with sparkhng foam. If it is possible, imagine
the effect upon the beholder : This precipice of ice, with
tremendous cracking, is falling toward us with a majestic
and awful motion. Down sinks the long water-line into
the black deep ; down go the porcelain crags,- and galle-
ries of glassy sculptures, a speechless and awful bap-
tism. Now it pauses and returns : up rise sculptures
and crags streaming with the shining, white brine ; up
comes the great, encircling line, followed by things new
and strange, crags, niches, balconies and .caves ; up, up
it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast
of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming
foam. Over goes the summit, ridge, pinnacles and all,
standing off obliquely in the opposite air. Now it pauses
in its upward roll : back it comes again, cracking, crack-
ing, cracking, "groaning out harsh thunder" as it comes,
and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into mil-
lions of glittering fragments. The spectacle is terrific
126 THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
and magnificent. Emotion is irrepressible, and peals of
wild hurra burst forth from all.
The effect of the sky-line of this berg is marvellously
beautiful. An overhanging precipice on this side, and
steep slopes on the other, give a thin and notched ridge,
with an almost knife-like sharpness, and the transparency
and tint of sapphire, a miracle of beauty along the heights
of the dead white ice, over which the sight darts into the
spotless ultramarine of the heavens. On the right and
left shoulders of the berg, the slopes fall off steeply this
way, having the folds and the strange purity peculiar
to snow-drifts. One who has dwelt pleasantly upon
draperies in marble, — upon those lovely swellings and
depressions, — those sweet surfaces and lines of grace and
beauty of the human form, perfected in the works of
sculptors, will appreciate the sentiment of the ices to
which I point. ,
At the risque of being thought over-sentimental and
extravagant, I will say something more of the great iceberg
of Cape St. John, now that we are retiring from it, and
giving it our last look. Of all objects an iceberg is in the
liighest degree multiform in its effects. Changeable in its
colors as the streamers of the northern sky, it will also
pass from one shape to another with singular rapidity.
As we recede, the upper portions of the solid ice have a
THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN. 127
light and aerial effect, a description of which is simply
impossible. Peaks and spires rise out of the strong and
apparently unchanging base with the light activity of
flame. A mighty structure on fire, all in ice !
Cape St. John !— As we slowly glide away toward the
north, and gaze back upon its everlasting cliffs, confront-
ed by these wonderful icebergs, the glorious architecture
of the polar night, I think of the apostle's vision of per-
manent and shining walls, " the heavenly Jerusalem,"
"the city which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God."
" The good south wind " blows at last with strength,
and we speed on our way over the great ocean, darkly
shining in all its violet beauty. Pricking above the hori-
zon, the peak of a berg sparkles in the glowing daylight
of the west like a silvery star. C has painted with
great effect, notwithstanding the difficulty of lines and
touches from the motion of the vessel. If one is curious
about the troubles of painting on a little coaster, lightly
ballasted, dashing forward frequently under a press of
sail, with a short sea, I would recommend him to a good,
stout swing. While in the enjoyment of his smooth and
sickening vibrations, let him spread his pallet, ai-range
his canvas, and paint a pair of colts at their gambols in
some adjacent field.
128 THE SPLENDID ICEBERGS OF CAPE ST. JOHN.
The novelty and grandeur of these Newfoundland
seas and shores have busied the pencil so completely as to
exclude much interesting matter, especially such as Cap-
tain Knight is continually contributing in his conversa-
tion. As we have been, for some time past, crossing the
fields of the sealer, and as the Captain himself has a
large experience in that adventurous business, seals and
sealing have legitimately a small place, at least, in this
recital.
CHAPTEK XXVIII.
THE SEAL FIELDS.-SEALS AND 6EALING.-CAPTAIN KNIGHT'S
SHIPWEECK.
The sealers from St. Johns, for example, start upon
tlieir northern voyage, early in March, fallmg in with
both ice and seals very frequently off the Capes of Con-
ception and Trinity Bays. The ice, a snowy white, Kes
in vast fields upon the ocean, cracked in all ways, and
broken into cakes or " pans " of all shapes and sizes. At
one time, it resembles a boundless pavement dappled
with dark water, into which vessels work their way, and
upon which the seals travel : at another time, without
the displacement of a block, this grand pavement of the
sea rolls with its billows, rising and falling with such
perfect order, that the men run along the ridges and
down ihe hollows of the swells in safety. But this order
goes into confusion in a storm, presenting in the succeed-
6*
130 SEALS AND SEALING.
ing calm a waste of ruins, masses of ice thrown into a
thousand forms. In the long, starry nights, or the moon-
light, or in the magic brilliancy of the aurora-borealis,
the splendor of the scene, — dark avenues and parks of
sleeping water, the silent glittering of mimic palaces and
temples, sparkling minarets and towers, is almost super-
natural. As will be seen at once, both the beauties and
the perils incident to the ice, in calm and tempest, enter
largely into the experience of the sealers. To-night,
their vessel may repose in a fairy land or fairy sea, of
which poets and painters may dream without the least
suspicion that any mortal ever beholds the reality, and
to-morrow night, it may encounter the double dangers of
ice and storm.
Upon the fields just mentioned, the seals come from
the ocean, in the depth of winter, and bring forth their
young by thousands. There, while their parents come
and go, the young things lie on the ice, fattening on their
mothers' milk with marvellous rapidity, helpless and
white as lambs, with expressive eyes almost human, and
with the piteous cries of little children. In March,
about as soon as the voyagers can reach them, they are of
suitable age and size for capture, which is effected by a
blow on the head with a club, a much more compassion-
ate way of killing these poor lambs of the sea than by the
CAPTAIN knight's SHIPWRECK. 131
gun, which is much used in taking the old ones. Occa-
sionally they are drawn bodily to the vessel, but usually
sMnned on the spot, the fat, two or three inches deep,
coining off from the tough, red carcass with the hide,
which, with several others is made into a bundle, dragged
in by a rope, and thrown upon deck to cool. After
a little, they are packed away as solidly as possible, to
remain until discharged in port. Five, six, and seven
thousand skins are freq[uently thus laid down, loading
the vessel to the water's edge. An accident to which the
lucky sealer was formerly liable, was the melting of the
fet into oil from the sliding of the skins, caused by the
rolling of the ship in stormy weather. To such an ex-
tent was this dissolving process sometimes carried, as to
reduce the cargo to skins and oil, half filling cabin and
forecastle, driving the crew on deck, rendering the vessel
unmanageable in rough weather, and requiring it to be
abandoned. This is now securely guarded against by
numbers of upright posts, which crib, and hold the cargo
from shifting.
Several years ago. Captain Knight, while beset with
the kind of ice, described as so beautiful in the bright
nights, encountered, with many others, a terrific gale, to
this day, a mournful remembrance to many people. If
I am not mistaken, some eighty sail were wrecked, at the
132 CAPTAIN knight's SHIPWRECK.
time, along these iron shores. In fact, very few that
were out escaped. Several crews left their vessels and fled
to land over the rolling ice-fields, the more prudent way.
A forlorn hope was to put to sea, the course adopted by
Captain Knight. By skill and coolness he slipped from
the teeth of destruction, and in the face of the tempest
escaped into the broad ocean. It was but an escape,
just the next thing to a wreck. One single sea, the
largest he ever experienced in numerous voyages along
this dreadful coast, swept his deck, and nearly made a
wreck of him in a moment, carrying overboard one man,
nine boats, every sealing-boat on board, and every thing
else that could be wrenched away. Another gigantic
roller of the kind would have destroyed him. But he
•triumphed, and returned to St. Johns in time to refit,
and start again.
Captain Knight was less fortunate, no later than last
April, when he lost a fine brig with a costly outfit for a
sealing voyage, under the following circumstances : Im-
mersed in the densest fog, and driven by the gale, he was
running down a narrow lane or opening in the ice, when
the shout of breakers ahead, and the crash of the bows
upon a reef, came in the same moment. Instantly, over-
board they sprang, forty men of them, and saw their
strong and beautiful vessel almost immediately buried in
CAPTAIN knight's SHIPWRECK. 133
the ocean. There they stood, on the heaving field of ice,
gazing in mournful silence upon the great, black billows as
they rolled on, one after another, bursting in thunder on
the sunken cliffs, a tremendous display of surf where the
trembling spars of the brig had disappeared forever. To
the west of them were the precipitous shores of Cape Bo-
na vista, lashed by the surge, and the dizzy roost of wild
sea-birds. For this, the nearest land, in single file, with
Captain Knight at their head, they commenced at sunset
their dreadful, and almost hopeless march. All night,
without refreshment or rest, they went stumbHng and
plunging on their perilous way, now and then sinking
into the slush between the pans or ice-cakes, and having
to be drawn out by their companions. But for their
leader and a few bold spirits, the party would have
sunk down with fatigue and despair, and perished. At
daybreak, they were still on the rolling ice-fields, be-
clouded with fog, and with nothing in prospect but the
terrible Cape and its solitary chance of escape. Thirsty,
famished, and worn down, they toiled on, all the morn-
ing, all the forenoon, all the afternoon, more and more
slowly, and with increasing silence, bewildered and lost
in the dreadful cloud travelling along parallel with the
coast, and passing the Cape, but without knowing it at
the time. But for some remarkable interposition of
134 CAPTAIN knight's SHIPWRECK.
Divine Providence, the approaching sunset would be their
last. Only the most determined would continue the
march into the next night. The worn-out and hopeless
ones would drop down singly, or gather into little groups
on the cold ice, and die. As the Captain looked back on
them, a drawn-out line of suffering men, now in the hol-
low of the waves, and then crossing the ridge, the last of
them scarcely seen in the mist, he prayed that God would
interpose, and save them. A man who prays in fair
weather, may trust God in the storm. So thought Cap-
tain Knight, when he thought of home, and wife and
children, and the wives and the children of his men, and
made his supplication. They had shouted until they
were hoarse, and looked into the endless, gray cloud until
they had no heart for looking any longer. Wonderful to
tell ! Just before sundown they came to a vessel. A
few rods to the right or to the left, and they must have
missed it, and been lost. It was owing to this disaster
that Captain Knight was at leisure in St. Johns upon our
arrival, and found it agreeable to undertake, for a few
weeks, our guidance after the icebergs.
CHAPTER XXIX.
BELLE ISLE AND THE COAST.— AFTEE-DINNEK DISCUSSION.— FIEST
YIEW OP LABEADOE.— ICEBEEGS.— THE OCEAN AND THE SUNSET.
Wednesday, July 6. After a quiet night, with a
mild and favorable breeze, the morning opens with the
promise of a bright day. Our little cloud of sail is all up
in the early sunshine, and moving before the cool south
wind steadily forward down the northern sea. Brilliantly
as the summer sun looks abroad upon the mighty waters,
I walk the clean, wet deck, in the heaviest winter cloth-
ing, and have that pleasant tingling in the veins which
one feels in a brisk walk on a frosty autumnal morning.
We are abreast of South Belle Isle, high lands fronting
the ocean, with huge precipices, the fashion of most of the
eastern coast of Newfoundland. With all their same-
ness, their rugged grandeur and the ceaseless battle of
the waves below make them ever interesting. Imagine
136 AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSIONS.
the Palisades of the Hudson, and the steeper parts of the
Highlands exposed to the open Atlantic, and you will
have no imperfect picture of these shores. They have no
great bank of earth and loose rocks heaped up along their
base, but step at once into the great deep ; so deep that
the icebergs, several of which are in sight, float close in,
and seem to dare their very crags.
Afternoon. We have a pleasant custom of coming
up, after dinner, and eating nuts and fruits on deck. It
is one of the merry seasons of the day, when John Bull
and Jonathan are apt to meet in those pleasant encoun-
ters which bring up the past, and draw rather largely
upon the future, of their history. John is always the
greatest, of course, and ever will be, secula seculorum.
Jonathan, " considering," is greater than John. To be
sure he is thinner, and eats his dinner in a minute ; but
then he has every thing to do, and the longest roads on
earth to travel, in the shortest time. In fact, he has
many of the roads to make, and the least help and the
shortest purse of any fellow in the world that undertakes
and completes grand things. John's first thousand years
is behind him ; Jonathan's, before him. One's work is
done ; the other's begun. John's fine roads were made by
his forefathers ; Jonathan is the forefather himself, and
is making roads for his posterity. In fact, Jonathan is a
AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSIONS. 137
youth only, and John an old man. When the lad gets
his growth, he will be everywhere, and the old fogy, by
that time, comparatively nowhere. Jonathan insists that
he is up earlier in the morning than John, and smarter,
faster, and more ingenious. He contends that he has
seen his worst days, and John his very best. The longer
the diverging lines of the dispute continue, the further they
get from any end ; and wind up finally with one general
outburst of rhetoric, distinguished for its noise, in which
each springs up entirely conscious of a perfect victory.
In the complicated enjoyment of almonds, figs, and victory,
we betake ourselves to reading, the pencil and the brush.
W We are coasting along the extreme northern limb of
Newfoundland, bound with its endless girdle of adamant,
upon which the white lions of old Neptune are perpetu-
ally leaping, but which they will never wrench away.
The snow lies in drifts along the heights, a novel, but
rather dreary decoration for a summer landscape. Be-
tween us and the descending sun stands a berg, church-
like in form. The blue shadows in contrast with the
pure white, have a deep, cloud-like, and grand appear-
ance. It is certainly a most superb thing, rising out of
the blue-black waves, now gleaming in the slant sunlight
like molten silver. So vast and varied is the scene, at
tment, that many pencils and many pens would
138 FIKST VIEW OF LABRADOR.
fail to keep pace with the rapid description of the
mind.
Directly west, is the Land's End of Newfoundland,
Cape Quirpon — in the seaman's tongue, Carpoon, which
we now shoot past. A few miles to the north, as if it
might have been split off from the Cape, lies Belle Isle.
The broad avenue of dark sea, extending westward be-
tween the cape and the island, opens out into the Strait
of Belle Isle, and carries the eye to the shore of Labra-
dor, our first view of that bony and starved hermit of a
country. In this skeleton sketch, as it shows on paper,
there is nothing very remarkable ; but with the flesh and
the apparel of nature upon it, it is more beautiful than
language can paint to the reader's eye. The entire east
is curtained by one smooth cloud, of the hue called the
ashes-of-roses. Full against it, an iceberg rises from the
ocean, after the figure of a thunderhead, and of the color
of a newly-blown rose of Damascus — a gorgeous spectacle.
The waters have that dark violet, with a silvery surface,
lucent like the face of a mirror, and a complexion in the
deeps reminding one of the soft, dusky hues of a Claude
Lorraine glass. The painter is busy with his colors,
and all are silently opening mind and heart to the uni-
versal beauty. We move on over the lovely sea with a
quiet gracefulness, in harmony with the visible scene and
ICEBERGS.
139
I
with our emotions. We are looking for unusual splen-
dors, at the approaching sunset. I close the note-book,
and give myself entirely to the enjoyment of the lonely
and still magnificence.
The book is open to record. The sun on the rugged
hills of Labrador, a golden dome ; Belle Isle, a rocky,
blue mass, with a wavy outline, rising from the purple
main pricked with icebergs, some a pure white, others
flaming in the resplendent sunset like red-hot metal.
We are sailing quietly as an eagle on the still air. Our
English friends are heard singing while they walk the
deck, and look off upon the lonesome land where their
home is waiting for them.
All that we anticipated of the sunset, or the after-
sunset, is now present. The ocean with its waves of
Tyrian dye laced with silver, the tinted bergs, the dark-
blue inland hills and brown headlands underlie a sky of
unutterable beauty. The west is all one paradise of
colors. Surely, nature, if she follows as a mourner on the
footsteps of the fall, also returns jubilant and glorious to
the scenes of Eden. Here, between the white light of
day and the dark of the true evening, shade and bright-
ness, like Jacob and the angel, now meet and wres-
tle for the mastery. Close down along the gloomy
purple of the rugged earth, beam the brightest lemon
140 THE OCEAN AND THE SUNSET.
hues, soon deepening into the richest orange, with scat-
tered tints of new straw, freshly blown lilacs, young
peas, pearl and blue intermingled. Above are the
royal draperies of the twilight skies. Clouds in silken
threads and skeins ; broad velvet belts and ample folds
black as night, but pierced and steeped and edged with
flaming gold, scarlet and crimson, crimson deep as blood ;
crimson fleeces, crimson deep as blood ; plumes tinged
with pink, and tipped with fire, white fire. And all this
glory lies sleeping on the shore, only on the near shore of
the great ethereal ocean, in the depths of which are melted
and poured out ruby, sapphire and emerald, pearl and
gold, with the living moist blue of human eyes. The
painter gazes with speechless, loving wonder, and I whis-
per to myself : This is the pathway home to an immor-
tality of bKss and beauty. Of all the days in the year,
this may be the birth-day of the King-of-day, and this
efi'ulgence an imperial progress through the grand gate of
the west. How the soul follows on in quiet joy, dreaming
of lovely ones, waiting at home, and lovely ones departed,
waiting with Christ ! Here come those wondrous lines
of Goethe, marching into the memory with glowing
pomp :
. . . . " The setting Sun ! He bends and sinks — the day is over-
lived. Yonder he hurries off, and quickens other life. Oh ! that I
I
I
I
THE OCEAK AND THE SUNSET. 141
have no wiDg to lift me from the ground, to struggle after, forever
after him ! I should see, in everlasting evening beams, the stilly world
at my feet, — every height on fire, — every vale in repose, — the silver
brook flowing into golden streams. The rugged mountain, with all
its dark defiles, would not then break my god-like course. Already
the sea, with its heated bays, opens on my enraptured sight. Yet the
god seems at last to sink away. But the new impulse wakes. I hurry
on to drink his everlasting light, — the day before me and the night
behind, — the heavens above, and under me the waves. A glorious
dream ! as it is passing, he is gone."
Here come the last touches of the living coloring,
tinging the purple waves around the vessel. Under the
icebergs hang their pale and spectral images, piercing the
depths with their mimic spires, and giving them a lus-
trous, aerial appearance. The wind is lulling, and we rise
and fall gracefully on the rolling plain. "The day is
fading into the later twilight, and the twilight into the
solemn darkness." No, not into darkness ; for in these
months, the faint flame flickering all night above the
white ashes of day from the west circling around to the
north and east, the moonlight and the starlight and the
northern-light, all conspire to make the night, if not
'^ more beloved than day," at least very lovely. A gloomy
duskiness drapes the cape, beneath the solitary cliffs of
which lies half entombed a shattered iceberg, a ghostly
wreck, around whose dead, white ruins the mad surf
springs up and flings abroad its ghastly arms. Softly
142 THE OCEAN AND THE SUNSET.
comes its sad moaning and blends with the plaintive
melodies of the ocean. Hark ! a sullen roar booms
across the dusky sea — nature's burial service and the
funeral guns. A tower of the old iceberg of the cape has
tumbled into the billows. We gather presently into the
cabin for prayer, and so the first scene closes on the coast
of Labrador.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE MIDNIGHT LOOK-OUT FOKWAED.— A STOEMY NIGHT.— THE
COMEDY IN THE CABIN.
Past Midnight. I have been up and watching for-
ward for more than an hour, roused from my berth by the
cry of ice. A large ship, with a cloud of sail, passed just
across our head, bound for Old England. " That's a
happy fellow," says the man at the helm ; "past the
dangers of the St. Lawrence and the Straits, and fairly
out to sea." The wind is rising, and promises a rough
time. " There is something," I said to myself, as I
leaned, and looked over the bow, " there is something in
all this, familiar as it is to many, very grand and awful,
as we rise upon the black seas, and plunge into the dark-
ness, rushing on our gloomy, strange way. We seem to
be above the very ' blackness of darkness,' and riding
upon the bosom of the night. The sounding foam, sweep-
144 THE MIDNIGHT LOOK-OUT FORWARD.
ing forward from beneath our bows, looks like a cloud of
supernatural brightness, its whiteness filled, as it is, with
the fire and electric scintillations of the sea. One could
easily imagine himself sailing on the breeze through the
night, with sparks of lightning and a cloud at his vessel's
bow." The wind freshens to a gale nearly, and all hands
are called on deck. We are rolling in a most uncomfort-
able manner, and I have retreated to my cabin, and will
creep back to my berth.
Thursday Noon, July V. A few scrawls of the pen-
cil will serve to give an outline of our experience for the
last twelve hours. A dense fog, high wind and a heavy
swell. As a matter of course, our little ship has been in
great commotion, and we, miserably sea-sick, regardless
of breakfast, absent from the cold, wet deck, and rolled
up below, dull and speechless in bed. We have been
gradually creeping up into the world, of late, sipping a
little coffee and nibbling at crackers. We are off Cape
St. Louis, the most eastern land of the continent. The
few turns on deck have sufficiently electrified the brain
to enable me to get on thus far with my notes, and to
venture upon a short description of a cabin-scene, at a
very late hour last night.
Three sides of our cabin, a room some ten feet by
twelve, and barely six feet under the beams, are taken up
A STORMY NIGHT.
by four roughly-made berths ; one on each side, and two
extending crosswise, with a space between them, fitted
up with shelves, and used for the flour-barrel, and as a
cupboard. Beneath the berths are trunks, tubs, bags,
boxes and bundles, most of our choicest stores. From
the centre, and close upon the steep, obtrusive stairs,
covered with a glossy oil-cloth, of a cloudy brown and yel-
low, our table looks round placidly upon this domestic
scene, so indicative of refreshment and repose. With
this little sketch of our sea-apartment, the stage upon
which was enacted our last night's brief play, I will un-
dertake its description, promising a brevity that rather
suggests, than paints it.
After the midnight look-out forward for ice, and the
retreat to the cabin, I soon joined in the general doze,
rather suffered than enjoyed. In the uproar above, sharp
voices and the rush of footsteps over the deck, occasion-
ally stamping almost in our very faces, we were too fre-
quently called back to full consciousness, to escape away
into any thing better than the merest snatch of a dream.
In my own case, the stomach, as usual, indulged itself in
taking the measure of those motions, so disastrous to its
peace and equipose ; those rollings, risings, sinkings,
divings, flings and swings, in which there is the sense of
falling, and of vibrations smooth and oily. Where one's
146 THE COMEDY IN THE CABIN.
mind's eye is perpetually looking down in upon the poor
remains of his late departed dinner, there is no possibility
for the outter eye to sink into any true and honest slum-
ber. The shut lid is a falsehood. It is not sleep. The
live, wakeful eye is under it, looking up against the
skinny veil. Occasionally the veil is lifted just to let the
dark out ; occasionally the dumb blackness falls in upon
the retina like a stifling dust, and dims it, for a moment,
to a doze. But the fire of wakefulness soon flashes up
from the cells of the brain, and throws out the sleepy
darkness, as the volcanic crater throws out its smoke and
ashes.
Through some marine manoeuvre, thought necessary
by the master spirit on deck, and which could be ex-
plained by a single nautical word, if I only knew what
the word is, we began to roll and plunge in a manner
sufficiently violent and frightful to startle from its staid
quiet almost every movable in the cabin. Out shot
trunks and boxes — off slid cups and plates with a smash
— back and forth, in one rough scramble with the luggage,
trundled the table, followed by the nimble chairs. At
this rate of going on, our valuables would soon mix in one
common wreck. Determining to interfere, I sprang into
the unruly confusion, and succeeded in lighting a candle
just in time to join in the rough-and-tumble, at the risk
THE COMEDY IN THE CABIN.
147
of ribs and limbs, and the object of mingled merriment
and alarm to the more prudent spectators. Botswood,
an experienced voyager, shouted me back to my berth in-
stantly, if I would not have my bones broken at the next
heavy lurch of the vessel. I was beginning to feel the
force of the counsel, when another roll, almost down upon
the beam-ends, overturned the butter-tub and a box of
loaf-sugar, and brought their contents loose upon the field
of action. They divided themselves ^between the legs of
the table and the individual, and so, candle in hand and
adorned in modest white, he sat flat down upon the floor
among them, at once their companion in trouble and
their protector. The marble-white sugar and the yellow
butter, our luxuries and indispensable necessaries, there
they were, on the common floor, and disposed for once to
join in a low frolic with plebeian boots and shoes and
scullion trumpery. With an earnest resolve to prevent
all improprieties of the kind, one hand grasped, knuckle
deep, the golden mellow mass, of the size of a good Yan-
kee pumpkin, and held on, whQe the other was busy in
restoring, by the rapid handful, the sugar to the safety of
its box. The candle, in the mean time, encouraged by
the peals of laughter in the galleries, slid back and forth
in the most trifling manner possible. When we tipped
one way, then I sat on a steep hill-side, looking down to-
148 THE COMEDY IN THE CABIN.
ward the painter, roaring in his happy valley : away slid
the candle in her tin slippers, and away the barefooted
butter wanted to roll after, encouraged to indulge in the
foolish caper by a saucy trunk jumping down from be-
hind. When we tipped the other way, then I sat on the
same hill-side, legs up, looking up, an unsatisfactory
position : back slid the candle, followed by a charge of
sharp-pointed baggage, and off started the butter with
the best intentions toward the tub, waiting prostrate and
with open arms. Notwithstanding the repetition and
sameness of this performance, the beholders applauded
with the same heartiness, as if each change back and forth
was a novel and original exhibition. "What heightened
the effect of the scene, and gave it a suspicion of the
tragic, was a keg of gunpowder, which evinced, by several
demonstrations of discontent in the dark corner where it
tumbled about, a disposition to come out and join the
candle. By a happy lull, not unusual in the very midst
of these cabin confusions during a brush at sea, the pow-
der did not enter, and I was enabled to pitch the butter
into the tub, and finally myself, after some few prelimi-
naries with a towel, into my berth, where, in the course
of the small remnant of the night, I fell into some broken
slumbers.
CHAPTEK XXXI.
THE CAPE AND BAY OF ST. L0UI9.-THE ICEBEEG.— CAEIBOO ISLAND.
—BATTLE HAEBOK AND ISLAND.— THE ANCHOEAGE.— THE MIS-
SIONAEIES.
Five o'clock, P. M. What a pleasing contrast !
We have been tossing nearly all day upon a rough, in-
clement ocean, and are now on the sunny, smooth waters
of the bay, gliding westward, with Cape St. Louis close
upon our right. We have sailed from winter into sum-
mer, almost as suddenly as we come out of the fog, at
times — bursting out of it into the clear air, as an eagle
breaks out of a cloud. It is fairly a luxury to bask in
this delicious sunshine, and smell the mingled perfume of
flowers, and the musky spruce. Mr. Hutchinson is filled
with delight to find himself once more on this beautiful
bay. The rocky hill-country along the western shores,
nine or ten miles distant, is not the mainland, he tells
150 THE ICEBEBG.
US, but islands, separated from the mainland, and from
each other, by narrow waters, occasionally expanding into
lakes of great depth, and extending more than forty miles
from the sea. Were these savage hills and cliffs beauti-
fied with verdure, and sprinkled with villages and dwell-
ings, this would class among the finest bays of the world.
Across it to the south, some seven miles, and partly out
to sea, lies a cluster of picturesque islands, where is Bat-
tle Harbor, the home of the missionaries, and the prin-
cipal port on the lengthy coast of Labrador.
A fine iceberg, of the fashion of a sea-shell, broken
open to the afternoon sun, and unfolding great beauty,
lies in the middle of the bay. We are sailing past it, on
our passage to the harbor, just near enough for a good
view. It gleams in the warm sun like highly-burnished
steel, changing, as we pass it, into many complexions —
changeable silks and the rarest china. The superlatives
are the words that one involuntarily calls to his aid in
the presence of an iceberg. From this bright creation
floating in the purple water, I look up to the bright
clouds floating in the blue air, and easily discover like-
nesses in their features, ways and colors.
