CHAPTER L.
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.