CHAPTER XXXVI.
RAMBLE AMONG THE FLOWERS OF BATTLE ISLAND.—A VISIT TO THE FISHERMEN.—WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
RAMBLE AMONG THE FLOWERS OF BATTLE ISLAND.—A VISIT TO THE FISHERMEN.—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 loveliest 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 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 parishioners thereabouts.
After a pleasant ramble, during which we were often 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, extending 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 ruggedness and desolation. Upon reflection, a broad and ancient solitude like this has a sadness 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 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 natural 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 cemetery, 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 eastern 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. A novel sight to us was the bottom of the harbor, seen through the clear, greenish water with considerable distinctness 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 THE BAY ST. LOUIS ICEBERG.—WINDSOR CASTLE ICEBERG.—FOUNDERS SUDDENLY.—A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE.
Afterdinner, upon the heights of Battle Island, gathering roots, plants, and mosses to carry home. We notice with pleasure the largest iceberg by far that we have ever yet seen. It is the last arrival from Greenland, 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 projections and massive towers not unlike those of the regal structure of which it reminds me. I see by the watch it is nearly 4P. M., the time set for our departure to a Bay St. Louis berg. Pencil and note-book must be pocketed, and haste be made with my vegetable gatherings.
Pencil and note-book reappear, and the sketch recommences. 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 silent 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. Replete 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 shining 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 those plebeian waves, that rabble-rout of surges, that democratic “lop,” lately born, and puffed into noisy importance! They scare me, and, worst of all, make me sick and miserable.
Every few minutes we hear the artillery of the icebergs, 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 magazine 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 exclaimed: 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, rolling upon the ear like the quick successive strokes of a 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.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SUNDAY IN LABRADOR.—EVENING WALK TO THE GRAVEYARD.—THE ROCKY OCEAN SHORE.
SUNDAY IN LABRADOR.—EVENING WALK TO THE GRAVEYARD.—THE ROCKY OCEAN SHORE.
Sunday evening,July 10. We have had a beautiful and interesting day. Early in the morning, flags were flying from the shipping, and from the tall staff in front of the church, the only bell-tower of the town. Boats, with people in their Sunday best, soon came rowing 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 rocks a depth of earth sufficient for shallow graves. While yet the sunshine was bright upon the high, overhanging 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 immersed in cool and lonesome shadows. An unavoidable 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 consecrated this. It was a pleasant Sunday morning, and the procession, with the bishop at its head clothed in his official 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 looking down with silent admiration from the rocky galleries around. A better resting-place, when one lies down 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 murmurs of the ocean. I found by the inscriptions, that England was the native country of most of those whose 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 icebergs 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 contest 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.
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 carpeted 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 HARBOR.—A DAY WITH THE ESQUIMAUX, AND OUR RETURN.
THE SAIL TO FOX HARBOR.—A DAY WITH THE ESQUIMAUX, AND OUR RETURN.
Monday,July 11. After icebergs in St. Michael’s 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, 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 wonderful 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 companion than a small whale. Now he blows just behind us, disappears, and blows again upon our right. There he blows ahead of us. Here he is close upon our left. The fellow is diving under us. All this may be very pretty sport for the whale, but with all the merry remarks 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 baptism. 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 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 forward over the low swells with a grace and fleetness unknown 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, McDonald, 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.
CHAPTER XL.
A MORNING RAMBLE OVER CARIBOO.—EXCURSION ON THE BAY, AND THE TEA-DRINKING AT THE SOLITARY FISHERMAN’S.
A MORNING RAMBLE OVER CARIBOO.—EXCURSION ON THE BAY, 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 hills of Cariboo, under the cliffs of which the Integrity now lies tied to the rocks. We gather roots and flowers, gaze upon the vast and desolate prospect, count the icebergs, and watch the motions of the fog driving, in large, cloud-like masses, across the angry ocean. It is surprising how much we do in these, to us, almost interminable days. But for the necessity of it, I believe that we should not sleep at all, but work and play right on from midnight into morning, and from morning down to midnight. We have a large afternoon excursion before us. Previous to that, however, the Captain and myself are going upon an exploring expedition.