The coast of Labrador is the edge of a vast solitude
of rocky hills, split and blasted by the frosts, and beaten
by the waves of the Atlantic, for unknown ages. Every
CARIBOO ISLAND. 151
form into which rocks can be washed and broken, is visible
along its almost interminable shores. A grand headland,
yellow, brown and black, in its horrid nakedness, is ever
in sight, one to the north of you, one to the south. Here
and there upon them are stripes and patches of pale
green — mosses, lean grasses, and dwarf shrubbery. Oc-
casionally, miles of precipice front the sea, in which the
fancy may roughly shape all the structures of human art,
castles, palaces and temples. Imagine an entire side of
Broadway piled up solidly, one, two, three hundred feet in
height, often more, and exposed to the charge of the great
Atlantic rollers, rushing into the churches, halls, and
spacious buildings, thundering through the doorways,
dashing in at the windows, sweeping up the lofty fronts,
twisting the very cornices with snowy spray, falling back
in bright green scrolls and cascades of silvery foam. And
yet, all this imagined, can never reach the sentiment of
these precipices.
More frequent, though, than headlands and perpen-
dicular sea-fronts are the sea-slopes, often bald, tame, and
wearisome to the eye, now and then the perfection of all
that is picturesque and rough, a precipice gone to pieces,
its softer portions dissolved down to its roots, its flinty
bones left standing, a savage scene that scares away all
thoughts of order and design in nature. If I am not
152 CARIBOO ISLAND.
mistaken, there are times wlien a slope of the kind, a mile
or more in length, and in places some hundreds of feet in
breadth from the tide up to the highest line of washing,
is one of the most terribly beautiful of ocean sights. In
an easterly gale, the billows roll up out of the level of the
ocean, and wreck themselves upon these crags, rushing
back through gulfs and chasms in a way at once awfuUy
brilliant and terrific.
This is the rosy time of Labrador. The blue interior
hills, and the stony vales that wind up among them from
the sea, have a summer-like and pleasant air. I find
myself peopling these regions, and dotting their hills,
valleys, and wild shores with human habitations. A
second thought, and a mournful one it is, tells me that
no men toil in the fields away there ; no women keep the
house off there ; there no children play by the brooks, or
shout around the country school-house ; no bees come
home to the hive ; no smoke curls from the farm-house
chimney ; no orchard blooms ; no bleating sheep fleck
the mountain-sides with whiteness ; and no heifer lows
in the twilight. There is nobody there ; there never was
but a miserable and scattered few, and there never will
be. It is a great and terrible wilderness of a thousand
miles, and lonesome to the very wild animals and birds.
Left to the still visitations of the light from the sun.
BATTLE HARBOR AND ISLAND. 153
moon, and stars, and the auroral fires, it is only fit to
look upon, and then be given over to its primeval soli-
tariness. But for the living things of its waters, the cod,
the salmon and the seal, which bring thousands of ad-
venturous fishermen and traders to its bleak shores, Lab-
rador would be as desolate as Greenland.
We are now entering Battle Harbor, a most romantic
nook of water, or Strait rather, between the islands form-
ing the south side of the bay St. Louis. Cariboo Island
fronts to the north on the bay, five or six miles, I should
guess, and is a rugged mountain-pile of dark gray rock,
rounded in its upper masses, and slashed along its shores
with abrupt chasms. It drops short off, at its eastern
extremity, several hundred feet, into a narrow gulf of
deep water. This is Battle Harbor. The billowy pile of
igneous rock, perhaps two hundred and fifty feet high,
lying between this quiet water and the broad Atlantic, is
Battle Island, and the site of the town. We pass a
couple of wild islets, lying seaward, as we glide gently
along toward our anchorage. There is little to be seen
but hard, iron-bound bay, and yet we are all out, gazing
abroad with silent curiosity, as if we were entering the
Golden Horn. Up runs the Union Jack, and flings its
ancient crosses to the sun and breeze, and the fishermen
look down upon us from their rude dwellings perched
7*
154 THE MISSIONARIES.
among the crags, and wonder who, and from whence we
are. For the moment, nothing seems to be going on but
standing still and looking, men, women, and children.
And now they will look and wonder still more : up run
the Stars and Stripes, higher up than all, and overfloat
the flag of England, and salute the sun and cliffs of Lab-
rador. The missionary waves his handkerchief — waves
his hat — calls pleasantly to a group upon the nearest
shore. They look, and hearken, in the stillness of uncer-
tainty. Instantly there is a movement of recognition.
The people know it is their pastor. The intelligence has
caught, and runs from house to house. Down drop the
sails, rattling down the masts ; the anchor plunges, and
the cable runs, runs rattling and ringing from its coil.
Round the vessel swings in line with the breeze, and
comes to its repose. We congratulate the missionary on
his safe return, while he points us feelingly to the little
church and parsonage, just above us on the mossy hill-
side, and bids us welcome as long as we shall find it
agreeable to remain. With light and thankful hearts,
and pleasant anticipations, we prepare to go ashore, and
take our first run upon the hills.
CHAPTER XXXII.
BATTLE ISLAND AND ITS 8CENEET.
We sit down upon the summit of Battle Island, after
a zigzag scramble up its craggy side, and talk and sketch,
and scribble, as we rest and look upon the blue, barren
sea, and the brown and more barren continent, with its
mountains of desert rock. With all this desolateness,
the approaching sunset and the warm skies, the stem
headlands, the white icebergs and bleak islands, and the
bay with its rays and points of water, like a vast spangle
on the savage landscape, all compose a picture of singular
novelty and grandeur ; at the present moment, wonder-
fully heightened in beauty and spirit by a distant shower,
itself a spectacle of brilliancy and darkness sweeping up
from the north. Mr. Hutchinson here joins us, looking
aU the pleasure that he feels, and points out what is visi-
156 BATTLE ISLAND AND ITS SCENERY.
ble of the lengthy, but narrow field of his religious
labors. The harbor, with its vessels and various build-
ings, lies quite below. One could very nearly throw a
stone over the little church spire, and shoot a rifle ball
into the cliffs opposite. The air is spiced with the most
delicate odors, which invites us to a short ramble in
search of flowers, after which we descend to the parson-
age for tea.
I have stolen out upon the small front piazza
with a chair, to enjoy the warm sunshine and the
sights of a Labrador village. The parsonage, which has
been closed for more than a year past, has been cleaned
and put in order by some kind Esquimaux parishioners,
j^nd looks neat and comfortable. H has taken us all
through, from room to room — to the kitchen, pantry, bed-
rooms, parlor, which serves also for dining-room, library
and study, to the school-room up stairs, which is used at
times as a chapel. As we passed the house clock, the
pointer still upon the hour where it stopped more than
eighteen months ago, the painter wound it up, and gave it
a fresh start and the true time, which it began to measure
by loud and cheerful ticks, as if conscious that life and
spirit had returned again to the vacant dwelling. On
the shelf, over the fireplace, lay a prayer-book, the gift
of Wordsworth to his nephew, with an affectionate in-
BATTLE ISLAND AND ITS SCENERY.
157
scrip tion on a fly-leaf, in his own handwriting, while
near by stood a couple of small pictures of the poet and
his wife.
As some fishermen are now drawing in their capelin
seine, we are going to run down and see the sight. And
quite a pretty sight it was. Not less than a barrel or
two were inclosed, which they dipped with a small scoop-
net into their boat, where they lay for a moment, flutter-
ing likfe so many little birds of gaudy plumage under the
fowler's net. The males and females of these delicate
fishes, are called here, very comically, cocks and hens. As
our boat, just then, came across from the vessel, the
fishers gave us a mess for breakfast, all of half a bushel,
which we carried over at once. At the sight of several
fine salmon, on the fishing-flake close by, fresh from the
net, the poor little capelin sank into immediate contempt.
We must have a salmon or two. It was a question
whether we could not eat several. It resulted in the
purchase of one of sixteen pounds, at the cost of a dollar.
We were pulled back immediately in order to sup with
Mr. Hutchinson, and spend the remainder of the long,
light evening in running over Battle Island. I shall not
yield to the temptation to dwell upon the brilliant sunset
which we saw from the summit rocks. Its glories were
reflected in the bay, and shed upon the grim wilderness,
158 BATTLE ISLAND AND ITS SCENERY.
dissolving all its gloomy ruggedness into softest beauty.
No language can depict the still and. solemn splendor of
the icebergs, reposing upon the burnished waters. Tem-
ples and mausoleums of dazzling white, warming into
tints of pink, or deepening on their shaded side into the
sweetest azure, seemed to be standing upon a mighty
mirror with their images below. I thought of that stand-
ing on the sea of glass, in the glorious visions of St.
John, and was filled with emotions of wonder and admi-
ration. The words of the psalmist could hardly fail to
be remembered : " These men see the works of the Lord,
and his wonders in the deep."
One would think that all is couleur de rose in these
lands beyond the reach of fashionable summer tourists.
Let him remember that nature here blooms, beautifies,
and bears for the entire year, in a few short weeks. We
are in the very flush of that transient and charming time.
Believe me, when I speak of the plants and flowers,
shrubbery and mosses. At this moment, the rocky isle,
bombarded by the ocean, and flayed by the sword of the
blast for months in the year, is a little paradise of beauty.
There are fields of mossy carpet that sinks beneath the
foot, with beds of such delicate flowers as one seldom
sees.
There is a refined dehcacy in the odor, which the
lATTLE ISLAND AND ITS SCENERY.
159
ordinary flora of warmer climes seldom lias. Some rare
exotic, reared with .cost, and pampered by all the ap-
pliances of art, may suggest the subtle spirit of these
tiny blossoms. It steals upon the sense of smell with the
indescribable tenderness of the music of the seolian harp
upon the ear. As I enjoy it, I know that I cannot paint
it to the reader, and that I shall probably never " look
upon its like again." It is very likely that the cool and
very pure air, a refinement of our common atmosphere,
has much to do with it.
In our stroll, we found banks of snow still sleeping in
the fissures above the showering of the surf, and peeping
out from beneath their edges were clusters of pretty flowers.
As we returned in the twilight, upon the mournful still-
ness of which broke the voice of the surge, I lingered
upon the cliffs to listen to the wood-thrush, the same
most plaintive and sweet bird that sings in the Catskill
mountain woods, at dusk and in the early morning. The
pathos of its wild melody stole in upon the heart, waking
" thoughts too deep for tears," and calling up a throng of
tender memories of Cole and others, with whom the
songster, the hour, and mountain scenery are forever
associated. Startled by the voices of my companions,
one a nephew of the famous poet, and the other a
pupil of the painter scarcely less renowned, I hastened
160 BATTLE ISLAND AND ITS SCENERY.
to join them at the humble parsonage below the cliffs,
when we went across to the vessel^ and united, for the
last time in the cabin, in those pleasant devotions which
we had enjoyed, morning and evening, since our depar-
ture from St. Johns.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
MOSSES, 0D0E8 AND FLOWERS.— A DINNEE-PARTY.
Friday, July S, 1859. A bright, cool morning.
After breakfast at the parsonage, we went rambling again
up and down the moss-covered fields of Battle Island,
smelling the fine perfume, gathering flowers, and counting
the icebergs. There are more than forty in the neighbor-
hood, and some of them grand and imposing at a distance.
Have you thought, as I did, that there are no flowers, or
next to none, in Labrador ? You might as well have
thought that all, or nearly all the flowers were in Florida.
Along the brook-banks under the Catskills — to me about
the loveliest banks on earth, in the late spring and early
summer days — I have never seen such fairy loveliness as
I find here upon this bleak islet, where nature seems to
162 MOSSES, ODORS AND FLOWERS.
have been playing at Switzerland. Green and yellow
mosses, ankle-deep and spotted with blood-red stains, car-
pet the crags and little vales and cradle-like hollows.
Wonderful to behold ! flowers pink and white, yellow,
red and blue, are countless as dew-drops, and breathe out
upon the pure air that odor, so spirit-like. Such surely
was the perfume of Eden around the footsteps of the
Lord, w^alking among the trees of the garden in the cool
of the day. What grounds these, for such souls as write,
" The moss supplicateth for the poet,'' and the closing
lines of the " Ode, Intimations of Immortality from recol-
lections of early Childhood." The Painter, passionately
in love with the flowers of the tropics, lay down and
roUed upon these soft, sweet beds of beauty with delight.
Little gorges and chasms, overhung with miniature preci-
pices, wind gracefully from the summits down to meet
the waves, and are filled, where the sun can warm them,
with all bloom and sweetness, a kind of wild greenhouse.
We run up them, and we run down them, fall upon the
cushioned stones, tumble upon their banks of softness as
children tumble upon deep feather-beds, and dive into
the yielding cradles embroidered with silken blossoms.
WiUows with a silvery down upon the leaves, willow-trees
no larger than fresh lettuce, and the mountain laurel of
the size of knitting-needles, with pink flowers to corre-
DINNER PARTY.
163
spond, cluster here and there in patches of a breadth to
suit a sleeping child.
After our ramble, we returned on board, arranged the
cabin, now become quite roomy from the departure of our
friends, and prepared for dinner, to which a small com-
pany is invited. Our cook, a young Sandy, excelling in
good nature, but failing in all the essentials of his art,
was suspended, for the time, from the exercise of all duties
about the caboose, except those of the mere lackey, and
two more important personages self-inducted into his
place. Some pounds of fresh salmon bagged in linen, a
measure of peeled potatoes, a pudding of rice well shotted
with raisins, one after another, found their way to the
oven and the boilers ; from which, in due time and order,
they emerged in a satisfactory condition, and, with appro-
priate sauce and gravy, descended in savory procession to
the cabin, to which they were unexpectedly welcomed by
a whole dress circle of fashionable dishes seated in the
surrounding berths, jelly-cake, sponge-cake, raspberry-
jam, nuts, figs, almonds and raisins, and a corpulent
pitcher, sweating in his naked white, filled with iceberg
water. It is not necessary to dwell upon the fact, that
the cooks subsided into the more quiet character of hosts,
and made themselves, and endeavored to make their
guests, merry at their own expense. Whether the Queen
164 A DINNER PARTY.
of England, or the President of the United States will be
pleased, it never occurred to us at the time, when, with-
out thinking of either, we drank to their health in the
transparent vintage of Greenland.
CHAPTEK XXXIV.
OUE BOAT FOE THE ICEBERGS.— AFTER THE ALPINE BERG.-STUDT
OF ITS WESTERN FACE.
After dinner. Mr. Hutchinson has placed at our ser-
vice his parish vessel, at once a schooner and a row-boat,
of which Captain Knight, of course, is master, and our
men the sailors. We are all ready, waiting its arrival
alongside, in order for our first excursion after icebergs,
equipped entirely to our mind.
An hour's sail has brought us off into the broad wa-
ters, south of Battle Harbor, close to a berg selected from
the heights this morning. We drop sails, and row rapidly
around it, for the best point of observation in the present
light. The intention is to study the ices of these waters,
at all points, and in all lights, with great care. From
this, the western side, now glittering in the face of the
sun, at sik o'clock, it is alpine in its form, with one
crowning peak, supported by pinnacles and buttresses,
166 AFTER THE ALPINE BERG.
with intervening gulfs and hollows, each with its torrent
hissing along down in white haste over glassy cliffs and in
alabaster channels, until it comes spouting into the sea
from an overhanging precipice, varying from six, to twenty
feet in height. Between the upper edge of this ice-coast
and the great steeps of the berg, lies a broad slope, smooth
as ivory, a paradise for the boys of a village school. We
are actually tempted to land at a low place, and have a
run. Without skates, or some arming of the boots, how-
ever, we guess it would be rather perilous sport ; in short,
simply impossible. We content ourselves with catching
a panfull of water, fresh from the great Humboldt gla-
cier, quite likely, and cold and pure it is. While we are
busy at the fountain, we amuse ourselves with looking
down through the clear, green water — right under us,
clear almost as air — at the roots and prongs of the moun-
tain mass. They shoot out into the dark sea below far
beyond our boat, not a pleasing vision to dwell upon, when
we reflect, that these very prongs and spurs only wait to
take their turn in the sunshine, under the aspect of up-
right towers. A heavy fall of ice, which may happen in
a minute, on the opposite side of the berg, instantly
gives the preponderance to this, when over this way
slowly rolls the alpine peak, down sinks all this precipice,
and after it, all the slanting field above ; then on rushes
AFTER THE ALPINE BERG. 167
the sea in curKng waves, and we are swept on with them.
Before we can get back, and get away to a safe distance,
by the force of mere sailor power, back rolls the berg, up
rises the broad slope, followed quickly by the precipices
rising up, up, and up into lofty cliffs, with a foreground,
a new revelation of ice ; in a word, the prongs and
spurs now below us in the transparent deep. In all
this play of the iceberg and the sea, what will be our
part ? And who knows whether the moment is not now
close upon us for this sparkling planet of the main to
burst asunder, a common process by which the mother
berg throws off her little ones, rather, resolves herself
entirely into a shoal of small icebergs ? Should that mo-
ment really come while we are in this fearful proximity,
you need not ask any questions about us, except those
which you yourself can answer. There are the dead in
these very waters, I believe, whose last earthly experience
was among the final thunders of these ices.
I am struck with the rapid rate at which the bergs
are perishing. They are dissolving at every point and
pore, both in the air and in the sea. One sheet of water,
although no thicker than a linen sheet, covers the entire
alp. It trickles from every height, yonder glimmering
like a distant window in the sunset, here cutting into the
glassy surface and working out a kind of jewelry, which
168 STUDY OF ITS WESTERN FACE.
sparkles with points of emerald and ruby. It rains from
eves and gables, cornices and balconies, and spouts from
gutters. All around, tbere is the pattering of a shower
on the sea, and the sharp, metallic ringing of great drops,
similar to what is heard around a pond in the still woods,
when the dew-drops fall from the overhanging boughs.
Below, the currents, now penetrated with the summer
warmth, are washing it away. Around the surface-line, the
ever-busy waves are polishing the newly-broken corners,
and cutting under, and mining their way in, with deceitful
rapidity. Unceasingly they bore and drill, without holi-
day or sabbath, or rest at night, as the perpetual thun-
ders of their blasting testify. Thus their ruin is hourly
hastening to a consummation, and the danger of ap-
proaching them made more and more imminent. The
iceberg in winter, in the Arctic regions, and even here, is
a different affair. In the cold, they are tolerably safe and
sound. But now, in these comparatively tepid seas, and
in this warm atmosphere, lone wanderer, it finds no
mercy. Motionless as this and several bergs appear, they
are all slowly moving in toward the Strait of Belle Isle,
borne forward by the great Baffin current, a stream of
which bends around Cape St. Louis and these adjacent
isles, and sets along the shore of Labrador into the Gulf
of St. Lawrence.
CHAPTEK XXXV.
THE ALPINE BERG.-STUDIES OF ITS SOUTHEEN FEONT.-FEIGHTFUL
EXPLOSION AND F.VLL OF ICE.-STUDIES OF THE WESTEEN SIDE.
— OUE PLAY WITH THE MOOSE HOENS.— THE SPLENDOE OF THE
BEEG IN THE SUNSET.
We are now lying under oars, riding quietly on tlie
swells, distant, say, a hundred yards soutli of the berg,
which has a visible, perpendicular front of five hundred,
by one hundred and fifty feet or more elevation. It re-
sembles a precipice of newly-broken porcelain, wet and
dripping, its vast face of dead white tinged with green,
here and there, from the reflection of the green water at
its base. We are in its shadow, which reaches off on the
sunny sea, a long, dark track. The outline of the berg is
one edge of dazzling brightness, a kind of irregular, flow-
ing frame, gilt with sunlight, which comes pouring over
in full tide from behind. Where the ice shoots up into
thin spear-points, or runs along a semi-transparent blade,
8
170 STUDIES OF ITS SOUTHERN FRONT.
the liglit shines through, and gives the tint of flame, with
a greenish hand below, and lower still, a soft blue, pres-
ently lost in the broad white. In these ices, never think
of any such as you see at home, from Kockland and Cats-
kill. Frozen under enormous pressure^ and frozen to dry
and flinty hardness, it has all the sparkle of minutest
crystallization, and resembles, as I have said already,
freshly broken statue-marble or porcelain, as you see it on
the edge newly snapped. The surface of this ice is in
itself a study singularly complex and subtle. How the
mere passer-by, at a distance, is going to know any thing
of value to a painter, I cannot teU. The fact is, he knows
just nothing at all. A portrait-painter might as well
pretend to have a knowledge of flesh, from seeing people
at a distance. I think if I could study just here, for
hours, I should be able to speak more correctly. Of
course, the Painter, whose eye is trained to look into the
texture of surfaces, sees all more readily. I am looking
up to rough crags, and enormous bulges, where the recent
fracture would seem to have an almost painful sharpness
to the touch. Where the surfaces have been for a time
exposed to the weather, they have the flesh-finish of a
statue. Along the lower portion, where you see the glass-
ing effects of the waves, there it resembles the rarest
Sevres vase, or even pearl itself, so exquisitely fine is
STUDIES OF ITS SOUTHERN FRONT. 171
the polish. It is almost mirror-like. You perceive the
dim images of passing objects, shadowy ships and shores.
Where the light pours over it in its strength, it shines
like burnished steel in the sunshine.
Under the manifold effects of atmosphere, light and
shade, none can imagine, through the medium of mere
description, the grandeur and glory of these moving Alps
of ice. Here now, is one simple feature, which our dan-
gerous proximity alone enables us to view, the wondrous
beauty of which — ^beauty to the feelings as well as to the
eye — I cannot find any language to paint. I may talk
of it through a hundred periods, and yet you will never
feel and see a tithe of what you would in a moment, were
you here upon the spot. The berg, in the deep shadow
of which we now sit painting and writing, as I have inti-
mated, is in form a mountain pinnacle, split down from
the summit square, and the spHt side toward our boat.
What has became of the lost half, the Great Builder of
icebergs only knows. We are under the cliffs, from which
that unknown part burst off and fell away. It is an
awful precipice, with all the features of precipices, such
as are seen about capes, headlands and ocean shores.
Here it swells out, there it sinks in, masses have slidden
I out, and left square-headed doorways opening into the
1 solid porcelain, ridges run off, and hollows run in and
172 EXPLOSION AND FALL OF ICE.
around. In these very hollows and depressions is the
one feature of which I am speaking. And, after all, what
is it ? It is simply shadow. Is that all ? That is
all : only shadow. All the grand fa9ade is one shadow,
with a rim of splendor like liquid gold leaf or yellow
flame, but in those depressions is a deeper shadow.
Shadow under shadow, dove-colored and blue. Thus
there seems to be drifting about, in the hollow lurking-
places of the dead white, a colored atmosphere, the
warmth, softness, and delicate beauty of which no mind
can think of words to express. So subtle is it and evan-
escent, that recollection cannot recall it when once gone,
but by the help of the heart and the feelings, where the
spirit of beauty last dies away. You can feel it, after you
have forgotten what its complexion precisely is, and from
that emotion you may come to remember it. You would
remember nothing more beautiful.
Any doubt that I may have entertained about the
danger of lying under the shadow of this great ice-rock is
now wholly dispelled. We have just witnessed what was,
for the moment, a perfect cataract of ice, with all its mo-
tion, and many times its noisa. Quick as lightning and
loud as thunder, when bolt and thunder come at the
same instant, there was one terrific crack, a sharp and
silvery ringing blow upon the atmosphere, which I shall
^
EXPLOSION AND FALL OF ICE.
never forget, nor ever be able to describe. It shook mo
through, and struck the very heart. The only response on
my part, and I was not alone in the fright, was a convul-
sive spring to the feet, and a shout to the oarsmen, of
fierce command, " Row back ! row back ! " The specta-
^^ cle was nearly as startling as the explosion. At once, the
upper face of the berg burst out upon the air, as if it had
been blasted, and swept down across the great cliff, a huge
cataract of green and snowy fragments, with a wild,
crashing roar, followed by the heavy, sullen thunder of
the plunge into the ocean, and the rolling away of tho
B high-crested seas, and the rocking of the mighty mass
back and forth, in the effort to regain its equilibrium.
I dreaded the encounter ; but our whale-boat was quite
at home, and breasted the lofty swells most gracefully.
But how fearfully impressive is all this ! I recall the
K warning of the Bishop of Newfoundland, and recollect the
conversation of the Rev. Mr. Wood, the rector of St.
I Thomas'.
We now pass round to the other side of the berg, and
take a position between it and the sun. Upon our first
circumnavigation, we found this edge of the ice, in its
:' lowest part, about six feet above the sea, with a caver-
nous hollow running all round, into which the waves were
playing with their strange and many sounds. Now, from
I
174 STUDIES OF THE WESTERN SIDE.
the recent loss of ice on the opposite heights, all this edge
has sunk helow the waves, leaving only an inclined plane
sweeping up from the water's edge to the steeper parts of
the berg, at an angle of about 20 degrees. Fancy a slab
of Italian marble, four and ^ve hundred feet in width,
extending from the eaves of the City Hall, New York,
half-way or more down the park. I think you will have
a tolerable notion of the slope now before us. Up this
slippery field of ivory hardness roll the waves, dark as
night until they strike the ice, when, in a flash, they
turn into that lovely green of the sea, and afterward
break in long lines of tumultuous foam. The spectacle
is perfectly magnificent. A seam of ice, apparently six
inches in diameter, of the hue of a sapphire, cuts the berg
from its very top down, and doubtless cuts through the
entire submarine body. This jewel of the iceberg is a
wonderful beauty. Sparkles of light seem to come from
its blue, transparent depths. What, at first, appears sin-
gular is, that these blue veins are much softer than the
surrounding ice, melting faster, and so becoming channels
in wliich little torrents glitter as they run. At first, we
were at a loss to know how they originated, but presently
felt satisfied, that they were cracks filled with water, and
frozen when the berg was a glacier. This indelible mark
of primitive breakage and repair indicates with some cor-
OUR PLAY WITH THE
HOR]
rectness the original perpendicular of the ice. According
to the blue band in the berg now before us, it is occupy-
ing very nearly the position it was in when it was a fissure
or crevasse of the glacier. Long processional lines of
broken ice are continually floating off from the parent
berg, which, in the process of melting, assume many
curious shapes, huge antlers of the moose and elk, and
sea-fowl, geese and ducks, of gigantic figure. We have
just succeeded in securing one of these antlers, and a
merry time we had. Before reaching it, we supposed one
could bend over and lift it out of the water as easily as
he stoops and picks up a buck's horn out of the prairie
grass. It was a match for three of us, and escaped out
of our hands and arms repeatedly, slipping back into the
waves, and requiring us to round to again and again before
we fairly had it. As it is the hardest and the heaviest,
so it is 1 he most slippery of all ices, and certainly it seems
to me the coldest thing upon which human hands were
ever laid. Our summer cakes, handed in by the ice-man,
are warm, I fancy, in comparison. I do not wonder that
the face of icebergs burst off, under the expansion of the
heat they receive in these July days. The surface of this
horn is not the least curious feature of it : it is melted
into circular depressions about the depth and size of a
large watch-crystal, all cutting into each other with such
176 SPLENDOR OF THE BERG AT SUNSET.
regularity that their angles fall into lines parallel and
diagonal in the most artistic manner. Now that we have
it in the boat, it resembles a pair of mammoth moose-
horns sculptured from water-soaked alabaster. We see
several of them now, &Ye or six feet tall, rocking and
nodding on the swells as if they were the living append-
ages of some old moose of the briny deep, come up to
sport a little in the world of warmth and sunshine.
