TORBAY.—FLAKES AND FISH-HOUSES.—THE FISHING BARGE.—THE
CLIFFS.—THE RETREAT TO FLAT ROCK HARBOR.—WILLIAM WATERMAN, THE
FISHERMAN.
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 waterfalls 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 footpaths, 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.
But where was the iceberg? We were not a little disappointed when all
Torbay was before us, and nothing but dark water to be seen. To our
surprise, no one had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off Flat Bock
Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed with the supposition
that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations to pursue, by
securing the only boat to be had in the village,—a substantial
fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at least a cord of
cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive power, as it turned
out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked at the foot of a
fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the kind-hearted men,
and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck. All ready, they
pulled away at their long, ponderous oars, with the skill and
deliberation of life-long practice, and we moved out upon the broad,
glassy swells of the bay towards the open sea, not indeed with the
rapidity of a Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable steadiness,
and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores, which, under the
afternoon sun, were made brilliant with lights and shadows.
We were presently met by a breeze, which increased the swell, and made
it easier to fall in close under the northern shore, a line of
stupendous precipices, to which the ocean goes deep home. The ride
beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my life.
While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all their
appendages of extent, structure, complexion and adjacent sea, they are
sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of sublimity.
The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle to angle, and
fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face of the vast
walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and rise
perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water. Their
stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of light and
dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the effect of
height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface.
At one point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a
kind of headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form
of a pyramid, from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to
meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out, and
left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses and
halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and the surf
was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing forth like
the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now and then, the
gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a billow far
within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of great doors.
After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea, there
appeared long rocky reaches, like Egyptian temples, old dead cliffs of
yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares, and having
the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean, of doors and
windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we came to a break,
where there were grassy slopes and crags intermingled, and a flock of
goats skipping about, or ruminating in the warm sunshine. A knot of
kids—the reckless little creatures!—were sporting along the edge of
the precipice in a manner almost painful to witness. The pleasure of
leaping from point to point, where a single mis-step would have dropped
them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in proportion to the danger. The
sight of some women, who were after the goats, reminded the boatmen of
an accident which occurred here only a few days before: a lad playing
about the steep, fell into the sea, and was drowned.
We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold
the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef, that flanked the
small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of
dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward,
and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our
hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. “There it is!”
one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the next
headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon us from
the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg was
expected to be seen. Further and further out the long, strong sweep of
the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between us and the
next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too trifling a
matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning or
remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when from
the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells, we stood
up and looked around, and saw that if the iceberg, over which our very
hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four hours, was
anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward fog. It might
as well have been in the depths of the ocean.
While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to
wait patiently where we were, or retreat. We chose the latter. C——
gave the word to pull for the settlement, at the head of the little bay
just mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we
turned away for the second time, when the game, as we had thought, was
fairly ours. Even the hardy fishermen, no lovers of “islands-of-ice,” as
they call the bergs, felt for us, as they read in our looks the
disappointment, not to say a little vexation. While on our passage in,
we filled a half-hour with questions and discussions about that iceberg.
“We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill
told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days. And you,
my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How happens
it to be away just now? Where do you think it is?”
“Indeed, sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over. De’il a bit can
a man look after a thing in a fog more nor into a snow-bank. Maybe, sir,
he’s foundered; or he might be gone off to sea altogether, as they
sometimes does.”
“Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these bergs are, they escape
very easily under their old cover. No sooner do we think we have them,
than they are gone. No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no
pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg. We will run in yonder
and inquire about it. We may get the exact bearing, and reach it yet,
even in the fog.”
The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached a fishery-ladder,
which we now knew very well how to climb, and wound our “dim and
perilous way” through the evergreen labyrinth of fish-bowers, emerging
on the solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman’s house. Here
lives and works and wears himself out, William Waterman, a deep-voiced,
broad-chested, round-shouldered wight, dressed, not in cloth of gold,
but of oil, with the foxy remnant of a last winter’s fur cap clinging to
his large, bony head, a little in the style of a piece of turf to a
stone. You seldom look into a more kindly, patient face, or into an eye
that more directly lets up the light out of a large, warm heart. His
countenance is one sober shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by
a true and guileless smile. William Waterman has seen the
“island-of-ice.” “It lies off there, two miles or more, grounded on a
bank, in forty fathoms water.”
It was nearly six o’clock; and yet, as there were signs of the fog
clearing away, we thought it prudent to wait. A dull, long hour passed
by, and still the sun was high in the north-west. That heavy cod-seine,
a hundred fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply, and
made it row heavily. For all that, there was time enough yet, if we
could only use it. The fog still came in masses from the sea, sweeping
across the promontory between us and Torbay, and fading into air nearly
as soon as it was over the land. In the mean time, we sat upon the
rocks—upon the wood-pile—stood around and talked—looked out into the
endless mist—looked at the fishermen’s houses—their children—their
fowls and dogs. A couple of young women, that might have been teachers
of the village school, had there been a school, belles of the place,
rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely combed, tripped shyly by,
each with an arm about the other’s waist, and very merry until abreast
of us, when they were as silent and downcast as if they had been passing
by their sovereign queen, or the Great Mogul. Their curiosity and
timidity combined were quite amusing. We speculated upon the
astonishment that would have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts,
had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city fashionables in full
bloom.
At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the house, and sat, not
under the good-man’s roof, but under his chimney, a species of large
funnel, into which nearly one end of the house resolved itself. Here we
sat upon some box-like benches before a wood fire, and warmed ourselves,
chatting with the family. While we were making ourselves comfortable and
agreeable, we made the novel, and rather funny discovery of a hen
sitting on her nest just under the bench, with her red comb at our
fingers’ ends. A large griddle hung suspended in the more smoky regions
of the chimney, ready to be lowered for the baking of cakes or frying
fish. Having tarred my hand, the fisherman’s wife, kind woman, insisted
upon washing it herself. After rubbing it with a little grease, she
first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then finished with soap and
water and a good wiping with a coarse towel. I begged that she would
spare herself the trouble, and allow me to help myself. But it was no
trouble at all for her, and the greatest pleasure. And what should I
know about washing off tar?
They were members of the Church of England, and seemed pleased when they
found that I was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church. They had a pastor,
who visited them and others in the village occasionally, and held divine
service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended, going in boats in
summer, and over the hills on snow-shoes in the winter. The woman told
me, in an undertone, that the family relations were not all agreed in
their religious faith, and that they could not stop there any longer,
but had gone to “America,” which they liked much better. It was a hard
country, any way, no matter whether one were Protestant or Papist. Three
months were all their summer, and nearly all their time for getting
ready for the long, cold winter. To be sure, they had codfish and
potatoes, flour and butter, tea and sugar; but then it took a deal of
hard work to make ends meet. The winter was not as cold as we thought,
perhaps; but then it was so long and snowy! The snow lay five, six, and
seven feet deep. Wood was a great trouble. There was a plenty of it, but
they could not keep cattle or horses to draw it home. Dogs were their
only teams, and they could fetch but small loads at a time. In the mean
while, a chubby little boy, with cheeks like a red apple, had ventured
from behind his young mother, where he had kept dodging as she moved
about the house, and edged himself up near enough to be patted on the
head, and rewarded for his little liberties with a half-dime.