Coasting the southern 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. Givesusabout as much aswecan manage! “Us” and “We” have not a great deal to do with it. This half of the “us” and the “we,” the Me and the subjective I, as your Kantian philosopher calls his essential 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 fisherman has his summer-home. We are going in to see him.
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 maintained his ground. The shout of the fisherman’s wife, who now appeared on the edge of the scene above, instantly 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 good man himself 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 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 Newfoundland, 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 children, 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 CAVERN OF GREAT ISLAND, AND OUR SAIL HOMEWARD IN A GALE.
PAINTING THE CAVERN OF GREAT ISLAND, AND OUR SAIL HOMEWARD IN A GALE.
Twoo’clockP. 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 excursion proposed in the morning, 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 moment, the sails would be without a breath; at another, the wonder is that they were not burst from their fastenings. As the Captain turned into the wind, the boat would jump as if going out of the water. Some training 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 cavern, 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 shattered—terrifically rough—tumult and storm all 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 astonishing spectacle of power and fury. The charge and the retreat of billows upon slopes of rock so torn and shattered, for miles and miles at the same moment, Mr. Hutchinson repeatedly declares, is one of the most brilliant and imposing sights on earth. While C—— is painting, I have been writing these periods, and clambering the mossy cliffs for plants and flowers. Half-past 7, and Captain Knight below, waiting for us near the mouth 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 peril 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 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 increased, 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 darted 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. Wrapped in heavy overcoats, and wet and chilly, we came, notwithstanding, 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 RETREAT TO CARTWRIGHT’S TICKLE.—BRIDGET KENNEDY’S COTTAGE, AND THE LONELY STROLL OVER CARIBOO.
AFTER THE ICEBERG OF BELLE ISLE.—THE RETREAT TO CARTWRIGHT’S TICKLE.—BRIDGET KENNEDY’S COTTAGE, AND THE LONELY STROLL OVER CARIBOO.
Wednesday,July 13. We rise with the intention 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 passage into the south water. We have slipped through that, and are now scudding before a pleasant northeaster, directly toward the castle, and the northern cape of Belle Isle. We are having a long ground-swell, roughened with a “lop” or short sea, and the promise of high wind. The fishing boats, more out to sea, are putting in—a signal for our retreat. We confess ourselves beaten for the day, and run for Cartwright’s Tickle, a small inlet, a mile or so distant. And a merry run of it we are having; a kind of experience to which 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 widow 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 terrible—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 affecting 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 chimney. 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 over upon the good woman’s garden, the merest spot of black, in which there is nothing but 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 performance 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 sitting 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.
I have turned my walk back to the vessel, into a regular holiday stroll, jotting down from time to time whatever happens to please me. These deep amphitheatres 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 be 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 looking on, and cataracts were listening with delight. Silly 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 lie down and drink; kneel down and wash my hands; wash my 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, with a sprinkling of those cotton-tufted rushes. And I sing, as I sang in my boyhood:
“Green grow the rushes, O!’Tis neither you nor I do know,How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.”
“Green grow the rushes, O!’Tis neither you nor I do know,How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.”
“Green grow the rushes, O!’Tis neither you nor I do know,How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.”
“Green grow the rushes, O!’Tis neither you nor I do know,How oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.”
“Green grow the rushes, O!
’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 chamber 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, looking me in the face, with all the thousand eyes you have, and none of the modesty of bugs finely dressed, and vastly your superior? 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 hill-side, and roll over and over to the bottom. I did run up the hill-side, but not to roll 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 mountain, with the harbor and its vessels at my feet.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE ICEBERG OF THE FIGURE-HEAD.—THE GLORY AND THE MUSIC OF THE SEA AT EVENING.
THE ICEBERG OF THE FIGURE-HEAD.—THE GLORY AND THE MUSIC OF THE SEA AT EVENING.