C finds great difficulty in painting, from the
motion of the boat ; but it is the best thing in the ser-
vice, after all, for the men can take a position, and keep
it by the help of oars, in spite of the waves and currents
which beset an iceberg. The moments for which we have
been waiting are now passing, and the berg is immersed
in almost supernatural splendors. The white alpine peak
rises out of a field of delicate purple, fading out on one
edge into pale sky-blue. Every instant changes the
quality of the colors. They flit from tint to tint, and
dissolve into other hues perpetually, and with a rapidity
impossible to describe or paint. I am tempted to
look over my shoulder into the north, and see if the
" merry dancers " are not coming, so marvellously do the
colors come and go. The blue and the purple pass up
into peach-blow and pink. Now it blushes in the last
look of the sun-red blushes of beauty — tints of the
SPLENDOR OF THE BERG AT SUNSET.
177
roseate birds of the south — the complexion of the roses
of Damascus. In this delicious dye it stands embalmed
— only for a minute, though ; for now the softest dove-
colors steal into the changing glory, and turn it all into
light and shade on the whitest satin. The bright green
waves are toiling to wash it whiter, as they roll up from
the violet sea, and explode in foam along the broad
alabaster. Power and Beauty, hand in hand, bathing the
bosom of Purity. I need not pause to explain how all
this is ; but so it is, and many times more, in the pass-
ing away of the sunshine and the daylight. It is wonder-
ful I I had never dreamed of it, even while I have been
reading of icebergs well described. As I sit and look at
this broken work of the Divine fingers, — only a shred
broken from the edge of a glacier, vast as it is — I whisper
these words of Kevelation : " and hath washed their
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
It hangs before us, with the sea and the sky behind it,
Hke some great robe made in heaven. Where the flow-
ing folds break into marble-like cliffs, on the extreme
wings of the berg, an inward green seems to be pricking
through a fine straw tint, spangled with gold. Weary,
chilly, and a little sea-sick, I am glad to find the Painter
giving the last touches to a sketch, and to hear him give
the word for return. The men, who in common with
8*
178 SPLENDOR OF THE BERG AT SUNSET.
all these people of this northern sea have a terror of ice-
bergs, gladly lift the sails, and so, with Captain Knight
at the helm, we are speeding over the waves for Battle
Harbor.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
KAMBLE AMONG THE FLOWERS OF BATTLE ISLAND.— A VISIT TO
THE FISHEEMEN.-WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
Saturday, July 9. We are abroad again on the
rocky hills, fanned with the soft, summer wind, and
blessed with the lovehest sunshine. The mosses sparkle
with their sweet-scented blossoms of purple, white, and
red, and the wood-thrush is pouring out its plaintive
melody over the bleak crags, and the homes of fishermen,
around whose doors I see the children playing as merrily
as the children of fortune in more favored lands. How
many a tender parent, now watching over a sick child in
the wealthy city, would be glad to have the sufferer here,
to be the playfellow of these simple boys and girls, if he
could have their health and promise of life. Captain
Knight comes with his hands full of flowers, not unlike the
daisy ; and here come Hutchinson and the Painter. We
180 A VISIT Tg THE FISHERMEN.
meet around this moss-covered crag, where I am sitting
with my book and pencil, and resolve at once to go down;
and visit an islet of the harbor, where a few families have
a summer residence during the fishing season.
Here we are among the huts and dogs, and English
people, with the ways of Labrador. A kind woman, with
whom I have been talking about the deprivations of her
lot in life, has offered to bake bread for us when we can
send the flour. The Painter is out sketching this summer
nest upon the bleak, surf-washed rocks, about as wild-
looking as the nesting-place of sea-birds. Generous-
hearted people ! I am pleased with their simple ways,
and their affectionate, but most respectful manner
toward their pastor. Well, indeed, they may be both
respectful and affectionate. His life is a sacrifice for
them and their children. What but the love of Christ
and of men could lead one here, and keep him here, who
can ornament and bless the most cultivated society ?
I thank God, that He gives us witness, in such men, of
the power and excellency of His grace upon the human
heart. We sail across the harbor to a cove, or chasm in
the lofty sea-wall, with the intention of a walk over the
hills of Cariboo, while Hutchinson visits a few of his pa-
rishioners thereabouts.
After a pleasant ramble, during which we were often
WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
181
tempted to run and jump with very delight along the
spongy, springy moss, blushing here and there with its
sweet bloom, we sit down on the top of a high hill, and
look off upon the ocean and the bay of St. Louis, extend-
insr far into the desolate interior like a series of blue lakes.
All the beauteous apparel of summer has been stripped
off, and the brown and broken bones of the sad earth are
bleaching in the wind and sun. You would be delighted,
though, with the little vales, notched and shelved with
craggy terraces that catch and hold the sunshine. They
have the sultry warmth and scent of a conservatory, and
are frequently rich with herbage, now in flower. It seems
a pity that these nooks of verdure and floral beauty
should thus ^^ waste their sweetness on the desert air."
For a few days, the woolly flocks of New England would
thrive in Labrador. During those few days, there are
thousands of her fair daughters who would love to tend
them. I prophesy the time is coming when the invalid
and tourist from the States will be often found spending
the brief, but lovely summer here, notwithstanding its rug-
gedness and desolation. Upon reflection, a broad and an-
cient solitude like this has a sg.dness in it which no bloom,
no sun can dispel. Never, never, in all my life, have I
beheld a land like this, the expression and sentiment of
which are essentially mournful and melancholy. The
182 WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
sunshine, skies, "the pomp and circumstance of" ocean,
sweet smells, and sounds, and one's own joyous, healthy
feelings, flowing out and washing out as they flow the nat-
ural sadness of the soul, cannot take away nor cover up
that which really and everlastingly is, and ever will be,
namely, the sentiment of mournfulness. Nature here is
at a funeral forever, and these beauties, so delicately
fashioned, are but flowers in the coffin.
It is a coincidence a little curious that I should have
written these periods above, and then have plunged into
just the most lonesome little valley in all the world to
hit upon a graveyard. But there it was, a gloomy, silent
field, enclosed with the merest dry skeleton of a fence, for
no purpose to keep a creature out where no creature is,
but just to make a scratch around the few narrow beds
where the dead repose, unpraised and unnamed, under
the lightest possible covering of dust, as undisturbed as
in the deeps of the Atlantic. From the tombless ceme-
tery, our way back to the vessel over the hills resembled
the crossing of mountains just below the line of perpetual
snow. Upon the summit we encountered a small lake
and marshes with water-plants and flowers. At the east-
ern extremity of the island, where the rocks break off
steeply some hundreds of feet, we saw every object of the
port nearly beneath, and apparently within stone's throw.
WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
183
A novel sight to us was tlie bottom of the harbor, seen
through the clear, greenish water with considerable dis-
tinctness almost from end to end. Patches of sea-weed,
dark rocks, and white gravel, seemed to be lying in the
bottom of a shallow mirror, across which small fishes,
large ones in reality, were wandering at their leisure.
This was a picturesque revelation. Upon the surface of
the harbor, the depth of water very nearly shuts out all
view of the bottom. I am beginning to think that a few
thousand feet above the ocean, in a bright day, would
enable the eye to pierce it to an extraordinary depth.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
AFTER THE BAY ST. LOUIS ICEBERG.— WINDSOR CASTLE ICEBERG.—
FOUNDERS SUDDENLY.— A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE.
After dinner, upon the heights of Battle Island,
gathering roots, plants, and mosses to carry home. "Wo
notice with pleasure the largest iceberg by far that we
have ever yet seen. It is the last arrival from Green-
land, and is abreast Cape St. Louis, in the northeast.
It is a stupendous thing, and reminds me of Windsor
Castle, as I know it from pictures and engravings. It
appears to be wheeling in toward the bay, with a front of
great elevation and extent, finely adorned with projec-
tions and massive towers not unlike those of the regal
structure of which it reminds me. I see by the
watch it is nearly 4 p. m., the time set for our de-
parture to a Bay St. Louis berg. Pencil and note-book
AFTER THE BAY ST. LOUIS ICEBERG.
185
must be pocketed, and haste be made with my vegetable
gatherings.
Pencil and note-book reappear, and the sketch recom-
mences. Half-way to the chosen iceberg, in the mouth
of the bay, rowing slowly over the glassy, low swells, as
they move in from sea. These are the swells for me :
broad, imperial swells, full of majesty, dignity, and grace ;
placid and serene of countenance ; solemn, slow, and si-
lent in their roll. They are the swells of olden time,
royal and aristocratic, legitimately descended from those
that bore the ark upon their bosom, and used to bear the
unbroken images of the orbs of heaven. Keplete with
gentleness and love and power, they lift us lightly, and
pass us over tenderly from hand to hand, and toss us
pleasantly and softly from breast to breast, and roll us
carefully from lap to lap, and smile upon us with their
shiniDg smiles. Grand and gracious seas ! With you I
love the ocean. With you I am not afraid. And with
you, how kind and compassionate of you, ye old patrician
billows ! with you I am not sea-sick. Save us from
V those plebeian waves, that rabble- rout of surges, that
H democratic " lop," lately born, and puffed into noisy
H importance ! They scare me, and, worst of all, make
H me sick and miserable.
^^^ Every few minutes we hear the artillery of the ice-
186 WINDSOR CASTLE ICEBERG. — FOUNDERS.
bergs, and are on the watch for fine displays, this warm
afternoon. C is sketching hastily, with the pencil,
Windsor Castle berg, now in complete view, and distant,
I should guess, five miles. It is a mighty and imposing
structure.
Between making my last dot and now — an interval
of ten minutes — Windsor Castle has experienced the
convulsions of an earthquake^ and gone to ruin. To use
the term common here, it has " foundered." A maga-
zine of powder fired in its centre, could not more
effectually, and not much more quickly, have blown it
up. While in the act of sketching, C suddenly ex-
claimed : when, lo ! walls and towers were falling
asunder, and tumbling at various angles with apparent
silence into the ocean, attended with the most prodigious
dashing and commotion of water. Enormous sheaves of
foam sprung aloft and burst in air ; high, green waves,
crested with white-caps, rolled away in circles, mingling
with leaping shafts and fragments of ice reappearing
from the deep in all directions. . Nearly the whole of
this brilliant spectacle was the performance of a minute,
and to us as noiseless as the motions of a cloud, for a
length of time I had not expected. When the uproar
reached us, it was thunder doubled and redoubled, roll-
ing upon the ear like the quick successive strokes of a
A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE.
187
drum, or volleys of the largest ordnance. It was awfully-
grand, and altogether the most startling exhibition I
ever witnessed. At this moment, there is a large field of
ruins, some of them huge masses like towers prone along
the waters, with a lofty steeple left alone standing in the
midst, and rocking slowly to and fro.
CHAPTEK XXXVIII.
SUNDAY IN LABEADOE.— EVENING WALK TO THE GEAVEYAED.— THE
EOCKY OCEAN SHOEE.
Sunday evening, July 10. We have had a beau-
tiful and interesting day. Early in the morning, flags
were flying from the shipping, and from the taU staff in
front of the church, the only bell-tower of the town.
Boats, with people in their Sunday best, soon came row-
ing in from different quarters, for the services of the day,
in which I had the pleasure of assisting. The house,
seating about two hundred people, was crowded, morning
and afternoon, with a devout and attentive congregation,
responding loudly, and singing very spiritedly.
Before sunset, we left the parsonage for a quiet
walk. Falling into a crooked path, we followed it to
the burying-ground in the bottom of a narrow, deep
hollow, where time has gathered from the surrounding
EVENING WALK TO THE GRAVEYARD.
189
rocks a depth of earth sufficient for shallow graves.
While yet the sunshine was bright upon the high, over-
hanging cliffs, dotted with lichens and tufted with their
summer greenery, the little vale below, with its brown
gravestones nearly lost in the rank verdure, was im-
mersed in cool and lonesome shadows. An unavoid-
able incumbrance of the sacred field was several large
bowlders, among which the long grass, and weeds and
tablets were irregularly dispersed.
It is the custom of the English church to consecrate
burying-grounds. Eleven years ago. Bishop Field conse-
crated this. It was a pleasant Sunday morning, and the
procession, with the bishop at its head clothed in his offi-
cial robes, descended by the winding path, and performed
the appointed service. Nearly the whole population of
the region was present, either in the procession, or look-
ing down with silent admiration from the rocky galleries
around. A better resting-place, when one lies dbwn
weary from the tasks and troubles of the present life,
could not well be imagined. Its perpetual solitude,
never profaned by the noisy feet of the busy world,
draped alternately with snowy fleeces and blooming
verdure, is always made musical by the solemn mur-
murs of the ocean. I found by the inscriptions, that
England was the native country of most of those whose
190 THE ROCKY OCEAN SHORE.
bones repose below, and whose names are gathering moss
and lichens, while the sea, close by, sings their mournful
requiem.
From this lone hamlet of the dead, we picked our
way among broken rocks out to the sea shore, all white
with the sounding surf, and gazed with silent pleasure
on the blue Atlantic, the dark headlands, and the ice-
bergs glittering in the sunset. Glittering in the sunset !
They glowed with golden fire — pointed, motionless, and
solid flames.
Battle Island, had there never been any bloody con-
test of angry men, would be an appropriate name. The
whole northeastern shore, once a lofty precipice, no
doubt, but now a descent of indescribable ruggedness, is
an extended field, whereon for ages flinty rocks and
mighty waves have contended in battle. A favorite
walk of Hutchinson's, during the wintry tempests, is
along the height overlooking this mighty slope or glacis.
His quiet description of the terrible grandeur of the
scene, was truly thrilling. In the course of our walk, we
came upon the verge of a fissure, which looked like an
original intention to split the island through its centre.
Banks of snow still lay in the nooks and closets of its
gloomy chambers, through which, every now and then,
boomed the low thunder of the plunging surf.
THE ROCKY OCEAN SHORE.
191
Upon our return, late in the evening, although quite
light, we wandered over tracts of the elastic, flowering
moss. The step is rendered exceedingly bouyant, and
invites you to skip and bound through the richly car-
peted hollows. After prayer at the parsonage, we
returned to the vessel, and talked in our berths until
slumber made us silent, past midnight.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE SAIL TO FOX HAEBOE.— A DAT WITH THE ESQUIMAUX, AND
OUE EETUEN.
Monday, July 11. After icebergs in St. Michaers
Bay, was to have been the order of the morning. It lies
northward forty miles, and usually abounds in icebergs
of the largest size, Mr. Hutchinson informs us. There
is not, however, the least necessity for passing Cape St.
Louis, south of which there is ice enough in sight for all
the painters in . the world. But the charm of novelty is
almost irresistible. Had we the time, we would see the
glaciers themselves, of which these bergs are merely the
chippings. What has suddenly caused this change in
our plans is an approaching storm. It will never do for
us to be out at sea in a cold northeaster, if it possibly can
be avoided. The painter and I are so given over to sea-
sickness, in rough weather, that nothing can be enjoyed,
I
THE SAIL TO FOX HARBOR. 193
and nothing done with pen or pencil. The work and
play of the day are finally determined. • C with the
Captain will cruise southerly among the bergs of Belle
Isle, and I will go with Mr. Hutchinson and Botwood
north, across St. Louis water to Fox Harbor, one of
the points of this extended parish.
We leave, past noon a little, sailing very pleasantly
by the ices, which appear to be in considerable motion.
Several are going to sea, and may reach the track of New
Yorkers voyaging to Europe, and be thought very won-
derful and fine ; and so indeed they will be, should they
lose half of their present bulk. There appears to be no
end to the combinations of these icy edifices. They
mimic all the styles of architecture upon earth ; rather,
all styles of architecture may be said to imitate them,
inasmuch as they were floating here in what we please to
call Greek and Gothic forms long before Greek or Goth
were in existence. Yonder, now, is a cluster of Gothic
cottages. I trace out a multitude of peaked gables and
low porches, and think of Sunny Side upon the Hudson.
Two hours have slipped away, and we approach the
northern shore, attended by no less a travelling com-
panion than a small whale. Now he blows just behind
us, disappears, and blows again upon our right. There
■ he blows ahead of us. Plere he is close upon our left.
I
194 A DAY WITH THE ESQUIMAUX.
The fellow is diving under us. All this may be very
pretty sport for the whale, but with all the merry re-
marks of Hutchinson, respecting the good nature of our
twenty-foot out-rider, I confess I am relieved to find that
he is gradually enlarging the field of his amusements.
The mouth of Fox Harbor all at once discovers itself,
and lets us in upon a small sheet of water, not unlike a
mountain lake with its back-ground of black, wild hills.
A few huts, a wharf, and fish-house appear upon the
margin of the narrow peninsula that lies between the
harbor and the bay. The people are pure Esquimaux
and English, with a mixture from intermarriage. The
patriarch of the place, perhaps sixty years of age, with
his wife, and, I believe, the elder members of the family,
are natives of a high latitude, and a good specimen of
the arctic race. They are now members of the English
Church, and for piety and virtue compare well with
Christians anywhere.
In the course of the afternoon, their pastor held
divine service, and administered the sacrament of bap-
tism. There were between twenty and thirty present,
old and young, some of whom had prayer-books and
responded. The sermon, which I was invited to preach,
I made as simple and practical as possible, and found
earnest and honest listeners. After an examination of
OUR RETURN.
195
I
furs and snow-shoes, reindeer horns, and seal-skin, fresh
from the seal, and still loaded with its fat or blubber, we
had an exhibition of the kayak. It was light and tight,
and ringy as a drum, and floated on the water like a
bubble. Under the strokes of the kayaker, it darted for-
ward over the low swells with a grace and fleetness un-
known to the birch bark canoe. After tea, and a very
good tea, too ; in fact, after two teas, we bade the
Esquimaux farewell and sailed away, taking one of their
number along with us, who had formerly been a servant,
and was now to resume her old place as such, in the
parsonage. About half way across the bay, a squall from
sea struck us with startling suddenness. But our bold
young sailing-master, Mc Donald, the mate and owner
of our vessel, managed the boat admirably, and we fairly
flew through the white-caps to the smooth water of our
harbor. In the evening we gathered in at the parsonage,
taking tea, made and served by the Esquimaux woman,
telling the adventures of the day, both north and south,
and returning at midnight to our cabin.
CHAPTEK XL.
A MOENING EAMBLE OVER CARIBOO.— EXCUESION ON THE BAT, AND
THE TEA-DRINKING AT THE SOLITARY FISHERMAN'S.
Tuesday, July 12. Cold as November, and a gale
outside. After a late breakfast, we roam the bills of
Cariboo, under tbe cliffs of wbicb tbe Integrity now
lies tied to tbe rocks. We gatber roots and flowers,
gaze upon tbe vast and desolate prospect, count tbe
icebergs, and watcb tbe motions of tbe fog driving, in
large, cloud-like masses, across tbe angry ocean. It is
surprising bow mucb we do in tbese, to us, almost inter-
minable days. But for tbe necessity of it, I believe tbat
we sbould not sleep at all, but work and play rigbt on
from midnigbt into morning, and from morning down to
midnigbt. We bave a large afternoon excursion before
us. Previous to tbat, bowever, tbe Captain and myself
are going upon an exploring expedition.
EXCURSION ON THE BAY,
Coasting the soutlierii shores of St. Louis water,
having a little private amusement by ourselves. The
breeze, in from sea, gives us about as much as we can
manage. Gives us about as much as tue can manage !
" Us " and " We '' have not a great deal to do with it.
I This half of the "us" and the ^'-we," the Me and the
subjective I, as your Kantian philosopher calls his essen-
tial self, sits here about midship, bear- skinned in with
a fleecy brown coat, holding on, and dodging the spray
that cuffs him on the right and left ; while the other,
and vastly larger half, in the shape of the captain,
holds all the reins of this marine chariot in his own single
hand — ropes, rudder and all, and holds them, too, well
and wisely. But we enjoy the freedom of these spirited,
though harmless seas, and dash along through most
charmingly.
What coasts these are ! " Precipitous, black, jagged
rocks," savage as lions and tigers showing their claws
and teeth, and foaming at the lips. Here is a chasm
called a cove, up which the green water runs in the
shape of a scimetar or horn — the piercing and the goring
of the sea for unknown centuries. Away in the extreme
hollow of this horn is a fishing-flake, and half-way up,
where the sea-birds would naturally nest, a Scotch fisher-
B man has his summer-home. We are going in to see him.
I
198 . THE FISHERMAN.
He met us at the water's edge, and welcomed us with
a fisherman's welcome — none heartier in the world — and
sent us forward by a zigzag path to the house hidden
away among the upper rocks. In the very tightest place
of the ascent, there swept down upon us an avalanche
of dogs furiously barking — a kind of onset for which I
have had a peculiar disrelish ever since I was overthrown
by a ferocious mastiff in my childhood. I sprang to the
tip of a crag, and stood out of their reach, while they
bristled and barked at the Captain, who coolly main-
tained his ground. The shout of the fisherman's wife,
who now appeared on the edge of the scene above, in-
stantly stilled the uproar, and invited us up with the
cheering assurance that they seldom bit anybody, and
were rather glad than angry that we had come. The
language of dogs being very much the same in all
countries, I took occasion to doubt any pleasure that
Bull, Brindle, and Bowse were thought to have felt at
our presence. The rascals smelt closely at my heels
and hands, with an accompaniment of bristling backs
and tails, and deep-throated growls. We were no
sooner in the house and seated than the goodman him-
self arrived, and ordered the kettle to the fire for a " bit
of tea." " It would do us good," he said. " When
strangers 'came, he commonly had a bit of tea." His
THE FlSHERMAI^f.
life had been a struggle for food and raiment : such was
the tenor of his brief history. Four children were with
him ; four were in a better world. Forty years he had
been a fisherman. Thirty, on these shores. They came
up yearly from Carbonear in the early days of June,
cleared the house of ice and snow, and got ready for the
fish. Their dogs, which are their only team in New-
foundland, would be lost if left behind, and so they
brought them along to save them. After tea, a fine
game-cock took possession of the floor, walking close in
front, looking up sideways in an inquisitive and comical
manner, and crowing very spiritedly. Hard by, in a box
beneath a bed, I caught a glimpse of the red comb of a
hen, his only mate. A little, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed
girl ran and brought her out as something to surprise
and delight us. And so with cock and hen, and chil-
dren, the fisherman and his wife, mariner and minister,
we were a social party. Thus the human heart spins
out its threads of love, and fastens them even to the
far-distant rocks of cold and barren Labrador. They took
us through their fish-house, which hung like a birdcage
among the crags, and afterwards followed us down to
the water, and gave our bark a kindly push," and thus
we parted."
CHAPTER XLI.
PAINTING THE CAYEKN OF GEEAT ISLAND, AND OUIi SAIL HOME-
WAKD IN A GALE.
Two o'clock P. M. The wind has moderated, and
blows from the land. We sail out upon the eastern or
ocean side of Great Island. This is not precisely the ex-
cursion proposed in the morningj which was to an iceberg
in the bay. It is the best^ though, that we can do, and
may turn out very well. I could wish a less exciting
passage in than we had out, when, for the first, I learned
the power of wind to knock a vessel over at a single blow.
It pounced upon us, as it swept over the lofty ridge of the
island, in puffs and gusts quite frightful. At one mo-
ment, the sails would be without a breath ; at another,
the wonder is that they were not burst from their fasten-
ings. As the Captain turned into the wind, the boat
would jump as if going out of the water. Some training
PAINTING THE CAVERN OF GREAT ISLAND.
201
is necessary for your landsman to bear this with perfect
coolness. After landing us, the Captain, with a couple
of men, plays off and on between a fishing-fleet and shore,
while C paints the particular part of the coast for
which we have come.
It consists of what once might have been a grand cav-
ern, but now fallen in, and all its cragged gulf opened to
the day. Into the yawning portal of this savage chasm
plunge the big waves of the Atlantic. In an easterly
gale, there is performed in this gloomy theatre no farce
of the surges, but the grandest tragedy. In fact, this
whole coast, a thousand miles or more, is built up, rather
torn down, on the most stupendous scale — vast and shat-
tered— terrifically rough — tumult and storm aU in horrid
stone. It would well pay the painter of coast scenery to
spend a fall and winter upon these shores. The breaking
of the waves upon such rocks as these must be an aston-
ishing spectacle of power and fury. The charge and the
retreat of billows upon slopes of rock so torn and shat-
tered, for miles and miles at the same moment, Mr.
Hutchinson repeatedly declares, is one of the most bril-
liant and imposing sights on earth. While C is
painting, I have been writing these periods, and clamber-
ing the mossy cliffs for plants and flowers. Half-past 7,
and Captain Knight below, waiting for us near the mouth
9*
202 OUR SAIL HOMEWARD IN A GALE.
of the chasm. The fishing-fleet is dispersing, homeward-
bound, and we are now ready to put up paint and pencil,
and join in the general run.
There is nothing like a dash of peri] to wake one up.
Now that I am quietly sitting by the cabin candles, I
will sketch you our passage in. These notes are usually
taken on the spot ; upon the occasion of which I am at
present speaking, my note-book was buttoned in pretty
tightly in its pocket.
It was blowing a gale, but, fortunately for us, from
the land. In from sea, the same wind would have driven
all into the surf. Close-reefed as we were, and under the
island, with a capital craft, and Captain Knight, the
very best of sailors, it was quite enough for us. We were
almost over at times. The sharp, short seas thumped
our bows like sledge-hammers. The spray flashed across
like water from an engine. There were the hum and
trembling of a swiftly revolving wheel. When she came
into the wind for a tack, all shook and cracked again, and
then sang on shrill and wildly as shuttle-like we shot to
the next point of turning. A few small islands make a
net-work of channels. Through this entanglement we
and the fishing-fleet were now making our way home,
crossing and recrossing, shooting here and there, singly
and in pairs, with sails black, white, and red — a lively and
OUR SAIL HOMEWARD IN A GALE.
203
picturesque sight, and just the prettiest play in all the
world. In a narrow, strait leading into the harbor, we
were nearly baffled. The tempest, for to such it had in-
creased, at some moments, seemed to fall upon us from
above, flattening the swells, and sweeping the spray about
as a whirlwind sweeps the dust. Back and forth we dart-
ed between the iron shores, wheeling in the nick of time,
and losing nearly as often as we gained. C and I
lay close below the booms, and watched the strife as one
might watch a battle round the corner of a wall. Wrap-
ped in heavy overcoats, and wet and chilly, we came, not-
withstanding, to enjoy it vastly. C fairly overflowed
with fun and humor. But what admirable sailors are
these northern seamen, in their schooner whaleboats !
the very Tartars and Camanches of the ocean ! They go
off to the fishing-grounds in stormy weather, and stay
with unconquerable patience at their hard and dangerous
labor. Under the cliffs of Cariboo we glided into calm
water, and looked back at the dark and troubled deep, in
broad contrast with the clouds and icebergs resplendent
with rosy sunlight.
CHAPTER XLII.
AFTER THE ICEBERG OF BELLE ISLE.— THE EETEEAT TO CAET-
WEIGHT'S TICKLE.— BRIDGET KENNEDY'S COTTAGE, AND THE
LONELY STROLL OYER CARIBOO.
Wednesday, July 13. "We rise with the inten-
tion of spending the day in Belle Isle water to the
south, around what we call the Great Castle Berg — an
object, from the first, of our particular regard. The
breeze freshens from the north, but the Captain thinks
we may lie safely to the leeward of the ice, and so sketch
and write. Battle Harbor has a narrow and shallow pas-
sage into the south water. We have slipped through
that, and are now scudding before a pleasant north-
easter, directly toward the castle, and the northern cape
of Bell Isle. We are having a long ground-swell, rough-
ened with a "lop" or short sea, and the promise of
high wind. The fishing boats, more out to sea, are put-
ting in — a signal for our retreat. We confess ourselves
beaten for the day, and run for Cartwright's Tickle, a
THE RETREAT TO CARTWRIGHT S TICKLE.
