CHAPTER 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.

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. 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, garnished 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 illustrating the story of the place, and of his own life. Chateau, 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 historic associations of thrilling interest.

According to the custom of those who live permanently 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 timber 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 explodes 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 frequently 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, thundering along. There are spaces of dark water spotting 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 preparations for a pic-nic upon the very top of it, the mysteries 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 amazement at such rashness, the grim Alp of the sea made 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 thunders, 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 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 excessively 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, and hemmed in with ice in a way to break off the wind. It is simply rain-water, I suppose, resting upon the surface of the heavier salt water. In the course of the conversation, 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 untamable 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 habitation 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.

CHAPTER 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.—THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE.

Afterdinner and a pleasant conversation on deck, we found time to slip ashore, and thread our 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 the 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 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 his 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 discovered. 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 rolled completely over, and came within an ace of catching 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, giving 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 peculiarly 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 filling the cabin with the dense smoke of spruce boughs, and then, upon its escape, covering 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 sounds above: shaking of blocks and cordage, now and then 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, but 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 calling 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 purpose 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 Newfoundland, 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 SCENERY.—FAREWELL TO LABRADOR.

Thecoast of Labrador was really fine, all the forenoon, and sometimes strikingly grand. It has lost something 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-line, black, brown and red. The last few miles, and which is near the Canadian border, the red sandstone shore is exceedingly 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 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 retreat 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. Anyway, 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 sandstone, of some two or three miles in extent, with horizontal 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 appearance. At one point of this huge citadel of solitude, there is the resemblance of a giant portal, with stupendous 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 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 christening 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 attracted us thither, could we have spared a day. On the point from which 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 honeyless 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 orchards? Hast not thou thy horned cariboo, thy reindeer, thy fox of costly fur, and thy wild-fowl of wintry plumage? Hast not thou thy bright-eyed salmon, graced with lines as delicate 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 delighted and awe-struck upon the grandeur of a great and terrible wilderness, upon the gloom of its shadowy atmosphere, upon the brilliancy of its sunlight? Have we not heard the footsteps of the billows marching 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 beautiful, most wonderful of all, thine icebergs, and thy twilight 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!

CHAPTER LIII.

WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND.—THE BAY, THE ISLANDS, AND THE HIGHLANDS OF ST. JOHNS.—INGORNACHOIX BAY.

Newfoundlandnow 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. Johns, 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 attractive 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. Johns. Behind them is an expanse of water, alive with fish and fowl, the extremes of which are lost in the deep, untroubled wilderness. A month would not suffice to find out and enjoy its manifold and picturesque beauties, through which wind the deserted trails of the Red 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 White 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 we may not return ourselves, we can direct others of like taste and sentiment. We come down from the cold air, 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 melancholy music.

CHAPTER LIV.

SLOW SAILING BY THE BAY OF ISLANDS.—THE RIVER HUMBER.—ST. GEORGE’S RIVER, CAPE, AND BAY.—A BRILLIANT 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 sailing 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, 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 River is a wild, 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.

CHAPTER LV.

FOUL WEATHER.—CAPE ANGUILLE.—THE CLEARING OFF.—THE FROLIC OF THE PORPOISES.—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 Indians, in single file. If Progress walk before, Patience is close behind, which order of march now happens to prevail, and 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 Anguille, the neighboring heights of which are five hundred 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 thousand 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 tubfull of helpless creatures in the upper air. They appear 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, 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 gallop, and 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 ambition. 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 deposed, and now occupies the lowly position of a mere lackey to cooks of character. There are now, instead of one indifferent, three pre-eminent cooks: a painter, a captain, and a writer. They employ, divert, and frequently 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, from 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 conglomeration 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 appeared 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 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 disintegrating 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 perpetuity.

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 effects are described in a language more venerable than that of Greece: “They reel 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 disorders, 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, interspersed 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. Tantæne animis celestibus iræ! There was no consciousness of a spectator of the militant manœuvres, but a mighty thrashing and furious thrusting, and whipping of a scraggy spruce-bough among tubs, jugs, and cans, and away behind. There was a 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 purrs 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 now breaking over our barriers every few minutes, yet they effectually upset the stomach, and hence all comfort. 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.

CHAPTER LVI.

ST. PAUL’S ISLAND.—CAPE NORTH.—COAST OF CAPE BRETON.—SYDNEY LIGHT AND HARBOR.—THE END OF OUR VOYAGE TO LABRADOR, AND AROUND NEWFOUNDLAND.

Thursday,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 group of mountain headlands, draped with gloomy grandeur, 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 Anguille, and Cape Ray with its rocky domes and tables. Thus have we fairly encompassed this Ireland of America, 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 atmosphere. Clouds are breaking around the woody summits, seas of forest-tops are smiling in the sunshine, and shadows are filling the rocky gorges with a kind of twilight. At last the sun is sinking behind the distant heights, and leaving his red footsteps on the clouds. C⁠—— is painting his last picture, and these are the last pencillings of the voyage. We hail the cliffs of Sydney—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 OUR WAY ACROSS CAPE BRETON.—A MERRY RIDE, AND THE RUSTIC LOVER.

Friday,July 22. Sydney harbor. A bright morning, 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, carpet-bags, reindeer-horns, snow-shoes, plants, and mosses—in a one-horse wagon, goes ahead; we follow 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 hill. 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 atmosphere; our eyes are upon the body and legs of the little fellow wrapped in this brown skin. After the first effervescence 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. Dearing, his master, said he was. We are pleased to find ourselves mistaken. Our very blunders are satisfactory. The longer he goes the smarter he grows, giving us symptoms of a disposition to run away, when ordinarily 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.

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 and 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, running, 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, 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 slackening 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 confined to monosyllables—loud and few—and, when forward, 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 expedition, 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 distance 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 understand him, and whose faces were so many open doors of curiosity, finally relieved us of him. It was evidently undesigned, and he pulled up, I thought, somewhat reluctantly.

CHAPTER LVIII.

EVENING RIDE TO MRS. KELLY’S TAVERN.—THE SUPPER, AND THE LODGING.

Ata sort of half-way house, the driver of the baggage-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 wound its way through thick woods, mostly spruce, and “I whistled as I went,” certainly 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 silvery, metallic ring, often made me pause and listen. Red 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. Ruby darlings, they had got only thus far along, and looked timid and disheartened, dropping wearily into the mossy turf, where they trembled like drops of blood. And so I loitered along the 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, English 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 the water, and thridding 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. Instantly 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 revolve, 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 supper. There was tea, somewhat intimate, to be sure, with the waterpot, and there was bread, nice as the Queen herself 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, kind 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, 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 intention of going at once to bed that were not mistaken. Immediately 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 returned, 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 Mungo Park, she and her maids lightened their nocturnal labors—spinning cotton—by singing plaintive songs, the burden of 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 continual 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 suffered until they naturally whispered and swept their way 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. Treacherous 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 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. Rapping 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 enemy, 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 supplied 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 affairs, a regular ebb and flow of bed-clothes, and a final cataract of them, the entire sheet descending into some abyss, from which we 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 could slumber on so soundly, and snore through so many troubles—a dulness from which, of course, I tried stoutly to clear myself. Thus, as frequently happens, each imagined the other to have slept, and himself to have been wakeful all night. Undoubtedly, both waked and slumbered, and magnified the several small annoyances.

When we were ready to get up, which was disagreeably early, the household was stirring. But a peep through the crevice of the curtains, which had been carefully pinned together again by some fingers unknown, while we were dreaming, gave the needful hint, when out they went again among the ducks and goslings. We sprang out of bed, and dressed with all reasonable dispatch—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.

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