CHAPTER XL.
A MORNING RAMBLE OVER CARIBOO.—EXCURSION ON THE BAY, AND THE TEA-DRINKING AT THE SOLITARY FISHERMAN’S.
Tuesday, July 12. Cold as November, and a gale outside. After a late breakfast, we roam the hills of Cariboo, under the cliffs of which the Integrity now lies tied to the rocks. We gather roots and flowers, gaze upon the vast and desolate prospect, count the icebergs, and watch the motions of the fog driving, in large, cloud-like masses, across the angry ocean. It is surprising how much we do in these, to us, almost interminable days. But for the necessity of it, I believe that we should not sleep at all, but work and play right on from midnight into morning, and from morning down to midnight. We have a large afternoon excursion before us. Previous to that, however, the Captain and myself are going upon an exploring expedition.
Coasting the southern shores of St. Louis water, having a little private amusement by ourselves. The breeze, in from sea, gives us about as much as we can manage. Gives us about as much as we can manage! “Us” and “We” have not a great deal to do with it. This half of the “us” and the “we,” the Me and the subjective I, as your Kantian philosopher calls his essential self, sits here about midship, bear-skinned in with a fleecy brown coat, holding on, and dodging the spray that cuffs him on the right and left; while the other, and vastly larger half, in the shape of the captain, holds all the reins of this marine chariot in his own single hand—ropes, rudder and all, and holds them, too, well and wisely. But we enjoy the freedom of these spirited, though harmless seas, and dash along through most charmingly.
What coasts these are! “Precipitous, black, jagged rocks,” savage as lions and tigers showing their claws and teeth, and foaming at the lips. Here is a chasm called a cove, up which the green water runs in the shape of a scimetar or horn—the piercing and the goring of the sea for unknown centuries. Away in the extreme hollow of this horn is a fishing-flake, and half-way up, where the sea-birds would naturally nest, a Scotch fisherman has his summer-home. We are going in to see him.
He met us at the water’s edge, and welcomed us with a fisherman’s welcome—none heartier in the world—and sent us forward by a zigzag path to the house hidden away among the upper rocks. In the very tightest place of the ascent, there swept down upon us an avalanche of dogs furiously barking—a kind of onset for which I have had a peculiar disrelish ever since I was overthrown by a ferocious mastiff in my childhood. I sprang to the tip of a crag, and stood out of their reach, while they bristled and barked at the Captain, who coolly maintained his ground. The shout of the fisherman’s wife, who now appeared on the edge of the scene above, instantly stilled the uproar, and invited us up with the cheering assurance that they seldom bit anybody, and were rather glad than angry that we had come. The language of dogs being very much the same in all countries, I took occasion to doubt any pleasure that Bull, Brindle, and Bowse were thought to have felt at our presence. The rascals smelt closely at my heels and hands, with an accompaniment of bristling backs and tails, and deep-throated growls. We were no sooner in the house and seated than the good man himself arrived, and ordered the kettle to the fire for a “bit of tea.” “It would do us good,” he said, “When strangers came, he commonly had a bit of tea.” His life had been a struggle for food and raiment: such was the tenor of his brief history. Four children were with him; four were in a better world. Forty years he had been a fisherman. Thirty, on these shores. They came up yearly from Carbonear in the early days of June, cleared the house of ice and snow, and got ready for the fish. Their dogs, which are their only team in Newfoundland, would be lost if left behind, and so they brought them along to save them. After tea, a fine game-cock took possession of the floor, walking close in front, looking up sideways in an inquisitive and comical manner, and crowing very spiritedly. Hard by, in a box beneath a bed, I caught a glimpse of the red comb of a hen, his only mate. A little, flaxen-haired, blue-eyed girl ran and brought her out as something to surprise and delight us. And so with cock and hen, and children, the fisherman and his wife, mariner and minister, we were a social party. Thus the human heart spins out its threads of love, and fastens them even to the far-distant rocks of cold and barren Labrador. They took us through their fish-house, which hung like a birdcage among the crags, and afterwards followed us down to the water, and gave our bark a kindly push, “and thus we parted.”