205
small inlet, a mile or so distant. And a merry run of it
we are having ; a kind of experience to whicli we were
put yesterday afternoon. Wet with spray, and chilly,
we are glad to jump ashore at Mrs. Bridget Kennedy's
fishing-flake.
Kind woman, she was on the spot to ask us up
" to warm, and take a drop of tea," although no later
than 10 o'clock. Mrs. Kennedy, a smart Irish Tyidow of
Newfoundland, is " the fisherman ; " and has men and
maidens in her employ. While the tea was really
refreshing, and the fire acceptable, the smoke was ter-
rible— a circumstance over which I wept bitterly,
wiping away the tears with one hand, while I plied
the hot drink with the other. From this painfully
afiecting scene I was presently fain to retire to a sunny
slope near by, where I was soon joined by my companion
in suffering, who indulged himself, perhaps too freely, in
remarks that reflected no great credit on the architect
and builder of Mrs. Kennedy's summer-house and chim-
ney. I cannot say that we wasted, but we whiled away,
not overwillingly, the best part of two hours, looking
around — looking across a bight of water, at a nest of
flakes and huts on the hill-side, to which Swiss cottages
are tame — looking ove*r upon the good woman's garden,
the merest spot of black, in which there is nothing but
206 BRIDGET Kennedy's cottage.
soil slightly freckled with vegetation, fenced in -with old
fish-net to keep out the fowls, and a couple of goats —
looking at the astonishment of our sailors over a syphon,
made from the pliant, hollow stalk of a sea-weed,
through which water flowed from the surface of the sea
into a basin placed upon the beach ; quite a magical per-
formance they fancied it, until explained.
Tired of "waiting for the wind to lull sufficiently for
an escape back by sea, I resolved to foot it over the hills
to Battle Harbor, and have come off alone. I am sit-
ting on the moss, out of the breeze, on the warm side of
a crag, " basking in the noontide sun ; disporting here
like any other fly.'' A part of the aforesaid amusement
consists in scribbling these notes, and especially the ones
relating our enjoyments and trials at hospitable Bridget
Kennedy's.
From the hill-top above me I had a wide prospect
of the dark, rough ocean ; and of darker and rougher
land. Looking westerly, what should I discover but the
painter, silent and motionless, looking out from another
hill-top ? Beyond him, far inland, is a chain of purple
mountains, lording it over the surrounding tumult of
brown and sterile hills, in the mossy valleys of which,
they say, are dwarf woods of birch and spruce, pretty
brooks, and reaches of blue sea- water.
THE LONELY STROLL OVER CARIBOO.
207
I have turned my walk back to the vessel, into a
regular hohday stroll, jotting down from time to time
whatever happens to please me. These deep amphi-
theatres opening out of the hills to the sea, are quite
charming, and novelties in landscape. And how almost
painfully still they are ! But for the dull roar of the
surf, they would he silent as paintings. The cloudless
sun, pouring its July brightness into them, gives them a
hot-house sultriness ; and, in their moist places, almost
a hot-house growth. The universal moss, the turf of the
country, carpets their depths and graceful slopes, and
lies upon their shelves like the richest rugs ; bright red,
green, and yellow, and sprinkled with small, sweet-
smelling flowers. Along the margin of the sea all is
cracked and slashed, and has no pretty beach. Here
now is a fast little brook, eagerly driving its spirited
steed down one of these rocky cuts. Pleased with its
speed, it hurras and cracks its whip, and swings its
white-plumed cap, all in its way, as if rivers were look-
ing on, and cataracts were listening with delight. Sniy
rivulet ! it sounds like water in a mill-wheel, and will in
a moment more be lost in the great deep. Here again,
a few steps higher up the vale, the rill expands into a
pool, daintily cushioned round its edges. I he down
and drink ; kneel down and wash my hands ; wash my
208 THE LONELY STROLL OVER CARIBOO.
handkerchief and spread it in the sun to dry. Poor little
fishes ! They dart and dodge about, as if they had never
felt before the look of a human face. Over there is a
bed of grass, luxuriant as grain, witb a sprinkling of those
cotton-tufted rushes. And I sing, as I sang in my boy-
hood :
" Green grow the rushes, 0 1
'Tis neither you nor I do know,
How oats, peas, beans, .and barley grow."
After this lyrical feat, I straighten up, and look all
around, to see if any one hears me, but only catch a
glimpse of a tiny waterfall ; a little virgin all in white,
spinning her silvery thread, as she looks out of her cham-
ber window among the rocks above. For all the world !
Here comes a fly — one of our own house flies — the same
careless, familiar fellow, whose motto is : " The dwelling
owes me a living." Now what do you expect, you self-
complacent little vagabond, standing here on my hand,
and rubbing your head at this rate, looldng me in the
face, with all the thousand eyes you have, and none of
the modesty of bugs finely dressed, and vastly your supe-
rior ? I do suppose myself the first Yankee here, and
here you are. Away with you ! I have a mind to run
up yonder soft and sunny hiU-side, and roll over and over
to the bottom. I did run up the hill-side, but not to roll
THE LONELY STROLL OVER CARIBOO.
209
back to the foot of it, on this most springy of all turfs.
I sat down and panted, wiping the moisture from my
forehead, and breathing the cool ocean breeze. A half
hour's walk brought me over to the brow of the moun-
tain, with the harbor and its vessels at my feet.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE ICEBEEG OF THE FIGUEE-HEAD— THE GLOKY AND THE MUSIC
OF THE SEA AT EVENING.
Late in the afternoon, and the breeze gone down.
We are off on the gentle rollers of the Bay of St. Louis,
after a low, broad iceberg, covering, say, an acre of sur-
face, and grounded in forty fathoms of water. It has
upon one extremity a bulky tower of sixty feet, on the
other, forty, and in the middle a huge pile of ice blocks
of all shapes and sizes, the ruins of some spire. While
the outside of this heap of fragments is white, with tints
of green, touched here and there with what seems to be
the most delicate bronze and gilding ; every crevice,
where there is a shadow lurldng, is a blue, the purity
and softness of which cannot be described nor easily
imagined. To one who has any feeling for color, it has
a sentiment as sweet as any thing in all visible nature. A
pure, white surface, like this fine opaque ice, seen through
THE ICEBERG OF THE FIGURE-HEAD.
deep shade produces blue, and such a blue as one sees
in the stainless sky when it is full of warmth and light.
It is quite beyond the rarest ultramarine of the painter.
The lovely azure appears to pervade and fill the hollows
like so much visible atmosphere or smoke. One almost
looks to see it float out of the crystal cells where it re-
poses, and thin away into colorless air.
We have just been honored by a royal salute from
the walls of the alabaster fortress. Our kind angels will
keep us at a safer distance than we are disposed to keep
ourselves. A projecting table has fallen with that pecu-
liarly startling crack, quick as lightning and loud as
thunder. It seems impossible for my nerves to become
accustomed to the shock. I tremble, in spite of myself,
as one does after a fright. The explosion unquestionably
has the voice of the earthquake and volcano. To my
surprise, I find myself with cold feet and headache — those
unfailing symptoms of sea-sickness. By the painful ex-
pression of his face, I suspect, the painter is even worse
off than myself. It is impossible to avoid feeling both
vexed and amused at this companionship in misery. In
his case, the climax has been attained. Laying down
bcx and brushes with uncommon emphasis, he made a
rapid movement to the edge of the boat, and looked over
at his own image reflected in the glassy, oily-rolling
212 GLORY AND MUSIC OF THE SEA AT EVENING.
swell, with loud and violent demonstrations of disagree-
ment with himself. After this unhappy outbreak, he
wiped away the tears, and returned subdued and com-
posed to the gentler employment of the paint-box.
It is nearly nine o'clock in the evening, with the
downiest clouds dropped around the retiring sun. What
light must be behind them to fill them with such wealth
of color, and dye their front with such rich and varied
red ! The very waves below bloom with a crimson
splendor. C has finished his pictures, and we row
around the berg, a singularly irregular one, both above
and below the surface. The surrounding water, to the
eye nearly black, is irradiated, star-like, with tracts of
the clear, tender green. The effect upon us is inde-
scribably fine. I think of deep down caverns of light
shining up through the dark sea. The blocks and bowl-
ders, wrecks of former towers, which lie scattered and in
heaps upon the main berg, are like the purest alabaster
on their outer and upper sides, but of that heavenly
azure in their fissures and spaces, although wrapped in
the one great shade of evening. We now pause at the
corner of the ice, and look down both its northern and
western fronts ; the upper stories, to all appearance, in
rough marble — the lower, polished as a mirror. Almost
over us, a Greek-like figure-head, sculptured from shin-
GLORY AND MUSIC OF THE SEA AT EVENING. 213
ing crystal, gazes with serene majesty upon the white
daylight in tlie northwest. Possessed with the mournful
and nearly supernatural beauty, we forget the dangers of
this intimacy. There is a strange fascination, and par-
ticularly at this hour, that draws like the fabulous music
of the Sirens. We are headed homeward, riding silently
over the glassy waves. The surf rings in the hollows of
the iceberg, and sounds upon the shores like the last
blows of the weary day.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CAPE ST. CHAELE9.— THE KIP VAN WINKLE BEEG.— THE GEEAT
CASTLE BEEG.— STUDIES OF ITS DIFFEEENT FEONTS.
Thuksday, Juhj 14. Off again for the Great Castle
Berg. The passage from Battle Harbor into tlie south
waters is a shallow, rocky lane, and furnishes very rare
studies of color in stone. A large agate cut across would
serve the painter very well as a sample of much that is
seen here along the rough margin of this little strait.
Wave- washed, and sparkling with mica and crystalliza-
tions, and tinged with green and yellow mosses soft as
plush, the rocks are frequently very beautiful. Foremost
along the coast, reaching southwest into the straits of
Belle Isle, is Cape St. Charles, a brown promontory, rising,
as it recedes from the sea, into rocky hills tinged with a
pale green, the moss-pastures of the reindeer. Beyond the
cape is a bay with mountain shores, not unlike those of
Lake George. The fine smoke-like shadow along their
w
o
I
THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG. 215
sides is dappled with olive-green and yellowish tracts of
moss and shrubbery. The annual expenditure of nature,
on those poor mountains, for clothing and decoration is
very small. She furnishes holiday suits of cheap and
flimsy cloud, and the showy jewelry of the passing show-
ers, but refuses any bounteous outlay for the rich and
sumptuous apparel of green fields and forests. Beneath
those sunny but desolate heights, there slumbers, in the
purple, calm waters, an iceberg with a form and expression
that harmonize with the landscape. I would call it the
Kip Van Winkle iceberg. It seems to have been lying
down, but now to be half up, reposing upon its elbow.
Its head, recently pillowed on the drowsy swells, wears a
shapeless, peaked hat, from the tip of which is dropping
silvery rain through the warm, dreamy air. Between the
calm and the currents, our oarsmen are having a warm
time of it. I lay hold and labor until my hands smart,
and I feel that hot weather has come at last to Labrador.
We rest in front of the Great Castle Berg, the grand
capitol of the city of icebergs now in the waters of Belle
Isle, and, if I except the Windsor Castle Berg which wc
saw founder, the largest we have seen, and, what is most
likely, the largest we ever shall see. We merely guess at
I the dimensions. Sailing up the Niagara in the little
M steamer, how wide should you judge the falls to be from
I
I
216 THE GREAT CASTLE BERG.
*
Table Kock across to the horse-slioe tower ? I judge
this ice-front to be two-thirds that width, and quite as
high, if not higher, than the cataract. If this were float-
ed up into that grand bend of Niagara, I think it would
fill a large part of it very handsomely, with a tower rising
sufficiently above the brink of the fall to be seen from the
edge of the river for some distance above. Imagine the
main sheet, reaching from Table Kock toward the Horse-
shoe, to be silent ice, and you will have no very wrong no-
tion of the ice before us at this moment. I do not mean
to say that it has the bend of the great cataract, for it is
on this side quite devoid of flowing lines, and- abounds
with the perpendicular and horizontal for about fifty feet
from the water, when the long and very level lines begin
to be crossed by a fluted surface, resembling the folds
of carefully arranged drapery hanging gracefully from the
serrated line at the top. No other side will present this
view at all. Change of position gives an iceberg almost
as many appearances as a cumulous cloud assumes at sun-
set in the summer sky.
We have rounded an angle to the southern front, and
look upon a precipice of newly broken alabaster crowned
with a lofty peak and pinnacles. A slight sketch seems
to satisfy the painter, and so we pass round to the eastern
or ocean side, at which Captain Knight, an experienced
STUDIES OF ITS DIFFERENT FRONTS. 217
iceberger/ expresses both delight and surprise. It is a
cluster of Alpine mountains in miniature : peaks, preci-
pices, slopes and gorges, a wondrous multitude of shining
things, the general effect of which is imposing and sub-
lime. We have been looking out from Battle Island
upon this for days, and never dreamed of all this world
of forms so grand and beautiful. Besides the main, there
are two smaller bergs, but all nothing more than the
crowning towers and spires of the great mass under the
sea. Here is quite a little bay with two entrances, in
which the pale emerald waves dash and thunder, washing
the pearly shores, and wearing out glassy caverns. The
marvellous beauty of these ices prompts one to speak in
language that sounds extravagant. Had our forefathers
lived along these seas, and among these wonders, we
should have had a language better fitted to describe
them. I can easily suppose that there must be a strong
descriptive element in the Icelandic, and even in the
Greenlandic tongues. I am quite tired of the words :
emerald, pea-green, pearl, sea-shells, crystal, porcelain and
sapjjhire, ivory, marble and alabaster, snowy and rosy,
Alps, cathedrals, towers, pinnacles, domes and spires. I
could fling them all, at this moment, upon a large descrip-
tive fire, and the blaze would not be sufficiently brilliant
to light the mere reader to the scene. I will give it up,
10
218 STUDIES OF ITS DIFFERENT FRONTS.
at least for the present, and remark merely that we have
received what the French newspapers occasionally receive
— a warning. It came in the shape of a smart cracking
of rifles in some large reverberating hall. There is un-
doubtedly at hand the finest opportunity one could wish
of witnessing an ice-fall. As it is now nearly 8 o'clock
p. M., and the painting done, we shall take a hasty leave,
and content ourselves with a distant view of ice- exhibi-
tions, tame as they are, when contrasted with those more
dangerously close by. Our men have had some trouble
in keeping the boat up to the berg in the right place for
painting, (so powerful is the current on this side setting
away,) and are glad of a change.
CHAPTER XLY.
THE SAIL FOR ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.— THE SALMON FISHEPwS.—
THE CAVERN OF THE ST. CHARLES MOLTJTAIN.— BURTON'S COT-
TAGE.—MAGNIFICENT SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—
THE PAINTING OF THE RIP YAN WINKLE BERG.— THE ICE-VASE,
AND THE RETURN BY MOONLIGHT.
Our sails are up, and we glide landward, stopping to
warm at a hut on a rocky islet. Two young fellows, en-
gaged here in the salmon fishery, welcomed us to their
cabin, and soon made their rusty old cooking-stove hot
enough. The salmon are taken very much like our river
shad, in nets set in sheltered waters. We have frequent-
ly sailed past them, and seen the salmon entangled in the
meshes at quite a depth in the clear sea water, where
they have the singular appearance of yellow serpents
writhing and bounding in the folds of the seine — an op-
tical illusion caused by the distorting and magnifying
efiects of the rolling surface. These young fishermen
220 THE CAVERN OF ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.
have several hogsheads filled, and are about closing up
for the season. They were not a little amused with the
idea of our coming so far to visit icebergs, but expressed
surprise that we would run the risk of being close about
them in such warm weather. After a walk over their
island, the merest crest of rough rocks, in a storm washed
very nearly from end to end, we set off for St. Charles
Mountain, quite lofty and rising perpendicularly from the
sea. It is gashed and pierced with black chasms, some
of which are whitened with a kind of snowy glacier. We
are now approaching a cavern to all appearance spacious
enough for the dusk of a very pretty little twilight, with
a doorway fifty feet in width and a clear three hundred
feet high. The summit of the hill is six hundred and
twenty feet above the tide, and the square-headed portal
reaches all but half-way up. The ocean goes deep home
to the precipice, and so we sail right in. With the wet,
black walls and the chilly shade behind, we look back
upon the bright, sparkling sea and the shining icebergs.
The sound of the waves rings and rolls through the huge
space like the deep bass of a mighty organ. We retreat
slowly, rising and sinking on the dark, inky swells coming
in, and steer for Mr. Barton's, the sole inhabitant of the
small bay close by, where we hope for supper.
Between our landing and the supper, two hours
SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.
passed, during which G painted the Rip Van Winkle
berg, and I ascended the mountain. Crossing a little
dell to the west of the house, through which flow a
couple of tinkling rills bordered with rank grass, and
sheeted with flowers white and fragrant, I struck the
foot of a small glacier, or chasm filled with perpetual
snow, and commenced the ascent. At first I was
pleased with the notion of climbing this mer-de-neige,
and went up right merrily, crossing and recrossing,
stepping sharply into the thawing surface in order
to secure a good foothold. But as I wound my way
up the cold track, beginning to be walled in by savage
crasrs, it seemed so lonesome, and sounded so hollow
below, and looked so far down and steep behind me,
that I became suspicious, and afraid, and timidly crept
out upon its icy edge, and leaped to the solid cliff. By
this time I was too warm with a heavy overcoat, and left
it hanging upon a rock against my return. Cold and
windy as it was, I was glowing with heat when I
reached the top.
H The prospect was a new one to me, although long
H accustomed to mountain views, and more impressive
H than any thing of the kind I can remember. Rather
H more than half of the great circle was filled with the
B ocean ; the remainder was Labrador, a most desolate
222 SCENE FEOM ST. CHAELES MOUNTAIN.
extent of small rocky mountains, faintly tinted here and
there with a greenish gray, and frequently slanting down
to lakes and inlets of the sea. It may be said that
Neptune, setting his net of blue waters along this
solitary land, sprung it at last and caught it full of
these bony hills, so hopelessly hard and barren, that
he, poor old fellow, appears to have thought it never
worth his trouble to look after either net or game.
Quite in the interior were a few summits higher than
the St. Charles, the one upon which I was standing.
The sun was looking red and fiery through long lines
and bars of dun clouds, and shed his rays in streams
that bathed the stern and gloomy waste with wonder-
ful brightness. Seaward, the prospect exceeds any power
of mine at description. I have no expectation of wit-
nessing again any such magnificence in that field of
nature. Poets and painters will hereafter behold it,
and feel how suggestive it is of facts and truths, past,
present, and to come. The coast — that irregular and
extended line far north, and far away south and west,
upon which the ocean and the continent embrace and
wrestle — with its reefs and islets, inlets, bays, and capes,
waves breaking into snowy foam, twilight shadows
streaming out upon the sea from behind the headlands,
and the lights of sunset glancing through the gorges and
SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.
223
vallej's of the shore, all combined to weave a fringe of
glory both for land and ocean. The sky over the ocean
was of great extent, and gave a wonderful breadth and
vastness to the water. There was truly " the face of
the deep." And a most awful, yet a glorious counte-
nance it was, and most exquisitely complexioned, re-
flecting faintly both the imagery and the hues of heaven,
the bright, the purple and the blue, the saffron and the
rosy. Belle Isle, with its steep shores reddening with
light; lay in the south, lovely to look upon but desolate
in reality, and often fatal to the mariner. Looking
farther south and southwest, a dark line lay along the
sky — the coast of Newfoundland. I was looking up the
straits of Belle Isle. All the sea in that quarter, under
the last sunlight, shone like a pavement of amethyst,
over which all the chariots of the earth might have
rolled, and all its cavalry wheeled with ample room.
Wonderful to behold ! it was only a fair field for the
steepled icebergs, a vast metropolis in ice, pearly white
and red as roses, glittering in the sunset. Solemn, still,
and half-celestial scene ! In its presence, cities, tented
fields, and fleets dwindled into toys. I said aloud, but
low : " The City of God ! The sea of glass ! the plains
of heaven " ! The sweet notes of a wood-thrush, now
lost in the voices of the wind, and then returning
224 SCENE FliOM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.
with soft murmurs of the surf, recalled me from the
reverie into which I had lapsed unconsciously, and I
descended carefully the front of the mountain until I
stood just above the portal of the lofty cavern into which
we had sailed. The fishing-boats in a neighboring cove,
moored for the night, appeared like corks upon the dark
water, and Burton's house like the merest box. He was
just ashore from his salmon-nets, and was tossing the
shining fishes from his boat to the rocks, I counted
seven.
Coming round upon the northern slope, I was
tempted by the mossy footing to try the reindeer
method, and went bounding to the right and left until
I was brought up waist-deep in a thicket of crisp and
fragrant evergreens. When I say thicket, do not fancy
any ordinary cluster of shrubs, such as is common, for
example, among the Catskills. This, of which I am
speaking, and which is found spotting these cold hill-
sides, is a perfect forest in miniature, covering a space
twenty or thirty feet across, compact as a phalanx of
soldiery, and from three feet to six inches high. In fact,
it reminds me of a train-band standing straight and trim,
and bristling with bayonets. The little troop looked as
if it was marching up the mountain, the taller ones in
front, and the little inch-fellows following in the rear, all
SCENE FEOM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.
225
keeping step and time. There are gentlemen on the
Hudson -and around our cities, that would give a thou-
sand dollars for such a tiny little wood. It is an ex-
quisite curiosity, and must excel the dwarf shrubhery
of the Japanese. The little trees — no mere yearHngs
playing forest — are venerable with moss and lichens,
and bear the symbols of suffering and experience. All
are well-developed, complete trees, mimicking the forms
and the ways of majestic firs. The lower boughs droop
with a sad, mournful air, and their pointed tops look up
into the sunshine and down upon the minute shrubbery
below, with the gloomy repose of dark, old pines. It
made me laugh. As I waded through the pigmy woods,
running my fingers through the loftier tops, as I would
run them through the hair of a curly-headed child, and
stepping over hills and dales of green forest, I was
highly amused, both at the little woodlands and the
moral of the thing. Cutting an armful of the sweet-
scented branches, and thinking of the children at home
as I dinted the mossy pincushions bright as worsted-
work all over the ground, I hastened to regain my coat,
and get down to the fisherman's. The painter soon
came in, when we sat down to an excellent supper of
tea and fried salmon, and presently set sail by moon-
light.
10*
226 PAINTING THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.
Among the incidents of painting the berg, C
related one of some novelty. It was in deep water,
hut close to the shore, and so nicely poised that it
was evidently standing tiptoe-like on some point, and
vibrating largely at every discharge of ice. Near by as
it was, ho could paint from the shore with security — a
rare chance in summer. A heavier fall than usual
from the part fronting the land was followed by corre-
spondingly large vibrations, leaving the berg^ after it
had settled to rest, leaning toward the sea with new
exposures of ice. Among these was an isolated mass
resembling a superbly fashioned vase. Quite apart from
the parent berg, and close to the rocks, it first appeared
slowly rising out of the sea like some work of enchant-
ment, ascending higher and higher until it stood, in the
dark waters before him, some twenty feet in height — a
finely proportioned vase, pure as pearl or alabaster, and
shining with the tints of emerald and sapphire through-
out its manifold flutings and decorations. It was act-
ually startling. As it was ascending from the sea, the
water in the Titanic vase, an exquisite pale green,
spouted in all directions from the corrugated brim, and
the waves leaped up and covered its pedestal and stem
with a drift of sparkling foam. While in the process of
painting this almost magical and beautiful apparition,
THE ICE-VASE, AND THE RETURN BY MOONLIGHT. 227
I
nearly one half of the bowl burst off with the crack of a
rifle, and fell with a heavy plunge into the sea. How
much in olden times would have been made of this ! In
the twilight of truth it is easy to see that there is but
a step, an easy and a willing step, from plain facts into
wild and fanciful forms of superstition. On our way
back to harbor, we passed the Kip Yan Winkle iceberg,
and saw his broken goblet pale and spectral in the moon-
light. How lengthy will be the slumbers of the ven-
erable wanderer beneath the shadows of the mountain,
there is none but the hospitable Burtons to report.
For their sakes, whose salmon-nets his ponderous move-
ments along shore have greatly disturbed, it is to be
hoped he wiU speedily perish and be buried where he is,
or wake up and be off to sea with the dignity befitting
an iceberg of so much character.
CHAPTER XL VI.
AFTER OUE LAST ICEBEEG.— THE ISLES.— TWILIGHT BEAUTIES OF
ICEBEEGS.— MIDNIGHT ILLUMINATION.
Friday, July 15. This is another of the summer
days of Labrador, with a soft, southerly wind, tempting
one to ramble in spite of musquitoes and black flies,
which, though few, are uncommonly pestilent. The
painter is sleeping from very weariness, and I am loiter-
ing about these cliffs, note-book in hand, in a drowsy
state, for a similar reason. These long days and late
hours about headlands and icebergs are attended with
their pains as well as pleasures. From the tenor of my
pages one would think that all was joyous and interest-
ing. Let him reflect, that for his sake I record the joy-
ous and the interesting, and pass by the dull and the
vexatious. I flit from frowning cliff" to cliff where the
surf thunders and Leviathan spends his holiday among
the capelin, and linger in the sunshine and shadow of
AFTER OUR LAST ICEBERG.
au iceberg, the choicest among fifty, but give you but a
suspicion of the common things between. The spark-
ling points of the life of this novel voyage are for the
reader's eye ; the chill and the weariness, and the sea-
sickness, and the mass of things, lumpish and brown in
" the light of common day," are for that tomb of the
Capulets away back in the fields of one's own memory.
But to return : this kind of life begins to wear upon us,
to wear upon the nerves, and suggests the importance of
keeping dull and still awhile.
I find myself looking towards home, looking that way
over the sea from the hill-tops, and rather dreading the
rough and tumble and chances of the journey. I regret
that time will not permit a continuation of the voyage,
at least as far as Sandwich Bay, where the mountains
are now covered with snow. We shall visit, this after-
noon and evening, our last iceberg, and mainly for some
experiments with lights. The rocks here, among which
I saunter, are a kind of gallery tufted with wild grass
and herbage, up to which a few goats climb from the
dwellings near our vessel, and upon a patch of which I
lounge and scribble. If there were any spirit in me, the
fine prospect, although somewhat familiar, would awaken
some fresh thoughts and feelings. One thought comes
swelling up from the sluggish depths — it is this : There
230 AFTER OUR LAST ICEBERG.
is a fascination in these northern seas, with their ices and
their horrid shores. The arctic voyagers feel and act
under its impulse. I can understand their readiness to
return to polar scenes.
Late in the afternoon, sailing up the bay, after an
ugly iceberg of no particular shape or remarkable at-
traction. In New York Bay, it would be thought a
most splendid thing, and so indeed it would be ; but here,
in contrast with the great berg of Belle Isle water, and
many others, it is a small matter, a harmless and dull
specimen of its kind. Its merit is its convenience.
And yet, let me tell you, we pause in our approach at
a distance of seventy yards. I am not willing to go
any nearer upon this, the cliff side. The agent, Mr.
Bendle, told us this morning, that when he first came
from England to these shores, he was fond of playing
about icebergs, and once rowed a boat under a lofty arch,
passing quite through the berg, a thing that he could not
now be persuaded to attempt. The wind blows rather
strongly, and we lie to the leeward of the ice, rolling
quite too much for painting. There is no accounting for
these currents which flow in upon, and flow away from
these bergs. The submarine ice so interferes with the
upper and lower streams that the surface water rolls and
whirls in a manner upon which you cannot calculate.
THE ISLES.
231
Under the leeward here, one would naturally suppose
that the current would set toward the ice, and require an
effort on our part to keep away. The contrary is the
case. Two good oars are busy in order to hold us up to
our present position. The wind and the swell increase,
and so we make sail and scud to some small islands dis-
tant half a mile. We moor our boat under the shelter
of the rocks and clamber up, look around upon the ruins
washed and rusty, and take a run.
