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.