Latein 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 surface, 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 lurking, 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 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 reposes, 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 peculiarly 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 expression 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 box 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 swell, with loud and violent demonstrations of disagreement with himself. After this unhappy outbreak, he wiped away the tears, and returned subdued and composed 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 indescribably fine. I think of deep down caverns of light shining up through the dark sea. The blocks and bowlders, 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 shining crystal, gazes with serene majesty upon the white daylight in the northwest. Possessed with the mournful and nearly supernatural beauty, we forget the dangers of this intimacy. There is a strange fascination, and particularly 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. CHARLES.—THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE GREAT CASTLE BERG.—STUDIES OF ITS DIFFERENT FRONTS.
CAPE ST. CHARLES.—THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE GREAT CASTLE BERG.—STUDIES OF ITS DIFFERENT FRONTS.
Thursday,July 14. Off again for the Great Castle Berg. The passage from Battle Harbor into the 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 crystallizations, 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 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 showers, 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 Rip 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.
PLATE No. 5.ICEBERG IN THE MORNING MIST.—WHALEBOATLith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.
PLATE No. 5.ICEBERG IN THE MORNING MIST.—WHALEBOATLith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.
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 we saw founder, the largest we have seen, and, what is most likely, the largest we ever shall see. We merely guess at the dimensions. Sailing up the Niagara in the little steamer, how wide should you judge the falls to be from Table Rock across to the horse-shoe 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 floated 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 Rock toward the Horseshoe, to be silent ice, and you will have no very wrong notion 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 sunset 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 iceberger, expresses both delight and surprise. It is a cluster of Alpine mountains in miniature: peaks, precipices, slopes and gorges, a wondrous multitude of shining things, the general effect of which is imposing and sublime. 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 sapphire, 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 descriptive fire, and the blaze would not be sufficiently brilliant to light the mere reader to the scene. I will give it up, 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 undoubtedly at hand the finest opportunity one could wish of witnessing an ice-fall. As it is now nearly 8 o’clockP. M., and the painting done, we shall take a hasty leave, and content ourselves with a distant view of ice-exhibitions, 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 XLV.
THE SAIL FOR ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE SALMON FISHERS.—THE CAVERN OF THE ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—BURTON’S COTTAGE.—MAGNIFICENT SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE PAINTING OF THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE ICE-VASE, AND THE RETURN BY MOONLIGHT.
THE SAIL FOR ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE SALMON FISHERS.—THE CAVERN OF THE ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—BURTON’S COTTAGE.—MAGNIFICENT SCENE FROM ST. CHARLES MOUNTAIN.—THE PAINTING OF THE RIP VAN WINKLE BERG.—THE ICE-VASE, AND THE RETURN BY MOONLIGHT.
Oursails are up, and we glide landward, stopping to warm at a hut on a rocky islet. Two young fellows, engaged 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 frequently 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 optical illusion caused by the distorting and magnifying effects of the rolling surface. These young fishermen 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. Burton’s, the sole inhabitant of the small bay close by, where we hope for supper.
Between our landing and the supper, two hours passed, during which C—— 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 crags, 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.
The prospect was a new one to me, although long accustomed to mountain views, and more impressive than any thing of the kind I can remember. Rather more than half of the great circle was filled with the ocean; the remainder was Labrador, a most desolate 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 wonderful brightness. Seaward, the prospect exceeds any power of mine at description. I have no expectation of witnessing 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 valleys 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 countenance it was, and most exquisitely complexioned, reflecting 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 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 keeping step and time. There are gentlemen on the Hudson and around our cities, that would give a thousand dollars for such a tiny little wood. It is an exquisite curiosity, and must excel the dwarf shrubbery of the Japanese. The little trees—no mere yearlings 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 moonlight.
Among the incidents of painting the berg, C—— related one of some novelty. It was in deep water, but 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, he 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 correspondingly 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 enchantment, 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 throughout its manifold flutings and decorations. It was actually 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, 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 Rip Van Winkle iceberg, and saw his broken goblet pale and spectral in the moonlight. How lengthy will be the slumbers of the venerable wanderer beneath the shadows of the mountain, there is none but the hospitable Burtons to report. For their sakes, whose salmon-nets his ponderous movements along shore have greatly disturbed, it is to be hoped he will 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.