SUNDAY IN TEMPLE BAY.—RELIGIOUS SERVICES.—THE FISHERMAN’S
DINNER AND CONVERSATION.—CHATEAU.—THE WRECK.—WINTERS IN
LABRADOR.—ICEBERGS IN THE WINTER.—THE FRENCH OFFICERS’ FROLIC
WITH AN ICEBERG.—THEORY OF ICEBERGS.—CURRENTS OF THE
STRAIT.—THE RED INDIANS.—THE RETURN TO THE VESSEL.
MONDAY, _July 19_. Early yesterday morning, a boat with tan-colored
sails came off from the town, and found that we were not traders from
Newfoundland, as they supposed, but visitors merely, and direct from Mr.
Hutchinson, their minister, of whose return they were delighted to hear
tidings. It was soon settled that I should be their clergyman for the
day, notice of which was given very quickly upon their going back to the
village, by sending from house to house, and flying the Sunday flag, a
white banner with a red cross. Our men, in holiday clothes, were prompt
at their oars, and soon placed us on the beach, where we were met by Mr.
Clark, one of the city fathers, who politely invited us to his house,
and afterward attended us to the place of worship, a small rude
building, which was crowded, the children gathering close about me.
After the usual Church of England service, I preached extempore on our
need of redemption, and the sufficiency and freeness of that which has
been graciously provided. After a brief intermission, all returned to
the evening service and sermon, which concluded the religious exercises
of the day. We dined at Mr. Clark’s, on fisherman’s fare, garnished with
salted duck, a new dish to us, and requiring the discipline of use and a
rough life in order to relish very well.
While at dinner and after, our host entertained us in a simple, sketchy
way with incidents and adventures illustrating the story of the place,
and of his own life. Chateau, the name of the village, is more ancient
than the old French and English war, during which it suffered pillage
and burning. The wreck beneath our stern, of which I spoke, was that of
an English vessel with a cargo of furs, fish and oil, and was there run
aground and fired by the captain, to prevent her falling into the hands
of the enemy. Even these remote rocks and waters have historic
associations of thrilling interest.
According to the custom of those who live permanently in Labrador, Clark
and a few of his neighbors remove, in autumn, to the evergreen woods
along the streams at the head of the bay, and spend more than half of
the year in hunting and sealing, and getting timber and firewood for the
summer. In some respects, it is a holiday time, and compensates for the
unremitting toil of the fishing season.
The experience of years with icebergs has not made them common things,
like the waves and hills, but rather increased the sense of their
terrible power and grandeur. They frequently arrive covered with earth
and stones, an indication of their recent lapse from the land, and of
the brevity of their time upon the sea. During the cold months they are
deeply covered with snow, and have a rounded, heavy, and drowsy aspect.
It is the warm weather that gives them their naked brilliancy, and melts
them into picturesque forms, and rolls and explodes them in the
magnificent style, I have attempted to describe. They are seen to move
occasionally at the same rate of speed, whether through the densely
packed ice or the open sea. Wind, current and tide, and the ocean
crowded with ice as far as sight can reach, all frequently set in one
direction, and the bergs in another. On they move, majestic and serene,
tossing the crystal masses from their shaggy breasts, cracking,
crashing, thundering along. There are spaces of dark water spotting the
white expanse. It makes no difference; all move on alike. None hastens
in the open water; none pauses at the heaped-up banks. All on the
surface of the deep is only so much froth before the Alp whose
foundations are immersed in the great submarine currents.
He told us a story illustrating the danger of icebergs, and the temerity
of making familiar with them. A few years ago, while a French man-of-war
was lying at anchor in Temple Bay, the younger officers resolved on
amusing themselves with an iceberg, a mile or more distant in the
straits. They made sumptuous preparations for a pic-nic upon the very
top of it, the mysteries of which they were curious to see. All warnings
of the brown and simple fishermen, in the ears of the smartly dressed
gentlemen who had seen the world, were quite idle. It was a bright
summer morning, and the jolly boat with a showy flag went off to the
berg. By twelve o’clock the colors were flying from the icy turrets, and
the wild midshipmen were shouting from its walls. For two hours or so
they hacked, and clambered the crystal palace; frolicked and feasted;
drank wine to the king and the ladies, and laughed at the thought of
peril where all was so fixed and solid. As if in amazement at such
rashness, the grim Alp of the sea made neither sound nor motion. A
profound stillness watched on his shining pinnacles, and hearkened in
the blue shadows of his caves. When, like thoughtless children, they had
played themselves weary, the old alabaster of Greenland mercifully
suffered them to gather up their toys, and go down to their cockle of a
boat, and flee away. As if the time and the distance were measured, he
waited until they could see it and live, when, as if his heart had been
volcanic fire, he burst with awful thunders, and filled the surrounding
waters with his ruins. A more astonished little party seldom comes home
to tell the story of their panic. It was their first, and their last day
of amusement with an iceberg.
It seems rather late in the day for persons of some experience in these
regions, to be ignorant of the origin of icebergs. I asked our friend,
as I had others, how he supposed that they were formed. He imagined that
they were merely the accumulations of loose ice, snow and frozen spray,
in the intensely cold regions of the arctic ocean. Piles of broken ice,
driven together, and cemented by the heavy snows and the repeated
dashing of the surf, would in time become the huge and solid islands
that we see. Such is the theory of their formation with all whom I have
heard express themselves on the subject, and I believe the one very
generally received. When this explanation was objected to, and the facts
stated that icebergs were glaciers, first formed on the land, and then
launched into the sea, our kind host expressed his doubts more modestly
than some others had done of less intelligence and experience.
Speaking of the currents in the straits, he said he could not well
conceive any in the world more dangerous. While exceedingly powerful,
they were shifting. What rendered this perilous to the last degree, was
the excessively deep water and the boldness of the shores. One could
toss a bullet into water frequently too deep for the anchorage of
smaller vessels. In times of calm, and in connection with the dense fogs
peculiar to those coasts, a vessel could not drift about in the straits
without the risk of being thrown upon the rocks and lost. When we were
lying becalmed off Temple Bay, on Saturday afternoon, he was watching us
from a hill-top, and remarked to a neighbor, that he was sorry for the
skipper out there, and feared, unless the wind came to his relief before
dark, he would get ashore.
He remarked that fresh water may be dipped in winter, from small open
spaces in the bay—a fact I do not remember to have read of in the pages
of arctic voyagers. I concluded that this only is true, where the water
is undisturbed below, and where the open spaces are small, and hemmed in
with ice in a way to break off the wind. It is simply rain-water, I
suppose, resting upon the surface of the heavier salt water. In the
course of the conversation, he stated that there was, at some distance
back in the interior, a remnant of the red Indians so called, once a
savage and troublesome tribe in Newfoundland. Driven from thence on
account of their hostile and untamable nature, they had finally taken
refuge in the remote vales of Labrador, where they now live, as is
commonly reported, nursing their ancient enmity, but too prudent to
reappear among the whites, or let their exact habitation be known.
Pleased with the talk of the fisherman of Chateau, we bade him and his
family good-by, and returned on board to a second dinner, a little more
to our taste.