At seven o'clock I sit down on the warm side of a
crag, and look about with the intention of seeing what
there is worth looking at in a spot to which one might
flee who was tired of seeing too much. Upon the word
of a quiet man, I find myself in the very middle of the
beautiful, and ought to be thankful that we are here,
and wish that we might be suffered to come again. And
what is there here ? Wise men have written volumes
over less. I do not know but here are groups of the
South Sea Isles in miniature. For example, separated
from us by a narrow gulf of water, and such clear, bright
water, is an islet with a ridge, a kind of half-moon crest,
carpeted with olive-tinted moss, over which the lone sun
pours a stream of almost blinding light. What glory
the God of nature sheds upon these rugged outworks of
the earth ! The painter that could faithfully repeat
232 THE ISLES.
upon canvas this one effect of light would leave Claude
and Cole, and the like, far enough behind to be forgotten.
The wind is lulling ; the sun touches and seems to burn
the crest of the island opposite, after eight o'clock.
C is finishing a sketch ; the Captain and I have
been hunting the sea-pigeons' nests, a pair of which keep
flying off and on ; and now the men are making the boat
ready for our twilight and evening play around "the
ugly iceberg." How glad the poor little family of ducks
must be, from whose home we have driven them, that we
are going away. They have been .pretending to swim off,
and yet have managed to keep back near enough to watch
us over the shoulder, ever since we arrived. Timid,
cunning fellows, how much they appear to know ! A
stone disperses them, some to the wing and some to the
bottom ; and now here they are again, all riding the
same swell, and seeming to swim away while they watch
our motions, continually turning their slick, black heads
quickly over the shoulder.
If you would look upon the perfectly white and pure,
see an iceberg between you and the day's last red
heavens. If you would behold perfect brilliancy, gaze
at the crest of an iceberg cutting sharply into those
same red heavens. To all appearance it will burn and
scintillate like a crown of costly gems. In all its
TWILIGHT BEAUTIES. 233
notched, zigzag and flowing outline, it palpitates and
glitters as if it were bordered with the very lightning.
He that watches the Andean clouds of a July sunset,
and beholds them rimmed, now with pink and rose-hues,
and now with golden fire, will see the edges of an iceberg
when it stands against the sky glowing with the yellow
and orange blaze of sunset. We go to the skies for pure
azure ; you will find it at twilight in these wonderful
Greenland ices. I am looking now upon what mimics
the ruins of a tower, every block of which, in one light,
gleams like crystal ; in another, as if they had been
quarried from the divinest sky. Cloud-like and smoke-
like, they look light as the cerulean air. This, as I have
said already, is the effect of perfect white seen through
deep, transparent shadow. True azure is the necessary
result. More than enough, it would seem, has been said
of these forms and colors. But really the eye never
wearies of these arctic palaces so grandly corniced and
pillared ; these sculptures so marvellously draped. As
we gaze at them, even in this meagre and common berg,
under this delicate light veiled with the dusk of evening,
they are astonishing in their beauty. I look at them
with joyful emotions, with wonder and with love. Why
do they not rustle with a silken, satin rustle ?
After dark, we sailed round to the northern ex-
234 MIDNIGHT ILLUMINATION.
tremity, where from the lowness of the ice it was more
safe to approach it, and dropped sail in order to experi-
ment with the blue lights furnished us by the governor.
Eowing up quite closely, within eight yards perhaps,
C— — , who stood ready upon the bow, fired a couple.
In the smoke and glare " we were a ghastly crew," while
the berg was rather obscured than beautified. We then
rowed round to the side where the current w^as setting
rapidly towards the ice, and launched a flaming tar-
barrel. With a stone for ballast, it kept upright, and
floated in fine style directly into the face of the berg —
an irregular cliff of sixty feet, pierced with caverns. It
was kept for some time under a succession of the bright-
est flashes of pink light. Upon one slope of the swells
the sheaf of red flames gushing from the barrel would be
turned from, on the other, toward the ice. Thus the
whole eastern front was kept changing from light to
darkness, from darkness to light. As the brightness was
flung back and forth from the sea to the berg, and from
the berg to the sea, the effect was exceedingly novel and
beautiful. When the swells bore the full-blown torch
into a cave, and its ruddy tongues were licking the green,
glassy arches, we hoisted sail and went ~ gaily bounding
back to harbor. For a while, the fire shot its fitful
rays over the lonely waters, and gleamed " like a star in
MIDNIGHT ILLUMINATION.
235
I
the midst of the ocean." At last it was quenched in the
distant gloom. A ghostly figure with dim outline was
aU that was visible, and our work and play with icebergs
were over — over forever. It was midnight and past, when
we dropped sails alongside the vessel, after a quick run,
enlivened, as we entered the harbor, by a sudden display
of the northern-light.
CHAPTEE XLYII.
FAEEWELL TO BATTLE IIAEBOE.— THE STEAITS OF BELLE ISLE.-
LABEADOE LANDSCAPES.-THE WEECK OF THE FISHEEMEN.
Saturday, July 16. " Once more upon the waters, yet
once more." We were awakened from sound slumbers by
the footsteps and voices of the men above, making ready
for sea. It was a pleasant sound, and the sunshine
streaming down into the cabin was welcome intelligence
of the brightness of the morning. We dressed in time to
get on deck, and wave a final adieu to our friends, from
whom we had formally parted yesterday, as well as from
Mr. and Mrs. Bendle, of whose hospitality we bear away
agreeable recollections.
And now the broad Atlantic is before, and Cape
St. Louis, its waters and its ices, behind the intervening
islands. The signal staffs of Battle and Cariboo Islands
are yet visible from the high rocks that overlook that
busy nest of fishermen, with its steepled church and par-
FAREWELL TO BATTLE HARBOR. 237
sonage. God's love abide with the man that lives there,
and ministers to the religious wants of men, women, and
children, who have little else than respect and affection
to make his home comfortable and happy. While kind
(hearts, and none kinder than those of the Esquimaux,
throb beneath rough manners and uncomely raiment,
there are wicked spirits there, no doubt, as everywhere,
that hurt and hinder, and never help, and render the
solitary path among the rocks insufferably lonesome and
painful. The remembrances of famous and beloved kin-
dred, of old and honored Cambridge, and of the quiet
rectory under the Malvern Hills, are much to a cultivated
and sensitive nature ; the bliss that flows from daily
duties cheerfully done with an habitual resignation to the
will of God, and with hopes of glory in the future, is
more than recollections, to a heart whose motive powers
■ are Christian faith and love. But amid all the sweetest
memories, and the brightest hopes, and the comforting
Hi satisfaction of believing well and doing well, it is a fear-
ful thing for cultivated man to toil in solitude and de-
privation. Although heaven is above him, and his path-
^M way certainly upward, yet a double portion of all those
" good and perfect gifts coming from above, be awarded to
the man whose parish is in Labrador ; who, when he
leaves the still companionship of books for the toils of the
23S THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE.
gospel from door to door, must take down either his oars
or his snow-shoes, and sweep over the snow-drift or the
billow.
We now beat slowly up the straits of Belle Isle for the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, hoping to pass these dangerous
waters by daylight. They are very fair to look upon at
this time of day, studded in all directions with those shin-
ing palaces of ice seen from the top of St. Charles Moun-
tain. The coast hills have a graceful outline, and slant
quite smoothly down, abutting on the sea in low broken
cliffs. They resemble the hills of Maine and Canada
after April thaws, while the heavier snow-drifts yet re-
main, and the yellow brown sod is patched with faint
green. Forsaken country ! if that can be called forsaken
which appears never to have been possessed. Doleful and
neglected land ! Chilly solitude keeps watch over your
unvisited fields, and frightens away the glory of the fruit-
ful seasons. The loving sunshine and the healing warmth
wander hand in hand tenderly abroad, calling upon the
lowly moss to wake up and blossom, and to the tiny,
half-smothered, flattened willows to rise and walk along
the brook banks. But the white-coated police of winter,
the grim snow-drifts, watch on the craggy battlements
of desolation, and luxuriance and life peep from their
dark cells only to sink back pale and spiritless. To a
LABRADOR LANDSCAPES. 239
traveller there is real beauty on the tawny desert and the
wild prairie ; but there is to me an awful lonesomeness
and gloom in these houseless wastes where the eye with
■fan insane perverseness will keep looking for cottage
smokes and pasture fences. I think of landscapes drying
off after the flood.
The bergs are in part behind us, and we are rocking
on the easy swells of Henly Harbor, where we can glean
no more signs of human " toil and trouble " than are just
enough to tie a name to, and quite a pretty name too.
The lazy sails flap idly in the sunshine, and the cold air
cuts with the sharpness of a frosty October morning. I
sit in the July heat with overcoat, and cloak over the over-
coat, woollen mittens and woollen stockings, and with
cold feet at that. And yet this miserable shore has, in
its cod and salmon, attractions for thousands of people
during the transient summer. Even the long and almost
arctic winter with its seals and foxes detains hundreds.
But, as a fisherman told me one day, while tossing upon
K the dock with his pitchfork a boat-load of cod, " It is a
poor trade." It is a little trying to patience to be rolling
in this idle way, with the creak of spars and the rattling
of blocks and rigging, especially as a breeze has been
ewin.Q-m!!? the blue water for an hour not more than a mile
)f us. We do move a little, just a little, enough
240 THE WRECK OF THE FISHERMEN.
to keep the hope breathing that we shall soon move off
with reasonable speed.
The current is almost a river stream, and we are drift-
ing rapidly, which is not a pleasant thing to be thinking
about, with these waters scouring the very banks, and a
short cable. I am gazing back upon the southern point
of Belle Isle with a mournful interest. It was only the
night of the second, the same night we ran into Twillin-
gate to escape a gale, that a vessel was lost there, and all,
or nearly all, on board perished. At this moment there
is a faint line of white, but not a murmur. All looks
quiet there and peaceful, as if the lion was going up to
lie down with the lamb.
CD
o •
I
CHAPTER XLYIIT.
SKETCHING THE PASSING BEEGS.— THE STOEY OP AN ICEBEEG.
The painter is a model of industry, sketcliing and
painting the bergs as we pass them. They are now clus-
tered on the northern horizon, with a few exceptions.
We have been for some time near one, out of which
might be cut an entire block of Broadway buildings, evi-
dently presenting the same upper surface that it had
when it slid as a glacier from the polar shore. If such is
the fact, we infer that in its long glacial experience it
could not have remained- long near any mass of earth
higher than itself, for there is not a stone or particle of
dust or earthy stain upon it. It is as spotless as a cloud
" after the tempest." How beautiful is the sentiment of
it ! It carries the imagination away to those heavenly
walls depicted in Revelation, and sends it back upon the
track of its own story.
11
242 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
The story of an iceberg ! yes, indeed ; and a most
wonderful tale would it be, could it be truthfully written.
It would run up into, and become lost in the story of the
great glaciers of Greenland ; the half of which science it-
self has not learned, profoundly as it has penetrated the
mysteries of the Alpine glaciers.
There are valleys reaching from the interior to the
coast, filled with glaciers of great depth and breadth,
which move forward with an imperceptible but regular
motion. The continent, as one might call Greenland,
does not shed the bulk of its central waters in fluid rivers,
but discharges them to the ocean in solid, crystalline, slow-
ly progressing streams. They flow, or rather march, with
irresistible, mighty force, and far-resounding footsteps,
crossing the shore line, a perpetual procession of block-
like masses, flat or diversified with hill and hollow on the
top, advancing upon the sea until too deeply immersed
longer to resist the buoyant power and pressure of the
surrounding waters, when they break upwards, and float
suspended in the vast oceanic abyss. The van of the gla-
cial host, previously marked ofl* by fissures into ranks,
rushes from the too close embrace of its new element, and
wheels away, an iceberg — the glistening planet of the sea,
whose mazy, tortuous orbit none can calculate but Him
who maps the unseen currents of the main.
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. . 243
When and where, on the lengthy Greenland coast,
did this huge block make the grand exchange of de-
ments ? Which, if any of these great buildings " not
made with hands/' now whitening the blue fields of Nep-
tune, followed or preceded it ? What have been its sol-
emn rounds ? Through what winters has it slept, and
caught the snows upon the folds of its sculptured draper-
ies ? How many summers has it bared its spotless bosom
to the sun and rains ? What nights of auroral splendors
have glassed their celestial countenance in its shining mir-
rors ? What baths and vases of blue water have opened
their pure depths to moon and stars ? What torrents
and cascades have murmured in its glassy chasms, crystal
grottoes, Alpine dells ? And who shall count its battles
with the waves and tempests, when with the surf about
its shoulders and among its locks, and the clouds around
its brow, it stood far up from the unsounded valleys of
ocean " tiptoe on the mountain top " ?
In the defiles and gorges of the Arctic coast are pro-
digious accumulations of ice — the congelation of small
streams flowing from the adjacent mountains-^the glaciers
m of the coast range, in short. These gradually encroach
" upon, and overhang the sea ; and are continually breaking
_ off, from the undermining of the waves which beat at their
B base. Such is the depth of water, that the hugest ava-
244 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
lanche of ice can fall with safety to itself, and float
away.
When, and in what bay or inlet, may this Great
Northern have been launched ? Out of what gloomy
fiord may have rolled the billows, after its icy fastenings
were loosed, and it slid, with the thunder of an earth-
quake, down its slippery ways, and plunged into the black
deep ?
Until science have her beaten pathway over polar
waves and hills, and measure the rain-falls and the snow-
falls, and the freezings of the one and the compactings
of the other, the story of the glacier and the iceberg, in
their native land and seas, will be left, in part, to the
imagination — a faculty, after all, that will ever deal with
those wonderful ices about as satisfactorily as the faculty
that judges according to the sense, as Bishop Leighton
calls the mere scientific faculty. The truth of this is
illustrated by the very icebergs about us. Emphatically
as they speak to the naturalist with his various instru-
mentalities, they speak, at the same moment, with mar-
vellous eloquence to the poet and the painter. There are
forces, motions, and forms, voices, beauties, and a senti-
ment, which escape the touch of science, and are scarcely
caught by the subtle, poetic mind. Icebergs, to the
imaginative soul, have a kind of individuality and life.
I
I
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. 245
They startle, frighten, awe ; they astonish, excite, amuse,
delight and fascinate ; clouds, mountains and structures,
angels, demons, animals and men spring to the view of
the beholder. They are a favorite playground of the
lines, surfaces and shapes of the whole world, the heavens
above, the earth and the waters under : of their sounds,
motions and colors also. These are the poet's and the
painter's fields, more than they are the fields of the mere
naturalist, much as they are his. Do not these fifty
bergs, in sight from any crag frowning in its iron strength
above the surf, speak more a living language to the crea-
tive, than to the mensural faculty ? Let us see.
They have a daily experience, and a current history
more remarkable now than ever. Whatever may have
been the wonders of their conception, birth and growth ;
however lengthy and devious their voyage, they are present
in these strange seas, in these tepid waters and soft airs,
to undergo their last, fatal changes, and dissolve forever
into their final tomb. There are fifty icebergs, more or
less. Apparently similar in appearance, yet each differs
widely from all others. Exhibiting similar phenomena,
yet each has complexions, movements, sounds and won-
ders of its own. If we choose, though, to add to the per-
formances of to-day, those of yesterday and to-morrow,
M we shall find that the experience of any one berg closely
■I
246 THE STORY OF AN ICEBKRG.
resembles that of all. The entire circle of its looks and
doings corresponds with the circle of nearly every other
berg, and so of all together, differing merely in the mat-
ter of time — as to when the changes take place. The de-
scription upon which I will venture, and which might be
gleaned from the foregoing pages, is, therefore, strictly
true, except that the phases and accidents are supposed
to occur in rapid succession. In a word, what you would
behold in all of these fifty, within twenty-four hours, you
are to fancy of one, in the course of an afternoon.
I have before me, in my mind's eye, the Windsor
Castle berg, fresh from the north, and the Great Castle
berg, of Belle Isle water, which it entered early last May,
and as large, at the time of its arrival, as both of them
at present combined. And so I am looking at a verita-
ble berg of Cape St. Louis, small, though, in comparison
with the berg of Cape St. Francis, " a vast cathedral of
dazzling white ice, with a front of 250 feet perpendicular
from the sea,'' visited by the Bishop of Newfoundland in
the summer of 1853.
I will describe, first, the figure of the berg. It is a
combination of Alp, castle, mosque, Parthenon and cathe-
drah It has peaks and slopes ; cliffs, crags, chasms and
caverns ; lakes, streams and waterfalls. It has towers,
battlements and portals. It has minarets, domes and
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG." 247
steeples ; roofs and gables ; balustrades and balconies ;
fronts, sides and interiors ; doors, windows and porches ;
steps and entrances ; columns, pilasters, capitals and en-
tablatures ; frieze, architrave and cornice ; arches, clois-
ters, niches, statuary and countless decorations ; flutings,
corrugations, carvings, panels of glassy polish and in the
rough ; Greek, Koman, Gothic, Saracenic, Pagan, Sav-
age. It is crested with blades and needles ; heaped here
and there with ruins, blocks and bowlders, splintered and
crumbled masses. This precipice has a fresh, sharp frac-
ture ; yonder front, with its expanse of surface beautifully
diversified with sculptured imagery and other ornament,
has. the polish of ivory — the glassy polish of mirrors — the
enamel of sea-shells — the fierce brightness of burnished
steel — the face of rubbed marble — of smoothest alabaster
H — of pearl — porcelain — lily-white flesh — lily-white wax —
the flesh-finish of beauty done in the spotless stone of
I Italy. This, though, is but the iceberg of the air ; the
head and crown only of the iceberg of the deep sea.
From the figure of the berg, I will come to describe
an important feature of its life and history : its motion ;
not its movement from place to place, but upon its cen-
tre— its rotation and vibration. Where the berg is not
grounded — in which case it only beats and sways to and
fro, vibrating through the arc of a circle like an inverted
I
24o THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
pendulum — when it is not grounded, it must be supposed
to hang suspended at the surface — all but the topmost
part — just under the surface of the ocean, very much as
a cloud, a great white thunder-head, hangs suspended in
the upper air. Balanced around its he^irt, far down in
the deep, and in its cold solidity " dry as summer dust "
— poised upon its centre with perfect exactness, it is
evident that the loss of a single ton of ice shifts that cen-
tre, shifts it an ounce-notch on the bar of the mighty
scale, destroys the equilibrium, and subjects the whole to
the necessity of some small movement in order to regain
its rest. When, instead of one ton, thousands fall off, it
sets a rolhng the whole clifted and pinnacled circumfer-
ence.
And here begins that exhibition of novel forms and
shapes, and of awful force, and the sublimity of stupen-
dous masses in motion, that so impresses, awes, startles,
and fascinates the beholder. A berg in repose, wondrous
as it is to him that dares to linger in its presence, differs
from itself in action, as a hero in his sleep differs from
himself upon the field of battle.
With regard to the motions of the berg, it must be
borne in mind, that, from the fact of its centre being not
on a level with the surface of the sea, but at depths
below, they are quite different from w^hat might at first
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
249
be imagined. A rough globe, revolving upon its axis,
Avitb but a small portion of its bulk, say a twelfth, above
the water ; or, better still, the hub and spokes merely
of a common wagon wheel, dowly rolling back and forth,
will serve for illustration. The uppermost spoke, in its
vibrations to the right and left, describes a line of some
extent along the surface, not unlike an upright stick
moving to and fro, and gradually rising and sinking as
it moves. In this movement back and forth, the two
adjacent spokes will be observed to emerge and disappear
correspondingly. In this way, a berg of large diameter,
instead of falling over upon the sea like a wall or pre-
cipice, appears to advance bodily, slowly sinking as it
comes, with a slightly increasing inclination toward you.
In its backward roll, this is reversed. It seems to be
retreating, slowly rising as it floats away, with a slightly
increasing inclination from you. In these grand vibra-
tions, projecting points and masses of opposite sides
correspondingly emerge and disappear, rising apparently
straight up out of the sea on this side, going down as
straight on the other.
From the figure and motion of the berg, I come to
describe the motive power, rather the explosive power,
through which the delicate balance is destroyed, and mo-
tion made a necessity in order to gain again equilibrium
11*
250 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
and rest. Whatever may be the latent heat of ice, is a
question for the professed naturaHst. Two things are
evident to the unlearned observer : an iceberg is as solid
as ivory, or marble from the lowest depths of a quarry,
and cold apparently as any substance on the earth can
be made. This compact and perfectly frozen body, im-
mersed in the warm seas of summer, and warmer atmos-
phere, finds its entire outside, and especially that portion
of it which is exposed to the July sun, expanding under
the influence of the penetrating heat. The scrutiny of
science would, no doubt, find it certain that this heat, in
some measure, darts in from all sides in converging rays
to the very heart. The expanding power of heat be-
comes at length an explosive force, and throws ofi", with
all the violence and suddenness of gunpowder, in suc-
cessive flakes, portions of the surface. The berg, then,
bursts from expansion, as when porcelain cracks with
sharp report, suddenly and unequally heated on the
winter stove. Judge of the report when the porcelain
of a great cliff cracks and falls, or when the entire berg
is blasted asunder by the subtle, internal fire of the
summer sun ! If you would hear thunders, or whole
broadsides and batteries of the heaviest ordnance, come
to the iceberg then.
Speaking incidentally of noises, reminds me of the
THE STOKY OF AN ICEBERG.
hues and tints of tlie iceberg. Solomon in all his glory
was not clothed like the flowers of the field. Would you
behold this berg apparelled with a glory that eclipses
all floral beauty, and makes you think, not only of the
clouds of heaven at sunrise and sunset, but of heaven
itself, you must come to it at sunrise and at sunset.
Then, too, you would hear its voices and its melodies,
the deep and mournful murmuring of the surf in its
caverns. Hark ! In fancy I hear them now, half thun-
der, and half the music of some mighty organ.
And this reminds me of the sea, which shares with
the iceberg something of the glory and the power. In
the first place, from the white brightness of the ice, the
eye is tuned to such a high key, or so stimulated and be-
dazzled, that the ocean is not only dark by contrast, but
dark in reality. It is purple, so deep as to amount al-
most to blackness — an evening violet I would call it, a
complexion magnificent and rich exceedingly in the blaze
of noon, and at late and early hours when the skies are
full of brilliant colors. What heightens the efiect of
this dye of the ocean, is the pale emerald water around
the berg, and in which it floats as in a vast bath, the
loveliness, clarity and divine beauty of which no language
can paint in a way to kindle the proper feeling and
emotion. From ten to fifty feet in breadth, it encircles
252 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
the berg, a zone or girdle of sky-green, that most deli-
cate tint of the sunset heavens, and lies, or plays with a
kind of serpent play, between the greenish white ice and
the violet water, as the bright deeps of air lie beyond the
edge of a blue-black cloud. There is no perceptible
blending, but a sharp line which follows, between the
bright and the dark, the windings of the berg, across
which you may, if you have the temerity, row the bow
of your whale-boat, and gaze down, down the fearfully
transparent abyss, until the dim ice-cliffs and the black
deeps are lost in each other's awful embrace.
I have spoken of the figure, motion, and the breaking
of the iceberg, incidentally mentioning its sounds, its
colors, and the surrounding waters. You are now ready
to go with us, and spend the afternoon about it. Early
in the morning, and for the last hour, all but its heights
and peaks has been wrapped in cloud-like fog. That,
you discover, is thinning off, and will presently all pass
away. The breeze is fresh from the north, and we will
sail down upon the north-eastern side, until we have it
between us and the 3 o'clock sun. We are upon sound-
ings, and, as we glide from the broad sunny tract into the
shadow of the berg, the ocean should be green, a deep
green. But we have been sailing with the white ice in
our eyes, and you see the ocean a dark purple. The
I
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. 253
captain drops sail, and sets the men at their oars. As
the current sets back from the berg — the reverse of the
current below — you notice that they are pulling slowly^
but steadily forward without any perceptible advance.
We are distant a good hundred yards, as near again as
we ought to be for safety. But this is the position for
the painter, and it will be the care of the captam to keep
it, the required time, as nearly as possible.
As the broad roller lifts us lightly and gracefully, and
leaves us sinking on its after-slope, how majestic is the
silent march of it, the noiseless flight of it ! But look !
— look ! — as it flees in all its imposing breadth of dark-
ness, see the great, green star upon its breast — a spangle
green as grass, as the young spring grass in the sunsliine,
gleaming like some skylight of the deep, some emerald
window in the dome of the sea-palace, letting up the
splendor. What do you suppose that is? It is ice, a
point of the berg pricking up into the illuminated sur-
ilice and reflecting the light. You will understand that
better, perhaps, by and by. But wait an instant.
Now ! — now ! — Beauty strikes the billow with her
magic rod, and, presto — change ! — all is glittering
green. A thousand feet of purple, cloud-like wave
passes, in the twinkling of an eye, into the brightness
of an emerald gem, and thus rolls up and smites the
254 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
iceberg. And thus, like night perpetually bursting into
the splendid noon, roll up the billows, and strike the
minutes of the hour. How beautiful is the transfigura-
tion ! See them split upon this angle of the castle ;
and as they run along the walls, with the whispery,
hissing sound of smoothly sliding waters, mark how high
they wash, and sweep them with their snowy banners,
here and there bending over, and curling into long scrolls
of molten glass, which burst in dazzling foam, and
plunge in many an avalanche of sparkling jewelry.
Into the great porch of yonder Parthenon they rush
in crowds, and thunder their applause upon the steps.
Is not all this very grand and beautiful ? Have
you ever seen the like before ? The like of it is not to
be seen upon the planet, apart from the icebergs. With
cold, fixed, white death, life — warm, elastic, palpitating,
glorious, powerful life — is wrestling, and will inevitably
throw. Do you see " the witchery of the shadows " ?
Pray look aloft. Castle, temple, cliff, all built into one,
are draped with shadows softer than the tint of doves,
the morning's early gray, dappled with the warm pearly
blues of heaven, and edged with fire. The sun is behind
the ice, and the light is pouring over. A flood of light
is pouring over. All is edged with fire, streaming with
lightning ; all its notched and flowing edges hemmed
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. 255
with live, scintillating sunshine, ruby, golden, green, and
blue. See you below that royal sepulchre through its
crystal door ? Beauty hangs her lamp in there, and the
sky-blue shadow looks like the fragrant smoke of it. Now
tell me, was there ever any thing more lovely .? Have
the poets dreamed of rarer loveliness ? The surf springs
up like an angel from the tomb, and, with a shout
of triumph, strikes it with its silvery wings. Ha !
you start. But do not be frightened. It was only
the cracking of the iceberg. But was there ever
such a blow .? — quick — tremulous — ringing — penetrat-
ing. Why, it jarred the sea, and thrilled the heart like
an electric shock. One feels as if the berg had dropped,
instantly dropped an inch, and cracked to the very core.
Captain Knight, shall we not fall back a little .? we are
surely getting too close under.
K While I have been talking, the painter, who sits
midship, with his thin, broad box upon his knees,
making his easel of the open lid, has been dashing
in the colors. The picture is finished, and so, at the
word, the men pull heavily at their oars, and we come
round upon the south-eastern, or the cathedral front, as I
will call it, from the fact that the general . appearance is
architectural, and the prevailing style, the Gothic. A
dome and minaret, curiously thrown in upon one wing
25G THE STOKY OF AN ICEBERG.
of the berg, and some elaborately cut arches opening
through the water-line into the cloister-like cavern,
would suggest the Saracenic. But the pointed and
the perpendicular prevail, springing up full of life and
energy, vivid and flame-like in their forms.
As the berg faces, we are getting the last glances of
the 4 o'clock sun, and have broad sheets of both light
and shadow. You see how spirited the whole thing is.
