FAREWELL TO BATTLE HARBOR.—THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE.—LABRADOR
LANDSCAPES.—THE WRECK OF THE FISHERMEN.
SATURDAY, _July 16_. “Once more upon the waters, yet once more.” We were
awakened from sound slumbers by the footsteps and voices of the men
above, making ready for sea. It was a pleasant sound, and the sunshine
streaming down into the cabin was welcome intelligence of the brightness
of the morning. We dressed in time to get on deck, and wave a final
adieu to our friends, from whom we had formally parted yesterday, as
well as from Mr. and Mrs. Bendle, of whose hospitality we bear away
agreeable recollections.
And now the broad Atlantic is before, and Cape St. Louis, its waters and
its ices, behind the intervening islands. The signal staffs of Battle
and Cariboo Islands are yet visible from the high rocks that overlook
that busy nest of fishermen, with its steepled church and parsonage.
God’s love abide with the man that lives there, and ministers to the
religious wants of men, women, and children, who have little else than
respect and affection to make his home comfortable and happy. While kind
hearts, and none kinder than those of the Esquimaux, throb beneath rough
manners and uncomely raiment, there are wicked spirits there, no doubt,
as everywhere, that hurt and hinder, and never help, and render the
solitary path among the rocks insufferably lonesome and painful. The
remembrances of famous and beloved kindred, of old and honored
Cambridge, and of the quiet rectory under the Malvern Hills, are much to
a cultivated and sensitive nature; the bliss that flows from daily
duties cheerfully done with an habitual resignation to the will of God,
and with hopes of glory in the future, is more than recollections, to a
heart whose motive powers are Christian faith and love. But amid all the
sweetest memories, and the brightest hopes, and the comforting
satisfaction of believing well and doing well, it is a fearful thing for
cultivated man to toil in solitude and deprivation. Although heaven is
above him, and his pathway certainly upward, yet a double portion of all
those good and perfect gifts coming from above, be awarded to the man
whose parish is in Labrador; who, when he leaves the still companionship
of books for the toils of the gospel from door to door, must take down
either his oars or his snow-shoes, and sweep over the snow-drift or the
billow.
We now beat slowly up the straits of Belle Isle for the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, hoping to pass these dangerous waters by daylight. They are
very fair to look upon at this time of day, studded in all directions
with those shining palaces of ice seen from the top of St. Charles
Mountain. The coast hills have a graceful outline, and slant quite
smoothly down, abutting on the sea in low broken cliffs. They resemble
the hills of Maine and Canada after April thaws, while the heavier
snow-drifts yet remain, and the yellow brown sod is patched with faint
green. Forsaken country! if that can be called forsaken which appears
never to have been possessed. Doleful and neglected land! Chilly
solitude keeps watch over your unvisited fields, and frightens away the
glory of the fruitful seasons. The loving sunshine and the healing
warmth wander hand in hand tenderly abroad, calling upon the lowly moss
to wake up and blossom, and to the tiny, half-smothered, flattened
willows to rise and walk along the brook banks. But the white-coated
police of winter, the grim snow-drifts, watch on the craggy battlements
of desolation, and luxuriance and life peep from their dark cells only
to sink back pale and spiritless. To a traveller there is real beauty on
the tawny desert and the wild prairie; but there is to me an awful
lonesomeness and gloom in these houseless wastes where the eye with an
insane perverseness will keep looking for cottage smokes and pasture
fences. I think of landscapes drying off after the flood.
The bergs are in part behind us, and we are rocking on the easy swells
of Henly Harbor, where we can glean no more signs of human “toil and
trouble” than are just enough to tie a name to, and quite a pretty name
too. The lazy sails flap idly in the sunshine, and the cold air cuts
with the sharpness of a frosty October morning. I sit in the July heat
with overcoat, and cloak over the overcoat, woollen mittens and woollen
stockings, and with cold feet at that. And yet this miserable shore has,
in its cod and salmon, attractions for thousands of people during the
transient summer. Even the long and almost arctic winter with its seals
and foxes detains hundreds. But, as a fisherman told me one day, while
tossing upon the dock with his pitchfork a boat-load of cod, “It is a
poor trade.” It is a little trying to patience to be rolling in this
idle way, with the creak of spars and the rattling of blocks and
rigging, especially as a breeze has been winging the blue water for an
hour not more than a mile ahead of us. We do move a little, just a
little, enough to keep the hope breathing that we shall soon move off
with reasonable speed.
The current is almost a river stream, and we are drifting rapidly, which
is not a pleasant thing to be thinking about, with these waters scouring
the very banks, and a short cable. I am gazing back upon the southern
point of Belle Isle with a mournful interest. It was only the night of
the second, the same night we ran into Twillingate to escape a gale,
that a vessel was lost there, and all, or nearly all, on board perished.
At this moment there is a faint line of white, but not a murmur. All
looks quiet there and peaceful, as if the lion was going up to lie down
with the lamb.
[Illustration: PLATE N^o. 6.
ICEBERG IN THE STRAIT OF BELLE ISLE
Lith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.]