We have come to the uttermost verge of the Continent in quest of "Down
East," and find it elusive and still beyond us. There is yet the
remote island of Newfoundland, and we are pointed thither as still
"Down East." To the northward, lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are
the group of Magdalen Islands, where a steamer calls once a week,
sailing from Pictou, these probably being about as far away as one
would wish to go in his search. There are thirteen in the group, sixty
miles off the extremity of Cape Breton Island, the bleak Cape North.
Acadian fishermen live there, the population being about three
thousand, and New England fishery fleets visit them for cod, mackerel
and seals, with lobsters and sea-trout also abundant, so that these
islands have come to be called in the Provinces the "Kingdom of Fish."
Amherst Island is the chief, having the village and Custom House, the
surface of this and other islands rising in high hills seen from afar.
Coffin Island is the largest of the group, named after Admiral Sir
Isaac Coffin, the original owner. Coffin was a native of Boston, and
in colonial times a distinguished British naval officer. When he was a
Captain he took Governor General Lord Dorchester to Canada in his
frigate, and designing to enter the St. Lawrence, a furious storm
arose. With skill he saved his vessel by managing to get under the lee
of these islands, which broke the force of the gale, and Lord
Dorchester in gratitude procured the grant of the group for Coffin.
There are also the Bird Isles, two bare rocks of sandstone, the
principal one called the Gannet Rock. These are haunted by immense
numbers of sea-birds, whose eggs the islanders gather. The surf dashes
violently against the gaunt rocks on all sides, and they have been
visited by the greatest naturalists of the world, who found them a
most interesting study. A lighthouse is erected on one of them.
Charlevoix, in 1720, recorded his visit here, and his wonder how "in
such a multitude of nests every bird immediately finds her own." It is
also recorded of this remote region that it, too, is a colonizer, the
people of the Magdalen Islands having established three small but
prosperous colonies over on the Labrador shore. Outlying the group to
the westward, eight miles from Amherst, is the desolate rock,
resembling a corpse prepared for burial, known as Deadman's Isle. Tom
Moore sailed past this gruesome place in 1804, and wrote the poem
making it famous:
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador,
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tossed.
"Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
"To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world."