After Icebergs with a Painter / A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland.

by Louis Legrand Noble

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE CAPE AND BAY OF ST. LOUIS.—THE ICEBERG.—CARIBOO ISLAND.—BATTLE HARBOR AND ISLAND.—THE ANCHORAGE.—THE MISSIONARIES.

Five o’clock, P. M. What a pleasing contrast! We have been tossing nearly all day upon a rough, inclement ocean, and are now on the sunny, smooth waters of the bay, gliding westward, with Cape St. Louis close upon our right. We have sailed from winter into summer, almost as suddenly as we come out of the fog, at times—bursting out of it into the clear air, as an eagle breaks out of a cloud. It is fairly a luxury to bask in this delicious sunshine, and smell the mingled perfume of flowers and the musky spruce. Mr. Hutchinson is filled with delight to find himself once more on this beautiful bay. The rocky hill-country along the western shores, nine or ten miles distant, is not the mainland, he tells us, but islands, separated from the mainland, and from each other, by narrow waters, occasionally expanding into lakes of great depth, and extending more than forty miles from the sea. Were these savage hills and cliffs beautified with verdure, and sprinkled with villages and dwellings, this would class among the finest bays of the world. Across it to the south, some seven miles, and partly out to sea, lies a cluster of picturesque islands, where is Battle Harbor, the home of the missionaries, and the principal port on the lengthy coast of Labrador.

A fine iceberg, of the fashion of a sea-shell, broken open to the afternoon sun, and unfolding great beauty, lies in the middle of the bay. We are sailing past it, on our passage to the harbor, just near enough for a good view. It gleams in the warm sun like highly-burnished steel, changing, as we pass it, into many complexions—changeable silks and the rarest china. The superlatives are the words that one involuntarily calls to his aid in the presence of an iceberg. From this bright creation floating in the purple water, I look up to the bright clouds floating in the blue air, and easily discover likenesses in their features, ways and colors.

The coast of Labrador is the edge of a vast solitude of rocky hills, split and blasted by the frosts, and beaten by the waves of the Atlantic, for unknown ages. Every form into which rocks can be washed and broken, is visible along its almost interminable shores. A grand headland, yellow, brown and black, in its horrid nakedness, is ever in sight, one to the north of you, one to the south. Here and there upon them are stripes and patches of pale green—mosses, lean grasses, and dwarf shrubbery. Occasionally, miles of precipice front the sea, in which the fancy may roughly shape all the structures of human art, castles, palaces and temples. Imagine an entire side of Broadway piled up solidly, one, two, three hundred feet in height, often more, and exposed to the charge of the great Atlantic rollers, rushing into the churches, halls, and spacious buildings, thundering through the doorways, dashing in at the windows, sweeping up the lofty fronts, twisting the very cornices with snowy spray, falling back in bright green scrolls and cascades of silvery foam. And yet, all this imagined, can never reach the sentiment of these precipices.

More frequent, though, than headlands and perpendicular sea-fronts are the sea-slopes, often bald, tame, and wearisome to the eye, now and then the perfection of all that is picturesque and rough, a precipice gone to pieces, its softer portions dissolved down to its roots, its flinty bones left standing, a savage scene that scares away all thoughts of order and design in nature. If I am not mistaken, there are times when a slope of the kind, a mile or more in length, and in places some hundreds of feet in breadth from the tide up to the highest line of washing, is one of the most terribly beautiful of ocean sights. In an easterly gale, the billows roll up out of the level of the ocean, and wreck themselves upon these crags, rushing back through gulfs and chasms in a way at once awfully brilliant and terrific.

This is the rosy time of Labrador. The blue interior hills, and the stony vales that wind up among them from the sea, have a summer-like and pleasant air. I find myself peopling these regions, and dotting their hills, valleys, and wild shores with human habitations. A second thought, and a mournful one it is, tells me that no men toil in the fields away there; no women keep the house off there; there no children play by the brooks, or shout around the country school-house; no bees come home to the hive; no smoke curls from the farm-house chimney; no orchard blooms; no bleating sheep fleck the mountain-sides with whiteness; and no heifer lows in the twilight. There is nobody there; there never was but a miserable and scattered few, and there never will be. It is a great and terrible wilderness of a thousand miles, and lonesome to the very wild animals and birds. Left to the still visitations of the light from the sun, moon, and stars, and the auroral fires, it is only fit to look upon, and then be given over to its primeval solitariness. But for the living things of its waters, the cod, the salmon and the seal, which bring thousands of adventurous fishermen and traders to its bleak shores, Labrador would be as desolate as Greenland.

We are now entering Battle Harbor, a most romantic nook of water, or Strait rather, between the islands forming the south side of the bay St. Louis. Cariboo Island fronts to the north on the bay, five or six miles, I should guess, and is a rugged mountain-pile of dark gray rock, rounded in its upper masses, and slashed along its shores with abrupt chasms. It drops short off, at its eastern extremity, several hundred feet, into a narrow gulf of deep water. This is Battle Harbor. The billowy pile of igneous rock, perhaps two hundred and fifty feet high, lying between this quiet water and the broad Atlantic, is Battle Island, and the site of the town. We pass a couple of wild islets, lying seaward, as we glide gently along toward our anchorage. There is little to be seen but hard, iron-bound bay, and yet we are all out, gazing abroad with silent curiosity, as if we were entering the Golden Horn. Up runs the Union Jack, and flings its ancient crosses to the sun and breeze, and the fishermen look down upon us from their rude dwellings perched among the crags, and wonder who, and from whence we are. For the moment, nothing seems to be going on but standing still and looking, men, women, and children. And now they will look and wonder still more: up run the Stars and Stripes, higher up than all, and overfloat the flag of England, and salute the sun and cliffs of Labrador. The missionary waves his handkerchief—waves his hat—calls pleasantly to a group upon the nearest shore. They look, and hearken, in the stillness of uncertainty. Instantly there is a movement of recognition. The people know it is their pastor. The intelligence has caught, and runs from house to house. Down drop the sails, rattling down the masts; the anchor plunges, and the cable runs, runs rattling and ringing from its coil. Round the vessel swings in line with the breeze, and comes to its repose. We congratulate the missionary on his safe return, while he points us feelingly to the little church and parsonage, just above us on the mossy hill-side, and bids us welcome as long as we shall find it agreeable to remain. With light and thankful hearts, and pleasant anticipations, we prepare to go ashore, and take our first run upon the hills.