Torbay, finely described in a recent novel by the Rev. R.T.S. Lowell,
is an arm of the sea, a short strong arm with a slim hand and finger,
reaching into the rocky land and touching the water-falls and rapids
of a pretty brook. Here is a little village, with Romish and
Protestant steeples, and the dwellings of fishermen, with the
universal appendages of fishing-houses, boats, and "flakes." One
seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and wild. The rocks slope
steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles
support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark,
cool region, crossed with foot-paths, and not unfrequently sprinkled
and washed by the surf,--a most kindly office on the part of the sea,
you will allow, when once you have scented the fish-offal perpetually
dropping from the evergreen fish-house above. These little buildings
on the flakes are conspicuous features, and look as fresh and wild as
if they had just wandered away from the woodlands.
There they stand, on the edge of the lofty pole-shelf, or upon the
extreme end of that part of it which runs off frequently over the
water like a wharf, an assemblage of huts and halls, bowers and
arbors, a curious huddle made of poles and sweet-smelling branches and
sheets of birch-bark. A kind of evening haunts these rooms of spruce
at noonday, while at night a hanging lamp, like those we see in old
pictures of crypts and dungeons, is to the stranger only a kind of
buoy by which he is to steer his way through the darkness. To come off
then without pitching headlong, and soiling your hands and coat, is
the merest chance. Strange! one is continually allured into these
piscatory bowers whenever he comes near them. In spite of the chilly,
salt air, and the repulsive smells about the tables where they dress
the fish, I have a fancy for these queer structures. Their front door
opens upon the sea, and their steps are a mammoth ladder, leading down
to the swells and the boats. There is a charm also about fine fishes,
fresh from the net and the hook,--the salmon, for example, whose pink
and yellow flesh has given a name to one of the most delicate hues of
Art or Nature.