It is full of brilliant, strong effects. While the hollows
and depressions harbor the soft, slaty shadows, points and
prominences fairly blaze and sparkle with sunshine. The
current now, you discover, sweeps us past the ice, and
compels us to turn about and row up the stream. Here
is the point where all is strong and picturesque, and here
they hold on for the paiater. Let us sit upon the little
bow-deck, and look, and listen to the noises of the waves
at play in the long, concealed, under-sea piazza. How
they slap the hollow arches ! Hisses, long-drawn sighs,
booming thunder-sounds, mingle with low muttering,
plunging, rattling, and popping — a bedlam of all the
lunatic voices of the ocean. We appear to be at the
edge of a shower, such a sprinkling and spattering of
drops. All abroad, and all aloft, from every edge and
gutter the iceberg spouts, and rains, and drips. Over
the entire face of the ice is flowing swiftly down one
I
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. 257
noiseless river thin as glass, looking, for all the world,
like the perpetual falling of a transparent veil over the
richest satin. Here and there, the delicate stream cuts
into the silvery enamel, and engraves, in high relief,
brilliant shields of jewelry, diamonds, rubies, amethysts,
emeralds and sapphires. But yonder is a rare touch of
the enchanter. Pray, look at it carefully. It is a
glistening blue line of ice, threading the whiteness
from top to bottom, a good two hundred feet. It looks
as if the berg were struck, not with lightning, but with
sapphire. It is simply transparent ice, and may be com-
pared to a fissure filled with pellucid spring-water, with
depths of darkness beyond the visible, illuminated edge.
Darkness below the pure light flowing in, and reflecting
from the inner sides of the white ice, gives us the blue.
You understand the process by which so beautiful a re-
sult is effected ? Well, the glacier of which this berg is
a kind of spark, is mainly compacted snows, compressed
to metallic hardness in the omnipotent grasp of nature.
As it slides on the long, inland valley slope, it bends
and cracks. The surface-water fills the crevice, and is
frozen. Thus the glacier is mended, but marked forever
with the splendid scar which you see before you. You
fancy it has the hardness of a gem ; it is softer than the
flinty masses between which it seems to have been run
258 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
like a casting. On the opposite slope of the berg, you
will find it the channel of a torrent, melting and wearing
faster than the primitive ice.
How terribly startling is tliis explosion ! It re-
sounded like a field-piece. And yet you perceive only a
small bank of ice floating out from below where it burst
off. Small as it is, the whole berg has felt it, and is
slightly rolling on its deep down centre. You perceive
that it is a perfectly adjusted pair of scales, and weighs
itself anew at the loss of every pound. At the loss of
every hunce, the central point, around which millions of
tons are balanced, darts aside a very little, and calls
upon the entire bulk to make ready and balance all
afresh. You see the process going on. There, the water-
line is slowly rising ; and you peep into the long, green-
ish-white hollow, polished and "vvinding as the interior of
a sea-shell. Now it pauses, and returns. So will it rise
and sink alternately until it stands like a headland of
everlasting marble.
Again the painter wipes his brushes, puts away his
second picture, and tacks a fresh pasteboard within the
cover of his box, and gives the word to pull for the south-
western side. How finely nature sculptures her decora-
tions ! "Would not Palmer, Powers, and others of that
company, whose poetic language is in spotless stone, love
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. " 259
^to be with us ? Mark the high rehefs, and the deep, fine
fluting of this angle, as we pass from the Temple front
to the clifted. Here you see less to please, and more to
terrify. A word or so describes it : It is a precipice of
sparkHng, white ice, freshly broken. The edge of newly
broken china is nearest like it, with the suspicion of
green for forty feet or more up, the reflection of that
lovely pale green water. Now the currents recoil and
roll in upon the huge wall in whirling eddies, requiring
steady toil at the oars, to keep off a plump two hundred
yards, the proper distance for sketching so large a per-
pendicular mass.
If we except the quality and texture of the fracture,
there is little to paint in all this blaze of sunlight. The
outline of the berg, though, is worth remembering. It
cuts the blue vault like the edge of a bright sword, and
pricks it with flashing spears. The eye darts from point
to point along its lengthy, zig-zag and flowing thread, and
sweeps from the sea upward and over to the sea again.
How persistently the treacherous current labors to bear
' us in upon the clift' ! Let alone the oars five minutes,
and we should be among the great rain-drops slipping
from the overhanging crags.
I Horrible ! The berg is burst. The whole upper
front is coming. There it is — gone in the sea. Keep
b
260 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
still ! — Keep still ! — Don't be frightened ! The captain
will manage it. Here come the big swells. Hurra !
Look out for the next ! Here we go — splendid ! Now
for the third and last. How she combs as she comes.
Hurra ! — Hurra ! Here we are — all safe — inside of them.
See them go ! — racing over the ocean, circles of plumed
cavalry. Now for the berg. He'll make a magnificent
roll of it, if he don't go to pieces. Should he, then put
us half a mile away. See it rise ! — The water-line —
rising — rising — up — up. It looks like a carriage-way.
Hark ! — Crack — crack — crack. Quick ! — quick ! Look
at the black water here ! — all spots and spangles of
green. Something is coming ! There it comes ! The
very witchcraft of the deep — Neptune's half-acre, bowers,
thrones, giants, eagles, elephants, vases spilling, fountains
pouring, torrents tumbling, glassy banks. Look at the
peaks slanting off into the blue air, and the great slant
precipice. Hah ! Don^t you see ? It is coming again —
slowly coming ! Crack — crack — crack. Down sinks the
garden — on roll the swells — down go bowers, thrones, stat-
uary— lost amid the tumult and thunder of the surf. Over
bends the precipice — this way over — frightfully over — in
roll the waves — roaring, thundering in — dashing, lashing-
crag and chasm. Wonderful to see ! Waterfalls bursting
into light above — plunging in snowy columns to the sea.
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG. 261
How terrible — terrible all this is ! But 0, how beau-
tiful ! Who, that does not witness it, knows any thing
of the bursting of an iceberg ? It comes with the crash
of a thunderbolt. But how can one tell the horrible,
shocking noise ? A pine split by lightning has the point,
but not the awful breadth and fulness of the sound.
Air, ocean, and the berg, all fairly spring at the power of
it. And then the ice-fall, with its ringing, rumbling,
crashing roar, and the heavy, explosion-like voice of the
final plunge, followed by the wild, frantic dashing of the
waters. You see the whole upper face of the ice, yards
deep, and scores of them in width, all gone. All was
blasted off- instantly, and dropped at once, a stupendous
cataract of brilliant ruins.
Here we are, at last, where the painter will revel —
between the glories of sunset and the iceberg. What
shall we call all this magnificence, clustered in a square
quarter of a mile ? The Bernese Alps in miniature. A
dark violet sea, and Alps in burnished silver, with the
colors of the rainbow dissolving among them. Lofty
ridges, of the shape of flames, have the tint of flame ;
out of the purity of lilies bloom the pink and rose ; sky-
blue shadows sleep in the defiles ; I will not say cloth of
gold drapes, but water of gold washes — water of green,
of orange, scarlet, crimson, purple, wash the crags and
I
I
I
262 THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
steeps ; strange metallic tints gleam in the shaggy
caverns — copper, bronze, and gold. Endless grace of form
and outline ! — endless, endless beauty ! Its shining image
is in the deep, hanging there as in a molten looking-glass.
Look down and see it. Now the last rays of day strike
the berg. How the hues and tints change and flit, flush
and fade ! A very mirror for the fleeting glories of the
sunset, or the fitful complexions of the northern light.
Prodigal Nature ! Is she ever wasting splendors at this
rate ? "Watch them on this broad, slanting park of
lily-white satin. White ! — It has just a breath of pink.
Pink .?— It is the richest rose — rose deepening into pur-
ple— purple trembling into blue, pearly blue, skirted
with salmon-tints and lilac. Where are the train-bearers
of this imperial robe ? There they are, the smooth,
black swells, one, two, three, rolling up, and changing
into green as they roll up — far up, and break in spark-
ling diamonds on the bosom of the lustrous alabaster.
Do you hear the music ? 0 what power in sound !
Clothed in green and silver, the royal bands of the great
deep are playing at every portal of the iceberg. Hark !
Half thunder, and half the harmony of grand organs.
" "Waters, in the still magnificence,
Their solemn cymbals beat."
The painter's work is over. And now for harbor — all
THE STORY OF AN ICEBERG.
263
sails spread — a downy pressure on them, and the twilight
ocean. Indomitable pencil ! If the man is not at it
again ! — A last, flying sketch in lead. Let us take one
more look at the berg — a farewell look. It is a beautiful
creation — superlatively beautiful. It is more— sublime
and beautiful — fold upon fold — spotless ermine — caught
up from the billows, and suspended by the fingers of
Omnipotence.
The Merciful One ! It is falling ! — Cliffs and pinna-
cles bursting — crashing — tumbling with redoubling thun-
ders.— Pillars and sheaves of foam leap aloft. — Wave
chases wave, careering wild and high. — Columns and
splintered fragments spring from the deep convulsively,
toppling and plunging. — A multitude of small icebergs
spot the dusky waters. One slender obelisk, slowly rock-
ing to and fro, stands a monument among the scattered
ruins.
CHAPTER XLIX.
DEIFTING IN THE STRAITS.— EETEEAT TO TEMPLE BAT.— PICTU-
EESQUE SCENEEY.— YOTAGEES' SATUEDAY NIGHT.
We are drifting to the north shore in spite of all that
can be done, and positively have not been before in so
great danger. Our anchor, with all the cable we have,
would be swinging above the bottom, were we close to
the rocks. A reckless skipper, not long ago in a similar
predicament, let go his anchor with the expectation that
it would catch in time to save him, but he went bows on,
and lost his vessel Our hope is that some one of the
flaws of wind, now ruffling the water every little while
in various directions, will catch our sails, and allow us to
escape into Temple Bay, a land-locked harbor close by.
My anxiety to return home makes this delay a little
vexatious, and galls my thin-skinned patience. We had
every reason to hope, this morning, that we should be
PICTURESQUE SCENERY.
265
I
through these perilous narrows and upon the broad gulf
by midnight.
The breeze touches us at the last moment, and we
are gliding through the narrow pass between high craggy
banks, over a comparatively shallow bottom, visible from
the deck, into what appears to be a lake surrounded by
mountains not unlike those about West Point, barring
their fine woods. Keally Labrador can show us, at last,
a little forest greenery. Without a point of grandeur,
this is the most picturesque scenery we have found on
the coast. The greenish waters, tinted by the verdure
reflected from their surface, expand to the breadth of a
mile by six or seven in length, with a depth of fifty
fathoms or more. We glide past the village — a knot of
fish-houses, flakes and dwellings, in the bight to the
left or south, and drop anchor within pistol-shot of the
spruces and a mountain brook. Here we are, till next
week, like a lonely fly on this mirror of the mountains,
and must make the most of our shadows and reflections,
sunshine and solitude, and see what they will bring us.
I sit upon deck and look about upon the wild, noise-
less scene, and say : What a lonely Saturday afternoon !
The weary week is just lying down to ruminate in these
solemn shades. A few scattering sounds, the finishing
strokes of the axe and hammer, and the low wail of the
12
266 voyagers' Saturday night.
surf beyond the coast-ridge break the rest of the cool,
bracing air. The upper end of the lake, as I call the
bay or fiord, is hidden behind a headland, reminding me
of our Hudson Butter Hill. Nothing would be pleasanter
than a small voyage of discovery by twilight. Below the
stern of the schooner, which swings near the beach, are the
timbers of a ship peeping above water, and full of story,
no doubt, as so many old salts. "We have had a most
agreeable tea-time, the Captain entertaining us with in-
cidents of his life upon these northern seas. My regret,
not to say vexation, that we had to leave the strait and
retreat to the safety of this lovely fold, provided by the
Good Shepherd of the deep, is quite dissipated after a
little sketch of the perils to which v/e should have been
subjected among the currents, becalmed and immersed in
fog, banks of which I see already peeping over the hills
along the shore. Sunset and twilight and the dusk of
evening have come and gone. The stars are out in mul-
titudes, Arcturus among them high in the great arch,
and the depths, above which we seem to hang suspended,
are thickly sown with their trembling images.
I
CHAPTER L.
SOTTDAY IN TEMPLE BAT.— EELIGIOUS SERVICES.— THE FISHEEMAN'S
DINNEE AND CONVEESATION.— CHATEAU.— THE WEECK.— WINTEE9
IN LABEADOE.— ICEBEKGS IN THE WINTER— THE FEENCH OFFI-
CEES' FEOLIC WITH AN ICEBEEG.— THEOEY OP ICEBEEGS.— CUE-
EENTS OF THE STEAIT.— THE EED INDIANS.— THE EETUEN TO
THE VESSEL.
Monday, July 19. Early yesterday morning, a boat
with tan-colored sails came off from the town, and found
that we were not traders from Newfoundland, as they
supposed, but visitors merely, and direct from Mr.
Hutchinson, their minister, of whose return they were
delighted to hear tidings. It was soon settled that I
should be their clergyman for the day, notice of which
was given very quickly upon their going back to the
village, by sending from house to house, and flying the
Sunday flag, a white banner with a red cross. Our men,
in holiday clothes, were prompt at their oars, and soon
placed us on the beach, where we were met by Mr.
268 THE fisherman's dinner and conversation.
Clark, one of the city fathers, who politely invited us to
his house, and afterward attended us to the place of
worship, a small rude building, which was crowded, the
children gathering close about me. After the usual
Church of England service, I preached extempore on our
need of redemption, and the sufficiency and freeness of
that which has been graciously provided. After a brief
intermission, all returned to the evening service and
sermon, which concluded the religious exercises of the
day. We dined at Mr. Clark's, on fisherman's fare, gar-
nished with salted duck, a new dish to us, and requiring
the discipline of use and a rough life in order to relish
very well.
While at dinner and after, our host entertained us in
a simple, sketchy way with incidents and adventures illus-
trating the story of the place, and of his own life. Cha-
teau, the name of the village, is more ancient than the old
French and English war, during which it suffered pillage
and burning. The wreck beneath our stern, of which I
spoke, was that of an English vessel with a cargo of furs,
fish and oil, and was there run aground and fired by the
captain, to prevent her falling into the hands of the
enemy. Even these remote rocks and waters have his-
toric associations of thrilling interest.
According to the custom of those who live perma-
WINTERS IN LABRADOR.
269
nently in Labrador, Clark and a few of his neighbors
remove, in autumn, to the evergreen woods along the
streams at the head of the bay, and spend more than
half of the year in hunting and sealing, and getting tim-
ber and firewood for the summer. In some respects, it is
a holiday time, and compensates for the unremitting toil
of the fishing season.
The experience of years with icebergs has not made
them common things, like the waves and hills, but rather
increased the sense of their terrible power and grandeur.
They frequently arrive covered with earth and stones, an
indication of their recent lapse from the land, and of the
brevity of their time upon the sea. During the cold
months they are deeply covered with snow, and have a
rounded, heavy, and drowsy aspect. It is the warm
weather that gives them their naked brilliancy, and
melts them into picturesque forms, and rolls and ex-
plodes them in the magnificent style, I have attempted to
describe. They are seen to move occasionally at the
same rate of speed, whether through the densely packed
ice or the open sea. Wind, current and tide, and the
ocean crowded with ice as far as sight can reach, all fre-
quently set in one direction, and the bergs in another.
On they move, majestic and serene, tossing the crystal
masses from their shaggy breasts, cracking, crashing.
270 FKENCH OFFICEKS' FROLIC WITH AN ICEBERG.
thundering along. There are spaces of dark water spot-
ting the white expanse. It makes no difference ; all move
on alike. None hastens in the open water ; none pauses
at the heaped-up banks. All on the surface of the deep
is only so much froth before the Alp whose foundations
are immersed in the great submarine currents.
He told us a story illustrating the danger of icebergs,
and the temerity of making familiar with them. A few
years ago, while a French man-of-war was lying at
anchor in Temple Bay, the younger officers resolved on
amusing themselves with an iceberg, a mile or more
distant in the straits. They made sumptuous prepara-
tions for a pic-nic upon the very top of it, the myste-
ries of which they were curious to see. All warnings
of the brown and simple fishermen, in the ears of the
smartly dressed gentlemen who had seen the world, were
quite idle. It was a bright summer morning, and the
jolly boat with a showy flag went off to the berg. By
twelve o'clock the colors were flying from the icy
turrets, and the wild midshipmen were shouting from its
walls. For two hours or so they hacked, and clambered
the crystal palace ; frolicked and feasted ; drank wine to
the king and the ladies, and laughed at the thought of
peril where all was so fixed and solid. As if in amaze-
ment at such rashness, the grim Alp of the sea made
THEORY OF ICEBERGS.
neither sound nor motion. A profound stillness watched
on his shining pinnacles, and hearkened in the blue
shadows of his caves. When, like thoughtless children,
they had played themselves weary, the old alabaster of
Greenland mercifully suffered them to gather up their
toys, and go down to their cockle of a boat, and flee away.
As if the time and the distance were measured, he
waited until they could see it and live, when, as if his
heart had been volcanic fire, he burst with awful thun-
ders, and filled the surrounding waters with his ruins.
A more astonished little party seldom comes home to tell
the story of their panic. It was their first, and their last
day of amusement with an iceberg.
It seems rather late in the day for persons of some
experience in these regions, to be ignorant of the origin
of icebergs, I asked our friend, as I had others, how he
supposed that they were formed. He imagined that they
were merely the accumulations of loose ice, snow and
frozen spray, in the intensely cold regions of the arctic
ocean. Piles of broken ice, driven together, and cemented
by the heavy snows and the repeated dashing of the surf,
would in time become the huge and solid islands that
we see. Such is the theory of their formation with all
whom I have heard express themselves on the subject,
and I believe the one very generally received. When
272 CURRENTS OF THE STRAIT.
this explanation was objected to, and the facts stated
that icebergs were glaciers, first formed on the land, and
then launched into the sea, our kind host expressed his
doubts more modestly than some others had done of less
intelligence and experience.
Speaking of the currents in the straits, he said he
could not well conceive any in the world more dangerous.
While exceedingly powerful, they were shifting. What
rendered this perilous to the last degree, was the exces-
sively deep water and the boldness of the shores. One
could toss a bullet into water frequently too deep for the
anchorage of smaller vessels. In times of calm, and in
connection with the dense fogs peculiar to those coasts, a
vessel could not drift about in the straits without the risk
of being thrown upon the rocks and lost. When we were
lying becalmed off Temple Bay, on Saturday afternoon,
he was watching us from a hill-top, and remarked to a
neighbor, that he was sorry for the skipper out there, and
feared, unless the wind came to his relief before dark, he
would get ashore.
He remarked that fresh water may be dipped in
winter, from small open spaces in the bay — a fact I do not
remember to have read of in the pages of arctic voyagers.
I concluded that this only is true, where the water is
undisturbed below, and where the open spaces are small,
THE RETUKN TO THE VESSEL.
273
and hemmed in with ic3 in a way to break off the wind.
It is simply rain-water, I suppose, resting upon the sur-
face of the heavier salt water. In the course of the con-
versation, he stated that there was, at some distance back
in the interior, a remnant of the red Indians so called,
once a savage and troublesome tribe in Newfoundland.
Driven from thence on account of their hostile and un-
tamable nature, they had finally taken refuge in the remote
vales of Labrador, where they now live, as is commonly
reported, nursing their ancient enmity, but too prudent
to reappear among the whites, or let their exact habita-
tion be known.
Pleased with the talk of the fisherman of Chateau,
we bade him and his family good-by, and returned on
board to a second dinner, a little more to our taste.
12*
CHAPTER LI.
EVENING WALK TO TEMPLE BAT MOUNTAIN.— THE LITTLE ICEBEEG.
— TBOUBLES OF THE NIGHT AND PLEASUEES OF THE MOENING.—
UP THE STEAITS.— THE PINNACLE OF THE LAST ICEBEEG.— THE
GULF OF ST. LAWEENCE.
After dinner and a pleasant conversation on deck,
we found time to slip ashore, and thread onr way through
thickets of sweet-scented spruce to the mountain-top for
a prospect. Once in my life, on the borders of a forest
pond, in ihe lower St. Lawrence country, I experienced
the plague of black flies to an extent that was quite
frightful. I turned from the margin where, head and
face covered with handkerchiefs, I was fishing, and ran
to a woodman's hut. The same flies swarmed about us
on the mountain of Temple Bay, and drove us down
through its evergreens with all the speed it was prudent
to make.
In the edge of the twilight, the Captain went across
the bay to a little mouse of a berg, that had been all day
THE LITTLE ICEBERG. 275
creeping in from sea, to get a few cakes of ice ; and asked
our company. Our mouse, as might be expected, turned
out to be a lion. We rowed alongside, notwithstanding,
and sprung upon bis white, glassy back melted all over
into a roughness that resembled the rippled surface of a
pond. In attempting to walk to a fairy-like bowl, full of
that lovely blue water, the painter slipped up, and
came near sliding off altogether. But for the Captain,
at whose legs he caught as he was going by, he would
have had a fine plunge and a ducking. Our chick of a
berg, only ten or twelve feet across with a few minute
pieces of sculpture in the shape of vases and recumbent
animals, lay in its pale green bath like a burr or star, its
white points visible at quite a depth — a fact which served
to corroborate some experiments we had been making
with respect to the parts of an iceberg under water.
Here was a mass, with the exception of a few trifling
spurs, only a little above the surface, but with a bulk,
the extreme points of which were too far below to be dis-
covered. To conclude several amusing liberties we were
taking with it, the Captain proceeded to split off a kind
of figure-head attached to the main body by a sort of
horse-neck, which no sooner fell into the water than our
bantling began to imitate the motions of the tallest giant
of the icebergs. In making the grand swing, however, it
276 TROUBLES OF THE NIGHT.
rolled completely over, and came within an ace of catch-
ing us upon one of its horns. Anticipating the chance of
danger from below, I looked over the side of the boat,
when, sure enough, a prong was coming up in a way to
give us a toss that would be no sport. A lucky push off
saved us. Like the spoke of a big wheel it rolled up, giv-
ing us a blow in the ribs as it passed, and a good rocking
on the swash. One would scarcely think that there was
any excitement in so trifling an incident, but there was,
and enough of it to make me resolve to meddle no more
with a thing of the kind larger than a lamb. "When it
settled to rest, it was exactly upside down, and presented
a curious specimen of the honey-comb work of the waters.
It may occur to some that we were sporting upon the
Lord's Day. Upon reflection I confess that we were,
although we might plead the privilege of voyagers, and
the long day which touches hard upon our midnight.
Upon our return we found the musquitoes, a pecu-
liarly hungry and poisonous species, coming down from
the woods in numbers. We determined to crush that
mischief in the bud, and did it most effectually, by fill-
ing the cabin with the dense smoke of spruce boughs, and
then, upon its escape, coveiing the entrance with a sheet.
One only came feebly and timidly singing about my face
before I got to sleep. About one o'clock, there were
PLEASURES OF THE MORNING.
sounds above : shaking of blocks and cordage, now and
tlien a thump with a creak of booms, and jerking of the
rudder. I went up ; there was no watch ; all were soundly
sleeping. The ship's cat was out on the rail, running
from place to place, and mewing mournfully. The sky
looked ominous, and there was the roar of wind outside.
The waters and the woods of the bay, so prettily named,
were gloomy as the crypt of a temple. I crept to my
dreams, out of which in no long time I was startled by
the painter. He was getting up to have his look. He
reported breezes, bu.t in the wrong direction, and without
comment felt his way back to bed. At two, the voice of
the Captain put an end to slumbers, fore and aft. He
was calHng all hands to the deck, where presently all
was noise and bustle, hoisting sail, and heaving at the
anchor. The old motion was soon perceptible, and we
knew that we were taking leave of Temple Bay — a fact
of which we were assured by the Captain, who peeped in
upon us, by lifting a corner of the musquito-sheet, and
announced the good tidings that the wind, northeast, was
blowing briskly, and that the straits would give us no
further trouble.
No sooner were we clear of the " tickle,'* or narrows,
than " Iceberg ahead ! " — " Ice on the lee bow ! " was
cried by the man forward. It was no more to our j)ur-
278 THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE.
pose to go up and look at ices. It was a comfortable
reflection that we were now bidding them farewell. By-
way of a parting salute, one of the bergs burst asunder
with a great noise, before that we were out of the reach
of its shells. But its thunder fell but faintly on our
practised ears, and rather encouraged than disturbed our
disposition to sleep. When daylight was broad upon the
straits, we were over the worst, and the last iceberg, like
the top of some solitary mausoleum of the desert, was
sinking below the horizon. The high wind and sea were
after us, and we ran with speed and comparative stillness.
By noon we were fairly through ; with Forteau, the last
of Labrador, on the north — to the south, the coast of New-
foundland, and the broad gulf of St. Lawrence expanding
before us. We felt that we might then breathe freely.
The breeze most surely did, and we sped on our way
southward toward Cape Breton.
CHAPTER LII.
COAST SCENEET.— FAEEWELL TO LABEADOE.
The coast of Labrador was really fine, all the fore-
noon, and sometimes strikingly grand. It has lost some-
thing of the desolate and savage character it has about
the Capes St. Louis and St. Charles, and seems more
like a habitable land. There are long and graceful
slopes and outlines of pale green hills slanting down to
the sea, along which is the craggy shore-Hne, black,
brown and red. The last few miles, and which is near
the Canadian border, the red sandstone shore is exceed-
ingly picturesque. It has a right royal presence along
the deep. Lofty, semicircular promontories descend in
regular terraces nearly down, then sweep out gracefully
with an ample lap to the margin. No art could produce
better effect. The long, terraced galleries are touched
with a tender green, and the well-hollowed vales, now
280 COAST SCENERY.
and then occurring, and ascending to the distant horizon
between ranks of rounded hills, look green and pasture-
like. All, you must bear in mind, is treeless nearly, and
utterly lonely. Here and there are small detachments of
dwarf firs, looking as if they were either on their re-
treat to the woodlands of a warmer clime, or on their
march from it, in order to get a foothold, and make a
forest settlement remote from the woodman's axe. Any-
way, in their lonesome and inhospitable halt, they darken
the light greens and the gray greens with very lively effect.
The Battery, as sailors call it, is a wall of red sand-
stone, of some two or three miles in extent, with hori-
zontal lines extending from one extreme to the other,
and perpendicular fissures resembling embrasures and
gateways. Swelling out with grand proportions toward
the sea, it has a most military and picturesque appear-
ance. At one point of this huge citadel of solitude,
there is the resemblance of a giant portal, with stupen-
dous piers two hundred feet or more in elevation. They
are much broken by the yearly assaults of the frost, and
the eye darts up the ruddy ruins with surprise. If there
was anything to defend, here is a Gibraltar at hand, with
comparatively small labor, whose guns could nearly cross
the strait. Beneath its precipitous cliffs the debris
slopes like a glacis to the beach, with both smooth and
COAST SCENERY.
281
I
I
broken surfaces, and all very handsomely decorated with
rank herbage. Above the great walls, there is a range
of terraces ascending with marked regularity for quite a
distance. Miles of ascending country, prairie-like, greet
the eye along this edge of Labrador. " Arms of gold " —
is it ? Possibly these promontories, golden in the rising
and the setting sun, may have suggested to Cabot or
some other explorer, before or since, the propriety of christ-
ening this dead body of a country by some redeeming
name.
Among the very pretty and refreshing features of the
coast are its brooks, seen occasionally falling over the
rocks in white cascades. Harbors are passed now and
then with small fishing fleets and dwellings. Forteau
has a church-spire pointing heavenward among its white
buildings and brown masts, and is the most eastern place
in the diocese of Newfoundland visited by Bishop Field.
