SLOW SAILING BY THE BAY OF ISLANDS.—THE RIVER HUMBER.—ST.
GEORGE’S RIVER, CAPE, AND BAY.—A BRILLIANT SUNSET.
TUESDAY, _July 19_. We have a brilliant morning and a favoring breeze,
but a vexatious current. What a net of these currents has the tyrannous
Neptune set around his beloved Newfoundland! Like a web in a dim cellar
window, it is perpetually entangling some fly of a craft in its subtle
meshes. Buzz and struggle as we will, he has got us by the foot, and,
spider-like, may look on, and enjoy our perplexity. We advance with
insufferable slowness, notwithstanding the considerable speed of our
rounded bows, through the water. “That is the Bay of Islands,” they
said, early in the morning. It is the Bay of Islands still. We are a
long time sailing by the Bay of Islands. But it gives us time to look,
and talk about it with the Captain. Beyond the forest-covered hills
which surround it, are lakes as beautiful, and larger than Lake George,
the cold, clear waters of which flow to the bay under the name of the
river Humber. It has a valley like Wyoming, and more romantic scenery
than the Susquehanna. The Bay of Islands is also a bay of streams and
inlets, an endless labyrinth of cliffs and woods and waters, where the
summer voyager would delight to wander, and which is worth a volume
sparkling with pictures.
How fine a blue the waters of the gulf are in this light! We seem to be
upon the broad Atlantic. What a realm of seas and shores, islands, bays
and rivers, is this St. Lawrence world, in the midst of which we now
are, and of which our people know so little! Where are our young men,
who have the time and money to skip, from summer to summer, in the
fashionable rounds of travel, that they do not seek this virgin scenery?
One long, loud yell of the black loon, deep diver of these lakes and
fiords, pealing through the silent evening, would ring in their
recollection long after the music of city parks abroad had been
forgotten.
Late in the day, and Cape St. George in view, a bold and clifted point
pushed out from the mainland twenty miles or more, and commanding
extensive prospects both inland and along the coast. A month would not
suffice for all its many landscapes. St. George’s River is a wild, rapid
stream, and St. George’s Bay is quite a little sea, deep, and darkened
by the shadows of fine mountains, and broad woodlands. Like the Bay of
Islands, it is a paradise for the huntsman, and the fisher. Awake, ye
devotees of the fishing-rod and rifle, and the red camp-fire beneath the
green-wood trees, and know that to visit St. George’s cape and bay and
river, and all that is St. George’s, is better late than never.
The sun is in the waves, and yonder we have those wonderful heavens
again. The west is all one bath of colors, colors of the rainbow. And
clouds like piled-up fleeces, and like fleeces pulled apart and
scattered, and fleeces spun into soft and woolly threads, and again
those threads woven into downy fabrics, are weltering in the glory. The
wind has fallen, and the waves have put out all their white, flashing
lights, and now mould themselves into the flowing lines and the sweetest
forms of beauty. We go down with glad hearts, and ask protection for the
night.