_A ROUND of BLEAK COASTS_
The coast of Labrador, which, in number of miles, forms the larger
half of the doctor's round, is forbidding, indeed--naked, rugged,
desolate, lying sombre in a mist. It is of weather-worn gray rock,
broken at intervals by long ribs of black. In part it is low and
ragged, slowly rising, by way of bare slopes and starved forest, to
broken mountain ranges, which lie blue and bold in the inland waste.
Elsewhere it rears from the edge of the sea in stupendous cliffs and
lofty, rugged hills. There is no inviting stretch of shore the length
of it--no sandy beach, no line of shingle, no grassy bank; the sea
washes a thousand miles of jagged rock. Were it not for the
harbours--innumerable and snugly sheltered from the winds and ground
swell of the open--there would be no navigating the waters of that
region. The Strait Shore is buoyed, lighted, minutely charted. The
reefs and currents and tickles[1] and harbours are all known. A
northeast gale, to be sure, raises a commotion, and fog and drift-ice
add something to the chance of disaster; but, as they say, from one
peril there are two ways of escape to three sheltered places. To the
north, however, where the doctor makes his way, the coast is best
sailed on the plan of the skipper of the old _Twelve Brothers_.
"You don't cotch _me_ meddlin' with no land!" said he.
Past the Dead Islands, Snug Harbour, Domino Run, Devil's Lookout and
the Quaker's Hat--beyond Johnny Paul's Rock and the Wolves, Sandwich
Bay, Tumbledown Dick, Indian Harbour, and the White Cockade--past Cape
Harrigan, the Farmyard Islands and the Hen and Chickens--far north to
the great, craggy hills and strange peoples of Kikkertadsoak,
Scoralik, Tunnulusoak, Nain, Okak, and, at last, to Cape Chidley
itself--northward, every crooked mile of the way, bold headlands, low
outlying islands, sunken reefs, tides, fogs, great winds and snow make
hard sailing of it. It is an evil coast, ill-charted where charted at
all; some part of the present-day map is based upon the guess-work of
the eighteenth century navigators. The doctor, like the skippers of
the fishing-craft, must sometimes sail by guess and hearsay, by
recollection, and old rhymes.
* * * * *
The gusts and great waves of open water--of the free, wide sea, I
mean, over which a ship may safely drive while the weather exhausts
its evil mood--are menace enough for the stoutest heart. But the
Labrador voyage is inshore--a winding course among the islands, or a
straight one from headland to headland, of a coast off which reefs lie
thick: low-lying, jagged ledges, washed by the sea in heavy weather;
barren hills, rising abruptly--and all isolated--from safe water;
sunken rocks, disclosed, upon approach, only by the green swirl above
them. They are countless--scattered everywhere, hidden and disclosed.
They lie in the mouths of harbours, they lie close to the coast, they
lie offshore; they run twenty miles out to sea. Here is no plain
sailing; the skipper must be sure of the way--or choose it gingerly:
else the hidden rock will inevitably "pick him up."
[Illustration: "IT IS AN EVIL COAST"]