It is not unlikely that he is now there engaged in the
sacred duties of his office, and certainly would have at-
tracted us thither, could we have spared a day. On the
point from w^hich we took our final departure from the
north shore, stands a high lighthouse, erected at great
cost, and around its base are clustering the greens of a
kitchen garden ! Adieu, bleak Labrador ! They tell
me that the warmest of summers is now upon thy honey-
282 FAREWELL TO LABRADOR.
less and milkless land. If this is thy July — I say it
under an overcoat of the deepest nap — spare me thy
December.
But why, at parting, should I speak roughly unto
thee, and whet the temper to talk ill of thee, in the
presence of rich gardens, yellow fields, and ruddy or-
chards ? Hast not thou thy homed cariboo, the reindeer,
thy fox of costly fur, and thy wild-fowl of wintry plu-
mage ? Hast not thou thy bright-eyed salmon, graced
with lines as dehcate and lovely as those of beauty's arm,
and complexioned like the marigold " damasked by the
neighboring rose " .? — thy whales and seals to fill with oil
the lighthouse lamp, to fill with starry flame the lighthouse
lantern .^ — thy pale green capelin, silvery-sided myriads
that allure the '^fish,'' calling their millions to the hooks
and seines of thy toiling fishermen — ^hardy, hospitable
people, whose kentles of white-fleshed cod buy the ruby
wine and yellow fruits of Cuba and Oporto .^ Hast thou
not dealt kindly with us, and shown us these thy fat
things, and all thy richer, nobler treasures ? Hast thou
not uncurtained thy resplendent pictures of the sky, the
ocean, and the land ? And have we not gazed delight-
ed and awe-struck upon the grandeur of a great and
terrible wilderness, upon the gloom of its shadowy atmos-
phere, upon the brilliancy of its sunlight ? Have we
FAREWELL TO LABRADOR.
283
not heard the footsteps of the billows inarching to their
encampment in the grottoes of the cliffs ; and seen the
silent, inshore deeps ; the imprisoned islands and grim
headlands armed with impenetrable granite ; the vales
and dells, and hill- sides with their mosses and their
flowers, sweet odors, and sweet melodies ? — most beau-
tiful, most wonderful of all, thine icebergs, and thy twi-
light heavens ? All these, and more, of thy greatness
and thy glory, have we looked upon, and they will have
their reflections, and their echoes in the memory forever.
Beauty may watch, and supplicate, and weep sometimes
upon the crags now receding from our view, but she is
surely there, and native to the wildest pinnacle and
cavern. And while to the careless eye and thoughtless
heart thou art verily dark and bleak, yet art thou neither
barren nor unfruitful. Old Labrador, farewell !
CHAPTEK LIII.
WESTEEN NEWFOUNDLAND,— THE BAT, THE ISLANDS, AND THE
HIGHLANDS OF ST. JOHN.— INGOENACHOIX BAY.
Newfoundland now lifts its blue summits along the
southeast sky, a kind of Catskill heights, with here and
there patches of snow, that recall to mind the White
Mountain House. In the course of the afternoon, we
pass them, and find that they are the highlands of St.
John, the loftiest, I believe, in the island, and bound the
bay called by the same lovely name.
What a region for romantic excursion ! Yonder are
wooded mountains with a sleepy atmosphere, and at-
tractive vales, and a fine river, the river Castor, flowing
from a country almost unexplored ; and here are green
isles spotting the sea — the islands of St. John. Be-
hind them is an expanse of water, alive with fish and
fowl, the extremes of which are lost in the deep, un-
troubled wilderness. A month would not suffice to find
THE HIGHLANDS OF ST. JOHN. 285
out and enjoy its manifold and picturesque beauties,
through which wind the deserted trails of the Ked
Indian, now extinct or banished. Why they should have
left, with all these unappropriated breadths of solitude for
their inheritance, I do not precisely understand. There
are mournful tales told of their wrongs and their revenges,
the old story of contests between the civilized and the
savage.
Yonder, at the termination of the highlands, is a
cape, no matter what is its French name, since directly
behind it is a bay with an Indian name tough enough to
last one round a dozen capes — the Bay of Ingornachoix,
noted for its harbors, inlets, and pretty streams, another
fine region for the summer tourist. Beyond the woody
distances rising in the east, there lies a lengthy lake, the
centre of a little world of interest to the lovers of nature
and the picturesque. It is no great distance across the
island here to the shores of Whit© Bay, a remote expanse
of waters, to which few but fishermen have any occasion
to penetrate.
As the evening advances the wind strengthens, and
bears us rapidly along the coast. Thus we are encircling
Newfoundland, and finding spots of beauty, to which, if
B we may not return ourselves, we can direct others of like
H taste and sentiment. We come down from the cold air,
m
286 INGOKNACHOIX BAY.
and from looking at a fine aurora now playing in the
skies, and gleaming by reflection in the waves, and sit by
the cabin lights, and talk and write, inspect the sketches,
and listen to the roar of winds and surges — rather melan-
choly music.
CHAPTER LIV.
SLOW SAILING BY THE BAY OF ISLANDS.— THE EIVEE HUMBER.—
ST. GEOEGE'S EIVEE, CAPE, AND BAY. -A BEILLIANT SUNSET.
Tuesday, July 19. We have a brilliant morning
and a favoring breeze, but a vexatious current. What a
net of these currents has the tyrannous Neptune set
around his beloved Newfoundland ! Like a web in a
dim cellar window, it is perpetually entangling some fly
of a craft in its subtle meshes. Buzz and struggle as
we will, he has got us by the foot, and, spider-like, may
look on, and enjoy our perplexity. We advance with
insufferable slowness, notwithstanding the considerable
speed of our rounded bows, through the water. " That is
the Bay of Islands," they said, early in the morning. It
is the Bay of Islands still. We are a long time saiHng
by the Bay of Islands. But it gives us time to look,
and talk about it with the Captain. Beyond the forest-
covered hills which surround it, are lakes as beautiful.
288 ST. George's river, cape, and bay.
and larger than Lake George, the cold, clear waters of
which flow to the bay under the name of the river
Humber. It has a valley like Wyoming, and more
romantic scenery than the Susquehanna. The Bay of
Islands is also a bay of streams and inlets, an endless
labyrinth of cliffs and woods and waters, where the
summer voyager would delight to wander, and which is
worth a volume sparkling with pictures.
How fine a blue the waters of the gulf are in this
light ! We seem to be upon the broad Atlantic. What
a realm of seas and shores, islands, bays and rivers, is
this St. Lawrence world, in the midst of which we now
are, and of which our people know so little ! Where are
our young men, who have the time and money to skip,
from summer to summer, in the fashionable rounds of
travel, that they do not seek this virgin scenery ? One
long, loud yell of the black loon, deep diver of these lakes
and fiords, pealing through the silent evening, would ring
in their recollection long after the music of city parks
abroad had been forgotten.
Late in the day, and Cape St. George in view, a bold
and clifted point pushed out from the mainland twenty
miles or more, and commanding extensive prospects both
inland and along the coast. A month would not suffice
for all its many landscapes. St. George's Kiver is a wild,
iLIANT SUNSET.
289
I
rapid stream, and St. George's Bay is quite a little sea,
deep, and darkened by the shadows of fine mountains,
and broad woodlands. Like the Bay of Islands, it is a
paradise for the huntsman, and the fisher. Awake, ye
devotees of the fishing-rod and rifle, and the red camp-
fire beneath the green-wood trees, and know that to visit
St. George's cape and bay and river, and all that is St.
George's, is better late than never.
The sun is in the waves, and yonder we have those
wonderful heavens again. The west is all one bath of
colors, colors of the rainbow. And clouds like piled-up
fleeces, and like fleeces pulled apart and scattered, and
fleeces spun into soft and woolly threads, and again those
threads woven into downy fabrics, are weltering in the
glory. The wind has fallen, and the waves have put out
all their white, flashing lights, and now mould themselves
into the flowing lines and the sweetest forms of beauty.
We go down with glad hearts, and ask protection for the
night.
13
CHAPTEK LV.
FOUL WEATHEE.— CAPE ANGUILLE. — THE CLEAEING OEF. — THE
FEOLIO OF THE POEPOISES.— THE NEW COOKS.— THE SHIP'S
CAT.
Wednesday, July 20. We have a misty morning,
and a contrary wind. If there are any two words in
English, that early fell in love and married, and have a
numerous progeny, those words are Patience and Progress.
They do not walk hand in hand, but, like the red Ind-
ians, in single file. If Progress walk before. Patience is
close behind, which order of march now happens to pre-
vail, a.nd a good deal to our discomfort. In the mean time,
in company with this leisurely and quiet maid, we are
beating in and out from land, in long and tedious
stretches, with large gains upon one tack, and nearly as
large losses on the other.
Peeping through the rainy atmosphere is Cape An-
THE FROLIC OF THE PORPOISES. 291
guille, the neighboring heights of which are five hun-
dred feet above the tide, and sweep off in dim and
lengthy lines. The strong head-wind is blowing away
the mists, the seas are up in arms, crested with snowy
plumes, flashing and sparkling. Clouds, in white uniform,
at quick-time march in long battalions, moving inland
and leaving the defenceless shores to sunshine and the
dashing surf. The sails mutter a deep, low bass. The
" puffpigs," classic name for porpoise, are playing a thou-
sand pranks about us, and we are partners in the frolic ;
watching, laughing at, and pelting them, all of which
they seem to regard as the merest nonsense of only a
tubfuU of helpless creatures in the upper air. They ap-
pear to be in the very highest glee, a party of fast young
fellows, well bred and fed, and in holiday fin and skin.
Like swallows round a barn, they play about our bows,
L wheeling, plunging, darting to the surface, spouting,
splashing, every tail and rolling back of them full of fun
and laughter. After a spell of this ground and lofty
tumbling in the shadow of our jib, away they trip it, like
so many frisky buffalo calves, side by side, in squads and
couples, crossing and recrossing, kicking up their heels
and turning summersets — a kind of rollicking good-by.
Not a bit of it : round they come again, by tens and
twenties, wild with merriment, on a perfect gaUop, and
292 THE NEW COOKS.
dive below the vessel. Up they pop with puff and snort
on all sides and ends, and dart away like shuttles, with a
thread of light behind them, to go over and over again
the gamesome round.
Sandy, whose coarse good nature has been dropping
from his very finger ends in the way of stones thrown at
the jolly fishes, has the smallest possible aptitude for the
domestic art he is practising. Neither does his fancy
take at all to the fair ways of neatness. Beyond frying
pork and fish in one pan, and boiling potatoes in one pot,
and making tea in one kettle, as a housewife steeps her
simples, and every separate vessel, fakir-like, to sit from
meal to meal in undisturbed repose, wrapped in the
dingy mantle of its own defilement, Sandy has no ambi-
tion. Indignant, his superiors have read him several
homilies to the point. But the lessons have fallen upon
his attention like the first drops of a shower upon a
duck's back. The painter even went so far as to indulge
himself in a brief, emphatic charge, in the end of which
there darted out a stinging threat, anent washing and
scouring. Across the cloud of Sandy's unhappy brow a
faint smile was, at length, seen to pass, and charge and
threat dropped like pebbles into the muddy deeps of his
forgetfulness. Sandy, therefore, has virtually been de-
posed, and now occupies the lowly position of a mere
THE NEW COOKS. 293
lackey to cooks of character. There are now, instead of
one indifferent, three pre-eminent cocks : a painter, a
captain, and a writer. They employ, divert, and fre-
quently disappoint themselves in the several dishes they
attempt. Not that the dishes in themselves are so
bad, but that they fall so far short of the ideal of the
excellent.
When I was a lad, spruce-beer and gingerbread were
the nectar and ambrosia at general trainings. I wanted
some ambrosia. The cooking-stove was instantly fired,
and so was the painter, on the important occasion, who,
fi:om his skill in combining pigments on his pallet, had
suspicions of ability in compounding ingredients for the
pan and oven ; and therefore, nothing loth, was persuaded
to undertake, with the secrecy of some hoar alchemist of
old, in the dim retirement of the cabin, the conglomera-
tion from flour and ginger, sugar, salt, soda and hot
water, of a tremulous mass that should emanate, under
his plastic hand, in a generous and tempting cake. To
the large surprise of both mariner and author, order at
length arose out of that chaos in a milk-pan, and appear-
ed in upper day, when, with conscious but with a modest
air of triumph, it was passed into the hands of the chief-
baker, who *roasted both it and himself, for a sultry and
smoky hour, with entire success. Hot as metal from a
294 THE NEW COOKS.
furnace, and of a rich Potawatomie red, it was tasted,
and found nearly as hot with ginger, and then prudently
laid away to cool and petrify. The history of the decline
and fall of that memorable loaf will probably never be
written. It is enough to say, that, although the disin-
tegrating process was at first a little difficult, owing to
some doubt about the proper instrumentalities, yet it is
now easily dissected with a saw. It is unnecessary to
remark, that but one such batch of the ruddy bread
is needed on a pleasure- voyage. The painter has
fresh reason to congratulate himself that in all his
works he succeeds in imparting an element of per-
petuity.
Our great difficulty is the smallness of the caboose
and the stove, which will not permit the carrying on of
all operations at the same time — a circumstance which is
apt to leave no more than a kindly warmth, if not a
decided coolness, in all dishes but the last in hand. We,
the landsmen of the culinary trio, have also a dreadful
foe to fight, and, in any thing like a severe battle, are
sure to fall. It is ever lurking near our outposts, and is
sure to rush upon us in rough weather. They called it
sea-sickness, I dare say, as early as when they voyaged
for the golden fleece. Its efiects are described, in a lan-
guage more venerable than that of Greece : " They reel
THE ship's cat. 295
to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at
their wits' end." That describes our case exactly. It
lays both dishes and ourselves completely on the shelf.
Forthwith tea, cakes and coffee, meats, vegetables, fruits,
and fish are allowed a play-spell, perhaps a long yellow
holiday, and may go on a pic-nic, a bathing, or a fishing,
or a shooting frolic under the table, among the baggage,
or around the cabin floor, as the bend of things incline.
The Captain, however, is apt to interpose in such dis-
orders, and discipline the wild wares much to his own,
and often to our relief.
We are amused, annoyed, and distressed at the
ship's cat. She is an incorrigible thief and pick-shelf,
and bent on making the most of us while we last. The
painter is down upon her, and will not endure her for a
moment. The cabin was recently the field of a bloodless
battle, the din whereof was startling as far off as the
caboose, in the smoke of which I was weeping over
the remains of the late breakfast. Loud shouting, in-
terspersed with shocks of irate bodies, boots, broom,
cane, against barrels and amongst boxes came upon the
peaceful ear, and warned me to hasten to the edge of
things and look down. Tantaane animis celestibus irse !
There was jio consciousness of a spectator of the militant
manoeuvres, but a mighty thrashing and furious thrust-
296 THE ship's cat.
ing, and whipping of a scraggy spruce-bough among tubs,
jugs, and cans, and away behind. There was * steady
fire in the face, and a pistol-shot sharpness in the
" scat/' Grimalkin answered with a terrible wauling,
and finally with fixed tail made a dash past the enemy,
escaping up the steps into my face and eyes almost, and
retreating to the bowsprit. Puss is a bold sailor. She
skips upon the taffrail, climbs the shrouds, sits with ease
and dignity upon the boom, yawns and stretches among
the rigging. Poor Pussy, she is not a silken-haired,
daintily-fed cat, but a creature of backbone and ribs,
coated with fur unlicked and scorched, indicative of
kicks and a meagre cupboard. She treads no downy
bed, and purs in no loved daughter's lap. As she comes
mewing gingerly about my feet, and coils herself in a
sunny twist of rope, I think of our own household tabby,
and call her by all the feline names expressive of good-
will and tenderness.
How the breeze pipes ! Hoarse music this, played
upon the cordage of our light little schooner. Old Saint
Laurent, thy winds and waves are not always symbols of
a martyr's gentleness. A few seasons ago, just here in
sight of yonder hills and valleys now dreaming under an
atmosphere of quiet. Captain Knight experienced a most
appalling sea. While there is nothing terrible in these
THE SHIP S CAT.
297
now breaking over our barriers every few minutes, yet
they effectually upset the stomach, and hence all com-
fort. We lie upon the slant deck in the sunshine,
sheltered near the helm, and see the spray fly over us,
and watch the idle flourishing of the topmast.
13*
CHAPTEE LVI.
ST. PAUL'S ISLAND.— CAPE NOETII.— COAST OF CAPE BEETON.— SYD-
NEY LIGHT AND HAEBOE.— THE END OF OUE VOYAGE TO LAB-
EADOE, AND ABOUND NEWFOUNDLAND.
Thuksday, July 21. After a boisterous night we
are on deck again, and find a pleasant change in the
wind. It is gray and rainy, but then our sails swell,
and we rush southward.
A dome of inhospitable rock peers through the mist,
one of nature's penitentiaries, which no living man would
own, and so has been deeded to St. Paul : Melita is
Eden to it. The saints, it appears to me, have been
gifted with the ruggedest odds and ends. Wherever, on
all these cast-iron shores, there is a flinty promontory,
upon which Prometheus himself would have shuddered
to be chained, there the name of an apostle has been
transfixed. Yonder is Cape North, the stony arrow-
head of Cape Breton, a headland, rather a multitudinous
COAST OF CAPE BRETON. 299
groap of mountain headlands, draped with gloomy gran-
deur, against the black cliffs of which the surf is now
firing its snowy rockets. How is it they have not called
it Cape St. Mary or St. John ? All in all, this is a fine
termination of the picturesque isle. Steep and lofty, its
summits are darkened by steepled evergreens, and its
many sides gashed with horrid fissures and ravines.
Here we part from the broad gulf, and enter the
broader ocean, passing between the promontories of Cape
Breton and the last capes of Newfoundland, Cape An-
guille, and Cape Eay with its rocky domes and tables.
Thus have we fairly encompassed this Ireland of Amer-
ica, in all but climate: White seabirds, with long wings
tipped with black, sweep the air. We speed onward and
homeward past the many-folded mountains. The eye
slides along their graceful outlines, and follows their
winding shores. Through the deep valleys we look
upon the landscapes interior, softened by a purple at-
mosphere. Clouds are breaking around the woody sum-
mits, seas of forest-tops are smiling in the sunshine, and
shadows are filling the rocky gorges with a kind of
V twilight. At last the sun is sinking behind the distant
heights, and leaving his red footsteps on the clouds.
B C is painting his last picture, and these are the last
B pencillings of the voyage, We hail the cliffs of Sydney —
300 END OF OUE VOYAGE TO LABRADOR.
those remarkable cliffs that sat upon the horizon like
tinted sea-shells, on the Sunday afternoon we were on
our way to St. Johns. And yonder is the Sydney light
twinkling through the dusk of evening. Our summer
sail to Labrador and around Newfoundland is over.
Where the anchor brings the vessel to a pause, there
shall we leave the brave little pinkstern. May her
wanderings in the future under the Union Jack be as
happy as those of the present have been under the Stars
and Stripes. Thankful for the Divine care, we will ask
protection for the night, and guidance home, the final
haven where we would be.
CHAPTER LVII.
FAREWELL TO CAPTAIN KNIGHT.— ON OUK WAY ACEOSS CAPE
BEETON.— A MEEEY EIDE, AND THE EUSTIC LOVEE.
Friday, July 22. Sydney harbor. A bright morn-
ing, and the wind from the quarter where we should be
happy to find it, were we going to sea. But, selfish
souls ! because it puts us to a small inconvenience, we
now wish that it did not blow, and that we may have
calm weather. We are to breakfast, to finish packing,
and take our leave of Captain Knight, from whom we
part with emotions of regret. He will depart in the
next steamer for St. Johns, and we start for' Halifax by
an inland route.
Here we are, on our way across the Island of Cape
Breton, bound for Nova Scotia. Our baggage — trunks,
H carpet-bags, reindeer-horns, snow-shoes, plants, and
^L mosses — in a one-horse wagon, goes ahead ; we follow
302 OUR WAY ACROSS CAPE BRETON.
in another. We are delighted with the change from
rolling waves to rolling wheels. We are delighted with
our spirited nag. We are delighted with the scenery,
which, however, is in no way remarkable. I believe that
we should be delighted if we were riding through a
smoky tunnel. The truth is the delight is in us, and
will flow out, and would, be the world about us what it
might. Every thing amuses us, even the provoking trick
our pony has of slightly kicking up, every time the
breeching cuts into his hams upon going down hiU. As
may be supposed, said pony is a creature of importance
to us, now that he is our motive power. We do not look
at the clouds now, and watch the temper of the atmos-
phere ; our eyes are upon the body and legs of the little
fellow wrapped in this brown skin. After the first effer-
vescence of spirit upon starting, with which, of course,
we were much delighted, he began to lag a trifle, and to
raise suspicions that he was not the horse good-natured
Mr. D earing, his master, said he was. We are pleased
to find ourselves mistaken. Our very blunders are sat-
isfactory. The longer he goes the smarter he grows, giv-
ing us symptoms of a disposition to run away, when or-
dinarily we might look for any thing else. Let him run.
We can ride as fast, and come in not a length behind, at
the end of our thirty-two miles, the distance to a tavern.
A MERRY RIDE, AND THE RUSTIC LOVER.
I
I
The ride along the shore of Sydney harbor, over a
smooth, hard road, was really charming, and would have
been to travellers of ill temper. Wild roses incensed the
fresh air, and the sunshine was bright upon the clover-
fields. On the steamer down from Halifax to Sydney,
I became acquainted with a tradesman, an intelligent
Scotch Presbyterian. Who should come running out of
a little country store by the road-side, with a shout that
brought our nag down upon his haunches, but our friend !
He, too, was delighted, and shook us heartily by the hand,
asking after " the Labrador," the icebergs, and our voyage
in general. Set in the midst of our pleasure was one
regret : our want of time to visit Louisburg, or the ruins
of it. We talked it over, and then dismissed both the
ruins aaid the regret.
From the bay of Sydney the way is wonderfully
serpentine for a main road, winding about apparently for
the mere love of winding, and when there seems no
more real necessity for it than for a brook in a level
meadow. We have liked it all the better, though, run-
ning, as it does, around the slightest hills, wooded with
the perpetual spruce, intermingled with the birch and
maple, crossing with a graceful twist little farms, and
coming around garden fences, by the farmers' doors, under
the willows and the apple trees. The native Indians,
304 A MERKY EIDE, AND THE RUSTIC LOVER.
tricked out with cheap, showy finery, whose huts are seen
lazily smoking among the bushes, were occasionally met,
and chatted with. A young Mc. something, upon whose
sleepy face was the moonshine of a smile, was found
trotting his chestnut filly close behind our wagon. The
persistence in the thing was becoming disagreeable, and
we looked round several times with an expression which
said plainly : " Please keep a little back." Mc. was in no
humor to take the hint. When our pace quickened, the
click of his horse's shoes, and the breath of his steed, which
carried a high head, were close upon us ; a sudden slack-
ening of our speed brought him, horse-head and all, as
suddenly into our midst. Presently he changed his
tactics, and dashed by, brushing the wheels with his
stirrup, and so trotting on ahead, taking occasion to twist
himself on the saddle, when a walk permitted, and look
back. The fellow was a character, although of the softer
kind, and we struck up an acquaintance, during which,
in the effort to sustain his part of the conversation, he
rode around us in all possible ways. A particularly
favorite position was in the gutter at our side, where, in
spite of our united care, he would now and then be
literally run up a stump, or a bank. Whether on the
lead, or following, we kept him frequently at break-neck
speed, during which the conversation was mostly con-
MERRY RIDE, AND THE RUSTIC LOVER. 305
fined to monosyllables — loud and few — and, when for-
ward, discharged now over one, and then over the
other shoulder. Mc. was a farmer, and lived with " the
old folks at home." He had been on a courting ex-
J)edition, in which he considered himself successful. In
fact, he made a clean breast of it, and told us the
pleasant story of his love, and the fine qualities of the
lass of whom he was enamored. Although she might
not be thought handsome by a great many, yet she
was handsome to him. Never errant knight rehearsed
a softer tale in shorter periods, with a louder voice,
or happier heart. He was full of it, and it mattered
little to whom, or how he uttered it. For what dis-
tance he was intending to bear us company, I have no
notion. The house of an acquaintance, at the gate of
which were several persons, who seemed at once to under-
stand him, and whose faces were so many open doors of
curiosity, finally relieved us of him. It was evidently
undesigned, and he puUed up, I thought, somewhat
reluctantly.
CHAPTEE LVIII.
EVENING EIDE TO MKS. KELLY'S TA VEEN.— THE SUPPEE, AND THE
LODGING.
At a sort of half- way house, the driver of the bag-
gage-wagon stopped to feed and water, and I walked on
alone, leaving the painter with his sketch-book. For a
mile or more, the road womid its way through thick
woods, mostly spruce, and '' I whistled as I went," cer-
tainly not "for want of thought," and sang for the
solitude, and was answered by the ringing echoes and the
wood-thrush, whose sweet melody, sounding with a sil-
very, metallic ring, often made me pause and listen.
Ked raspberries, pendent from the slender bushes,
tempted me frequently to spring up the broken, earthy
bank, where, to my surprise I met the first strawberries
coming on from the juicier climes. Kuby darlings, they
had got only thus far along, and looked timid and dis-
heartened, dropping wearily into the mossy turf, where
I
I
EVENING RIDE TO MRS. KELLY's TAVERN. 307
they trembled like drops of blood. And so I loitered
along tbe lonely highway, up which the sweetest of all
the fruits were coming, and over which the wild birds
were pouring forth their songs, and felt that I was only
very, very happily going on toward heaven, taking home
and loving, and beloved ones by the way. In the middle
of the forest, I met a tall, thin Indian in ragged, Eng-
lish dress. He passed me by silently, and with an air
of bashfulness. I was a little disappointed. When
I saw him approaching, I proposed to myself a rest upon
a log near by, and a talk with the man about his people.
The wagons came up presently, and I resumed the reins,
having, at the outset, been voted by a small majority
much the better whip.
Late in the afternoon, we came upon the shores of
Bras D'or, a fiord or inlet extending in from the ocean,
and winding for many miles among hills, farms and
woodlands in a manner exceedingly picturesque. The
ride was lovely, too lovely for the merriment in which we
had been freely indulging. Ebullitions of mirth gave
way to thoughts and emotions arising from the beauty
of the scenery and the hour. Clouds of dazzling flame,
and a rosy sunset were reflected in the purple waters.
As we came on at a rapid pace through the twilight and
the succeeding darkness, rounding the hills abutting on
308 EVENING RIDE TO MRS. KELLY'S TAVERN.
the water, and tliridding bits of wood, we settled into a
stillness as unbroken as if we had been riding alone. It
was nearly ten o'clock when we arrived at our inn,
none the worse for our drive of thirty-two miles, good
measure.
Our inn ! Imagine, if you will, a long, low-roofed,
dingy white house, with a front piazza, and hard by a
sign swinging from the limb of a broad shade tree,
creaking harsh plaints to the lazy breeze, and, in dark
letters, asserting from year to year that this is the
traveller's home. If it be your pleasure to indulge in
such imaginings, let me at once assure you that in our
Cape Breton Inn there is no corresponding reality. - In-
stantly extinguish from your mind said white house,
tree and sign, and put in the place of them a log cabin
of the old school, in the naked arms of the weather,
backed by a stumpy field and weedy potato-patch, and
fronted by a couple of rickety log sheds. That antique
mensuration accomplished by the swinging of a cat would
very nearly decide the whole extent of the interior, one
side of which is a fire-place and fire, around which re-
volve, as primary orb, the hostess, Mrs. Kelly, and as
satellites, a son and daughter and maid- servant. With
all these powers, and with ample time, you may guess
that we sat down at last to a savory and generous sup-
THE SUPPER AND LODGING. 309
per. There was tea, somewhat intimate, to be sure, with
the waterpot, and there was bread, nice as the Queen her-
self ever gets at Balmoral. The butter, alas ! was afflicted
with that ailment which seems to be chronic throughout
these her majesty's dominions, rancidity and salt. But
the milk was creamy, and the eggs fresh as newly-cut
marble, and the berry-pie, served at the hands of the
daughter, a neat and modest girl with pretty face and
figure, was a becoming finish to the meal.
Mrs. Kelly is a Highland widow, of whom a story
may be told, not indeed of the tragic character of Sir
Walter's Highland Widow, but sufficiently mournful.
She walked back and forth before the door, and seemed
to take a melancholy pleasure in relating it. Two fine
boys had been tempted to leave her, of whom she had
not heard a syllable for years, but for whom, even then,
she was looking with the hope and yearning love of
Margaret in Wordsworth's " Excursion." Her husband,
land man, was in the grave. Her two children and her
little farm were much to be thankful for. But then it
was not Scotland. A sad day for her when they were
persuaded to leave "home." The land here was not
productive, and the winters were so long and snowy.
There was, however, a bright side to her fortunes, and I
tried to make her see it. At the conclusion of the talk,
310 THE SUPPER AND LODGING.
she asked me in to read a chapter^ and offer the evening
prayer.
It was getting late, and I asked to retire. I found
that we had retired. We were sitting in our private
chamber, and the closely-curtained bed behind us, a
match for one in an opposite corner, too long and too
wide for a lad in his teens, was the appointed couch for
two of us, and all ready. There were nine or ten of us,
,all told, and among them the daughter's lover, a good-
looking and very well-appearing young man. Now that
we were provided for, it was certainly no concern of ours
how and where the others were to lodge, although I could
not avoid feeling some interest in the matter. To hasten
things to a conclusion, I rose, wound my watch, took off
my boots, my coat and vest, demonstrations of my inten-
tion of going at once to bed that were not mistaken. Im-
mediately all walked out of the house, and remained out,
talking in the open air, until we were snugly packed away
and pinned in behind the scant curtains, when they re-
turned, and noiselessly went to rest in some order peculiar
to the household, dividing between them the other bed,
the floor, and the small chamber under the roof. When,
in her native land, an ebony lady entertained Mungp Park,
she and her maids lightened their nocturnal labors — spin-
ning cotton — by singing plaintive songs, the burden of
THE SUPPER AND LODGING. 311
which was " the poor white man who came and sat under
our tree/' Thus our two maidens lightened both their
labors and our slumbers^ but by a less poetic process.
While they busied themselves with sweeping the house,
and washing dishes until after midnight, they kept a con-
tinual whispering, the subject of which was, in part, the
poor sunburnt men who came to sleep under their curtains
— ^but could not do it. Considering that the daughter had
a sweetheart in the house, the sibilant disturbances of the
girls were meekly suiFered until they naturally whispered
and swept their v/ay to bed. After this we had a fair
field, and did our best to improve it. The room being
warm and smoky, I unpinned the curtain, and started for
fresh air, stealing out as quietly as possible. Treach-
erous door ! When I had succeeded in hitting upon the
wooden latch, up it came with a jerk and a clack that
went, it seemed to me, to the ears of every sleeper. I
waited till I thought the effect of the noise had passed
away, when I began slowly opening the door. It
squealed like a bagpipe, startling the dreamers from
their pillows, and arousing suspicions of a rogue creeping
in, while it was only the restless traveller creeping out.
There had been a kitten mewing at the door for some
time. With tail erect, she whipped in between my feet.
There was a puppy outside also, and some pigs ; each in
312 THE SUPPER AND LODGING.
its way promising to keep up till daylight the serenade of
barking and grunting, with which, from an earlier hour,
they had entertained us. It was starlight, and I could see
my ground, as I thought. I determined to have satisfaction
by setting the dog upon the pigs, and then flogging the dog.
Kapping one over the head with a bean-pole, by way of
prelude to rapping the other, the puppy instantly joined
in the assault, which, but for an unlucky, stubbing of my
naked toes, would have proved successful. I flung down
my bean-pole with disgust, and beat, instead of the
young rascal of a dog, an inglorious retreat. For the rest
of the night, it was a triumph with the enemj^, reinforced
by some goslings and quacking ducks. If there was
needed any more rosin on the bow that kept sawing
across my tightly tuned nerves, two or three fleas sup-
plied it at short intervals. The bite of the little villains
made me jump like sparks of fire. There was, also,
toward the chilly morning hours, a tide in our aflairs, a
regular ebb and flow of bed-clothes, and a final cataract
of them, the entire sh^et descending into some abyss,
from which w^e never succeeded in recovering hardly any
thing more than some scanty edges and corners of a
blanket. It was a wonder to me how my companion in
arms could sleep as he did, a pleasure he declares he did
not enjoy ; but in his restlessness was surprised that I
THE SUPPER AND LODGING.
313
could slumber on so soundly, and snore through so many
troubles — a dulness from which, of course, 1 tried stoutly
to clear myself. Thus, as frequently happens, each imag-
ined the other to have slept, and himself to have been
wakeful all night. Undoubtedly, both waked and slum-
bered, and magnified the several small annoyances.
When we were ready to get up, which was disa-
greeably early, the household was stirring. But a peep
through the crevice of the curtains, which had been care-
fully pinned together again by some fingers unknown,
while we were dreaming, gave the needfiil hint, when out
they went again among the ducks and goslings. We
sprang out of bed, and dressed with all reasonable dis-
patch— an exercise in which we were slightly interrupted
by a younger puppy, the pestilent animal persisting, in
spite of a kick or two, in springing at and nibbling our
feet.
14
CHAPTER LIX.
SUNDAY AT DAVID MUEDOCIFS.— THE SCENERY OP BRAS D'OR.
Saturday, July 23. We were off betimes, and
trundling right merrily again along the hilly shores of
Bras D'or, a much more expanded sheet of water than
yesterday. At three o'clock, p. m., we arrived at David
Murdoch's, the end of our journey with Bearing's convey-
ances, and where we remain until Monday morning.
I have just returned from a walk through wood and
meadow, picking berries by the way, and now wait for
dinner, which, from the linen on the table, the look of the
landlady, and the general air of things, promises uncom-
monly well. From this frequent mention of the quality of
our dinner, it may be thought that I think them of great
importance. I do think them of very great importance ;
not so much because good meals are necessary and the
best on mere sanatory grounds, but because they, are an
THE SCENERY OF BRAS d'OR.
315
allowable luxury, especially at a time when one is apt to
have a sharp appetite and good digestion. A man is
something of an animal, and likes excellent eating for
the comfort of it, and the stomach's sake, and that like
is defensible on good moral grounds. I need not add,
that the indulgence of it should have upon it the bit and
curb of moderation ; in the application of which moral
force consists temperance, a virtue that stands not in
the scantiness, the meanness, or the entire absence of
things drank and eaten, but in the strong, controlling
will. After this brief apology for the hungry traveller's
love of bountiful dinners well and neatly served, I will
return to the sylvan nook where ours, for to-day and to-
morrow, are to be cooked and eaten.
We are at the foot of a high, broad hill, verdant with
meadows and pastures, and checkered with woods and
orchards, around the lake-end of which the road comes
gracefully winding down to the creek and the bridge
close by. The expanse of water lying off to the west, as
you might have guessed, is named St. Peter's Bay, and
the buildings, a mile or more distant along the spruce
and pine-covered shore, is St. Peter's itself, a village.
The accommodations of Mr. Murdoch are ampler than
those of the Widow Kelly ; and the brown, wooden house
stands backed into the thick evergreen forest, the front
316 SUNDAY AT DAVID MURDOCH'S.
door dressing to the right and left, with its square-
toed stone step in line with the trees along the street.
We have each a neat room, softened under foot with
a rag carpet, and dimmed by a small window and
its clean white curtain. The narrow feather-beds are
freshened with the cleanest linen. We have seen the
last of our driver, who returns to-day as far as the
Widow Kelly's.
With one horse attached to the hinder end of the
forward wagon, he went over the bridge and up the hill,
" an hour and a half ago."
Sunday, July 24. We rest according to the com-
mandment, and have religious service in the fapaily, the
members of which, like most of the Scotch of Cape
Breton, are Presbyterians. In the afternoon, we saun-
tered through the adjoining woods and fields, picking a
few strawberries, and giving to ourselves a practical illus-
tration of the ease with which people slip into the habit
of Sabbath-breaking, who live in out-of-the-way places,
distant from the parish church, and beyond the restraints
of a well-ordered community. In the course of our walk,
we came out upon the beach, and looked at the beautiful
evening sky across the water. Bountiful Providence !
Where hast thou not sown the seeds of loveliness, and
SUNDAY AT DAVID MURDOCH S.
317
made the flowers of glory bloom ? Celestial colors are
also beneath the foot. The swells that fretted, and
left their froth along the sloping sand, were freighted
with the jelly-fish, several of which were of the most
exquisite purple.
CHAPTER LX.
OFF FOR THE STRAIT OF CANSO.— ST. PETER'S AND THE COUNTRY.—
DAVID MURDOCH'S HORSES, AND HIS DRIVING.— ARRIVE AT
PLASTER COVE.
Monday, July 25. We are out " by the dawn's early
light," and assist in getting our baggage upon the coach,
as David Murdoch calls his two-horse covered wagon,
which is to carry us on to the Strait of Can^o. We have
breakfasted, and all is ready. As I pen these notes, here
and there by the wayside, I keep them mainly in the
present tense. David, a little fair-complexioned, sandy-
whiskered farmer, innkeeper, stage-proprietor, and driver,
all in one, is exactly the man for his vocation. Quick in
his motions, intelligent and good-tempered, he is entirely
to our purpose. He starts his Cape Bretons, a span of
light, wiry animals, upon a canter, in our opinion an in-
discreet pace. We pass St. Peter's, a superlative place —
superlatively minute, the smallest city in the world. It
ST. PETER S.
319
had, for several years, one house, but has of late been in
a more thriving condition. It has now a name on the
map, a population of some nine or ten souls, and two
houses, a large public work in the shape of a beach, and
a little shipping, not able to say how much exactly, as it
is all absent but a skiff and a bark canoe, and the wreck
of a schooner, in a poor and neglected condition. How
long, at this rate of progress, it will take for St. Peter's to
grow out of existence, is a fair question of arithmetic,
left for the statist of the island to cipher out. We
pause for a moment only, and that in front of a mer-
cantile establishment, if one may guess from a tin-foil-
covered paper of tobacco, and astride of it a couple of
pipes in the window, but dash* through its suburbs, a
pig-pen and a hen-roost, and pass the gates of a calf-pen
and a potato-patch, and gain the open country, a wild
and lonesome tract, half-wooded, and the other half
weeds, brush, and stumps of all calibre and colors,
from rotten-red and brown down to coal-black, and all
torn to pieces, and tangled into one briery wilderness,
just fit for the fires that occasionally scour through.
We were mistaken about the indiscretion of David, in
his driving, and add two more to the list of those imperti-
nent travellers who hastily pass judgment upon persons
and things of which they are quite ignorant. David is
320 DAVID Murdoch's horses, and driving.
the Jehu of the road, and his steeds are chosen, and fitted
to their master. Like locomotives, they work with the
greater ease and spirit as they wax hotter. For three
hours they trotted, galloped, ran, as if something more
than horse was in them, and something worse than man
was in their driver. There was ; as we knew by the flame
in his face and about his nostrils, and by his breath that
had spirit in it. Around the hills, and at their foot,
over bridges, and through the bushy dales, the road
described many a Hogarth's line of beauty, and many a
full-blooded S. In whirling through these graceful sinu-
osities, now strongly on the right wheels, then heavily on
the left, flirting the dust or mud into the air, we seemed
to swim or fly on the oily brim of peril. Expostulation
flashed out upon the lips in vain. A shake of the head,
and a knowing smile, sharpened ofl" by the crack of the
whip, restored assurance, and fairly straightened all things
out. But all went well, and passengers as well as driver
became rash and brave, and foolishly came to like and
applaud what at first they were disposed to protest
against.
A change of horses has enabled David to persist in
this extraordinary driving, which brings us to Plaster
Cove at noon, where we part with both the mercurial
little Scotchman, and Cape Breton. Thus have we
ARRIVE AT PLASTER COVE.
321
coasted, and crossed this British Island, in which, with
all that is repulsive and desolate, nature has done much,
especially in the picturesque, and where agriculture and
commerce have large fields for improvement. To the
tourist that loves nature, and who, for the manifold
beauties by hill and shore, by woods and waters, is happy
to make small sacrifices of personal comfort, I would
commend Cape Breton. Your fashionable, whose main
object is company, dress, and frivolous pleasure with the
gay, and whose only tolerable stopping-place is the grand
hotel, had better content himself with reading of this
Island.
14*
CHAPTEK LXI.
ADIEU TO DAVID AND CAPE BKETON.— THE STEAIT OF CANSO.-OUR
NOVA SCOTIA COACH.— ST. GEORGE'S BAY, AND THE EIDE INTO
ANTIGONISH.
Plaster Cove, a small village, and our dining-place, is
at the main point of departure for Nova Scotia on the
Strait of Canso, a river to all appearance, and not unlike
the Niagara, pouring its deep, green tides back and forth
through its rocky channel, overlooked by cliffs and high-
lands. Directly opposite, the hills rise into quite a
mountain, thickly wooded, down the sides of which is a
broad clearing for the telegraphic wire connecting with
the Atlantic cable. At first a very high tower of timber
was erected on this, the Cape Breton side, in order to
carry the wire above the highest mast, but it was soon
abandoned and left to fall into ruin. The wire is now
submerged, and enters the water in the form of a sub-
stantial iron rope strong enough for the anchor of a man-
of-war.
THE STRAIT OF CANSO.
323
Two o'clock, p. M., we crossed the strait in a small sail-
boat, and encountered quite a disagreeable sea, enough so
to give us a few dashes of salt water, and frighten the
women that were in company. We have a two-horse
post-coach, of queer shape and uncomfortable dimensions,
being short and narrow in the body, but tall enough to
serve for a canopy at the head of a procession. One could
easily spread his umbrella overhead, and find some incon-
venience in disposing of it closed down below. To Anti-
gonish, the town for which we start in this — I am at a loss
to determine whether antique, or an anticipation of the
future — carriage, it is thirty- six miles, and not greatly
different from as many miles lately passed over, if I may
guess from what I can see for a mile ahead. Our fellow-
sufferers in this strait jacket of a carriage are Scotchmen,
and think in Gaelic before they speak, I imagine, as have
many of them that we have met. They are much
amused at the humour of the painter, of whose vocation
and standing in the world they have not the remotest
notion.
" St. George, he was for England,
St. Denis was for France ;
Sing, Honi soit qui mal y pense,"
is the refrain of Master John Grubb, of Christ Church,
Oxford, his ballad, rehearsed at the aniiivergary feast of
324 ST. GEORGE'S BAY, AND RIDE TO ANTIGONISH.
St. George's club, on St. George's Day, the 23d of April.
And now for the reason that I have been humming this
classic nonsense, or rather that I should have thought of it :
To the north of us is a blue expanse, dotted and bordered
by inlandSj headlands, and the warm blue heights of Capo
Breton. It is a kind of azure reticule, or pocket of the
Gulf, and was early christened, by whom I cannot tell,
St. George's Bay. This is the second Bay in honor of the
martyr of Nicomedia, the patron Saint of England, to
repeat a popish* fancy, that we have encountered within
a few days. And truly, could the old religious hero revisit
these earthly scenes, he would own that they had given
his name to a very fine extent of water, whose purple
hills to the northeast stand at the opening of the Strait
of Canso. Due north, a vessel would touch, in a few
hours' sail, the eastern cape of Prince Edward's Island,
the garden of all the Gulf, another region for the summer
traveller.
These landscapes of island, sky, and water are softly
beautiful in the afternoon and sunset lights, but scarcely
picturesque, and never grand. The country is dull and
wearisome, gently diversified with hill and dale, wood-
lands and farms, in no very high state of culture, and
thinly populated. There is some advantage, however,
resulting from this dulness of scenery : it drives us to
ST. GEORGE'S- BAY, AND RIDE TO ANTIGONISH. 325
ourselves for entertainraent. A merrier time I do not
remember than that lately passed on the driver's seat.
The theme was scarecrows — a peculiar walk of art, in
which the painter, during a recent stay in a remote part
of the country, became sufficiently adept to frighten, not
only the little creatures that pulled up the corn, but
even the larger ones that planted it. To such perfection
did he finally carry old clothes and straw, that, like the
statue of Pygmalion, his images became indued with life,
and ended with running after the astonished rustics of
the neighborhood. We ride into Antigonish, a thriving
village, with pretty white houses and spreading shade-
trees, at dusk, and alight at a comfortable tavern, where
we sup on salmon, and rest until after midnight.
CHAPTEK LXII. -
NEW GLASGOW.— THE EIDE TO TRUEO.— THE RAILWAY EIDE TO
h HALIFAX.— PARTING WITH THE PAINTER.
Tuesday, July 26. New Glasgow. We halt here
for breakfast, after a sociable and merry ride of several
hours from Antigonish, where, after a refreshing sleep, we
were favored by a change of coaches, and the pleasant
company of an officer of the English army. Here is a
broad and fertile vale with a pretty river and town ; all
reminding us of New England. Across the river are
coal-mines, a railroad, and ther oar of cars, merely coal-
cars, however. Tide-water is close by, setting in from
the Strait of Northumberland, the lengthy water lying
between the mainland and Prince Edward's Island. We
are all ready for our ride to Truro, on Mines Bay, or a
spur of it, an eastern reach of the Bay of Fundy, and
distant forty miles, where we take the cars for Halifax,
THE RAILWAY KIDE TO HALIFAX.
327
or all the world. Those wonderful cars ! Why, at
Truro, I shall begin to feel at home, a point more remote
than Europe, in the day of only sails and horse-power.
The ride is cheering, as we take it on the coach-top
in the breezy, bright day. Broad farms, with barns and
dwellings, grass and grain and orchards, cattle and bleat-
ing sheep spread out upon the hills, and stretch along the
valleys. The plain of Truro has many of the features of
a populous and well-cultivated county. Its groves and
trees and wide meadows, waiting for the mowef, form a
pretty and extended landscape. The town itself, reached
at three o'clock, with its central square and grass and
shades, is too much like a village of New England to need
further mention. While at dinner, the whistle of the
locomotive indicated the direction of the station, a wel-
come call, which we obeyed with rather more than ordi-
nary alacrity. The ride to Halifax, which occupied from
four o'clock until dusk, was by no means at Yankee
speed, and took us through a thinly inhabited country,
somewhat broken, and interspersed with woodls and
waters — a region that makes no very definite or lasting
impression, and yet one that the traveller looks out upon
with some pleasure. The last few miles along the banks
of the river flowing into Halifax Bay was a lovely valley
ride. Bounded hills and bluffs green and bowery, and
328 PARTING WITH THE PAINTER.
handsome residences looking out between pretty groves
and down grassy lawns, never appeared more attractive.
Had we been going the other way, perhaps they would
not have seemed deserving of more than a passing look.
In the weary hours, and along the torrid portions of the
path of life, I am sure that I shall remember the quiet,
refreshing scenery of that river, and wish myself among
its graceful and placid beauties. From the noisy station
we trundled in an 'omnibus through the narrow streets of
an old-fashioned, hill-side city, crowned with a fortress
looking off south upon a bay and the distant ocean, and
alighted at a hotel of stories and many windows, where
we heard a gong, instrument of Pandemonium, and took
tea with the relish of medicine, and talked over the con-
clusion of our journey. As haste was more requisite on
my part, I resolved to post across the province to Wind-
sor, that night, and leave the painter to wend his way
homeward at his leisure.
CHAPTER LXIII.
COACH EIDE AT NIGHT FEOM HALIFAX TO WINDSOR.— THE PEINCE
EDWARD'S MAN, AND THE GENTLEMAN FROM NEWFOUNDLAND.
Immersed in fog, and sliut up in a small coach,
three of us^ a Prince Edward's man and a gentleman
from Newfoundland, rode at a round trot, with but two
or three brief intermissions, from ten o'clock in the even-
ing until six next morning. The country, I conclude — if
a man may have any conclusions, who rides with his eyes
fast shut, and sleeps and nods — is a succession of hills
and dales. From the bridges, over which we rumbled,
and from the crowing of the cocks at midnight and at
dawn, I argue that there were farms and streams. My
companions were agreeable. Being partners in the en-
terprise, at the cost of twenty- two dollars and a half for
an eight hours' drive, we had fellow-feelings on all things
in general, and upon the expensiveness of night travel-
330 THE PRINCE EDWARD'S MAN.
ling in Nova Scotia in particular. The Prince Edward's
man, a tradesman, was on his first visit to the States,
in fact to the great world, and was a modest, thoughtful
person, who talked as men of merely home experience
are apt to talk, saying nothing to object to, nothing to
startle, and some little to remember concerning the
climate, the society, and products of his native isle. The
gentleman from Newfoundland had seen the world to
his soul's content, and now was a most passionate lover
of wild nature. He had dined with nobility and gentry,
and could talk of them and of cities, from the end of his
tongue ; but of the pleasures of the sportsman in British
America, out of his very heart. A more genial com-
panion the lonely traveller could not easily light upon.
I had seen him before, but forgot to mention it. It was
at Murdoch's, on the last Sunday, which I was sorry to
recollect of him. He drove up about noon, in wood-
man's dress partly ; washed, dined, and departed in great
haste for Pictou, in order to reach Halifax in time for
the very steamer that we were hoping to catch. With
all his speed he missed it as well as we. Hinc illa3
lachrymee. In his conversation you heard the crack of
the rifle, and the roar of the forest and the ocean. JIc
was often reeling in the largest salmon and the finest
trout, and bringing down with a crash in the brushwood
THE GENTLEMAN FKOM NEWFOUNDLAND.
331
I
the fattest of all bucks. The light of his nut-brown
pipe, a costly article, flashing faintly on his well-marked
face, reminded me of the red blaze of camp-fires in the
woods, on the banks of mountain brooks, and the shores
of solitary lakes. From one of a nature so companion-
able you part, on the road, after no longer than a day's
acquaintance, with genuine regret. He was a character
for the novelist, with a head and countenance both for
painter and sculptor.
CHAPTER LXIV.
WINDSOR —THE AVON AND THE TIDE.— THE STEAMER FOR ST. JOHN'S,
NEW BRUNSWICK.— MINES BASIN.— COAST SCENERY.— THE SCENE
OF EVANGELINE.— PARSBORO.— THE BAY OF FUNDY.— NOVxi SCOTIA
AND NEW BRUNSWICK SHORES.— ST. JOHNS.— THE MAINE COAST,
AND GRAND MANAN.
Wednesday, July 27. Windsor, N. S. Soon after
our arrival, I walked down to the Avon, an arm of Mines
Bay, itself an expanded inlet of the great Bay of Fundy,
to view the wonderful tide. It was not coming in, as I
had hoped, but quite out, leaving miles of black river-
bottom entirely bare, with only a small stream coursing
through in a serpentine manner. A line of blue water
was visible on the northern horizon. After an absence
of an hour or so, I loitered back, when,- to my surprise,
there was a river like the Hudson at Catskill, running up
with a powerful current. The high wharf, upon which,
but a short time before, I had stood and surveyed the
black, unsightly fields of mud, was now up to its middle
I
. MINES BASIN. 333
in the turbid and whirliDg stream, and very nearly in,
the steamer from St. Johns, N. B.
In the course of an hour more I was on board, and
waiting for the turn of the tide, upon which, of necessity,
the boat takes her departure. I had missed, after all,
seeing the first approach of the tidal wave, and had to
content myself with what I have described, and with a
short walk in the town, of late esteeming itself note-
worthy on account of being the birthplace of General
Williams, the hero of Kars, of whose fine personal ap-
pearance I have spoken.
We are now at the opening of the Avon into Mines
Bay or Basin, as they call this small sea, and look upon
scenes of which Longfellow speaks in the first pages of
his Evangeline. It is simply a pleasant-looking farming
country, checkered with fields of green, now of a yellow
tint and then of a blue. Shores of reddish rocks and
sand make a pretty foreground line along the west, and
rise to the picturesque as they wind away northward.
Headlands of gray and red rocks in slopes and precipices
stand out in bold relief crowned with underwood and
loftier trees. The clouds are clearing away before the
breeze, and letting us have a sparkling sea, a fine blue
sky, and landscapes dappled with light and shadow.
Parsboro, a village on the north shore of the Basin,
334 COAST SCENERY.
enjoys more than its share of broad, gravelly beach, over-
hung with clifted and woody bluffs. One fresh from the
dead walls of a great city would be delighted with the
sylvan shores of Parsboro. The beach, with all its
breadth, a mii^cle of pebbly beauty, slants steeply to the
surf, which is now rolling up in curling clouds of green
and white. Here we turn westward into the great bay
itself, going with a tide that rushes like a mighty river
toward a cataract, whirling, boiling, breaking in half
moons of crispy foam. Behind us is the blue reach of
Chignecto Bay, the northern of the two long and winding
horns of the main body of water, up which it would be
play for a fortnight to hunt romantic scenery, and wit-
ness the " bore," that most brilliant of all tidal displays.
Here is a broad sea, moving with strange velocity for
a sea. The prospect to the south is singularly fine.
Nova Scotia, sloping from the far-off sky gently down to
the shores, its fields and villages and country dwellings
gleaming in the warm noon-day, or darkening in the
shadow of a transient cloud — a contrast to the northern,
New Brunswick coast, iron-bound and covered with dark
forests. Drops from a coming shower are wasting their
sweet freshness upon the briny deep, an agreeable discord
in the common music of the day, and chime in, among
pleasant incidents, with the talk of the Prince Edward's
THE MAINE COAST. 335
man, and the sparkling conversation of the Newfoundland
gentleman. "And so sail we" into the harbor of St.
Johns, the last of the waters of this divine apostle, in
time for supper and a pleasant ramble about the city.
You might call it the city of hills.
Thursday, July 28, 1859. St. Johns, K B. This
is my last date, and I write it out in full, in the light of
a fine morning, on the deck of the steamer for Portland.
The coast of Maine, truly picturesque as it is, with its
rocky points, lake-like bays, and islands bristling in their
dark evergreens like porcupines, and particularly Mount
Desert Island and Frenchman's Bay, is the mildest form
of Newfoundland scenery as you see it on the Atlantic
side, with an additional dressing of forest and vegetation,
sparsely studded with towns and habitations.
Speaking of Mount Desert Island, recalls Cole to
memory, who was, I believe, the first landscape painter
of our country that visited that picturesque region. I
remember with what enthusiasm he spoke of the coast
scenery — the fine surf upon Sand Beach — the play of
the surge in the caverns of Great Head — the ^gean
beauty of Frenchman's Bay — the forests, and the wild,
rugged mountains, from the tops of which he could count
a multitude of sails upon the blue ocean, and follow the
336 GRAND MAN AN.
rocky shores and sparkling breakers for many and many
a mile. Familiar to me as all that has long since be-
come, I shall not pass it to-day without emotion.
Grand Manan, a favorite summer haunt of the
painter, is the very throne of the bold and romantic.
The high, precipitous shores, but for the woods which
beautify them, are quite in the style of Labrador. I look
upon its grand old cliffs with double interest from the
fact that he has made me familiar with its people and
scenery. As it recedes from my view, and becomes a dot
in the boundless waters, I will put the period to this
record.
THE END.
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