CHAPTER XXXVI.
RAMBLE AMONG THE FLOWERS OF BATTLE ISLAND.—A VISIT TO THE FISHERMEN.—WALK AMONG THE HILLS OF CARIBOO.
Saturday, July 9. We are abroad again on the rocky hills, fanned with the soft, summer wind, and blessed with the loveliest sunshine. The mosses sparkle with their sweet-scented blossoms of purple, white, and red, and the wood-thrush is pouring out its plaintive melody over the bleak crags, and the homes of fishermen, around whose doors I see the children playing as merrily as the children of fortune in more favored lands. How many a tender parent, now watching over a sick child in the wealthy city, would be glad to have the sufferer here, to be the playfellow of these simple boys and girls, if he could have their health and promise of life. Captain Knight comes with his hands full of flowers, not unlike the daisy; and here come Hutchinson and the Painter. We meet around this moss-covered crag, where I am sitting with my book and pencil, and resolve at once to go down, and visit an islet of the harbor, where a few families have a summer residence during the fishing season.
Here we are among the huts and dogs, and English people, with the ways of Labrador. A kind woman, with whom I have been talking about the deprivations of her lot in life, has offered to bake bread for us when we can send the flour. The Painter is out sketching this summer nest upon the bleak, surf-washed rocks, about as wild-looking as the nesting-place of sea-birds. Generous-hearted people! I am pleased with their simple ways, and their affectionate, but most respectful manner toward their pastor. Well, indeed, they may be both respectful and affectionate. His life is a sacrifice for them and their children. What but the love of Christ and of men could lead one here, and keep him here, who can ornament and bless the most cultivated society? I thank God, that He gives us witness, in such men, of the power and excellency of His grace upon the human heart. We sail across the harbor to a cove, or chasm in the lofty sea-wall, with the intention of a walk over the hills of Cariboo, while Hutchinson visits a few of his parishioners thereabouts.
After a pleasant ramble, during which we were often tempted to run and jump with very delight along the spongy, springy moss, blushing here and there with its sweet bloom, we sit down on the top of a high hill, and look off upon the ocean and the bay of St. Louis, extending far into the desolate interior like a series of blue lakes. All the beauteous apparel of summer has been stripped off, and the brown and broken bones of the sad earth are bleaching in the wind and sun. You would be delighted, though, with the little vales, notched and shelved with craggy terraces that catch and hold the sunshine. They have the sultry warmth and scent of a conservatory, and are frequently rich with herbage, now in flower. It seems a pity that these nooks of verdure and floral beauty should thus “waste their sweetness on the desert air.” For a few days, the woolly flocks of New England would thrive in Labrador. During those few days, there are thousands of her fair daughters who would love to tend them. I prophesy the time is coming when the invalid and tourist from the States will be often found spending the brief, but lovely summer here, notwithstanding its ruggedness and desolation. Upon reflection, a broad and ancient solitude like this has a sadness in it which no bloom, no sun can dispel. Never, never, in all my life, have I beheld a land like this, the expression and sentiment of which are essentially mournful and melancholy. The sunshine, skies, “the pomp and circumstance of” ocean, sweet smells, and sounds, and one’s own joyous, healthy feelings, flowing out and washing out as they flow the natural sadness of the soul, cannot take away nor cover up that which really and everlastingly is, and ever will be, namely, the sentiment of mournfulness. Nature here is at a funeral forever, and these beauties, so delicately fashioned, are but flowers in the coffin.
It is a coincidence a little curious that I should have written these periods above, and then have plunged into just the most lonesome little valley in all the world to hit upon a graveyard. But there it was, a gloomy, silent field, enclosed with the merest dry skeleton of a fence, for no purpose to keep a creature out where no creature is, but just to make a scratch around the few narrow beds where the dead repose, unpraised and unnamed, under the lightest possible covering of dust, as undisturbed as in the deeps of the Atlantic. From the tombless cemetery, our way back to the vessel over the hills resembled the crossing of mountains just below the line of perpetual snow. Upon the summit we encountered a small lake and marshes with water-plants and flowers. At the eastern extremity of the island, where the rocks break off steeply some hundreds of feet, we saw every object of the port nearly beneath, and apparently within stone’s throw. A novel sight to us was the bottom of the harbor, seen through the clear, greenish water with considerable distinctness almost from end to end. Patches of sea-weed, dark rocks, and white gravel, seemed to be lying in the bottom of a shallow mirror, across which small fishes, large ones in reality, were wandering at their leisure. This was a picturesque revelation. Upon the surface of the harbor, the depth of water very nearly shuts out all view of the bottom. I am beginning to think that a few thousand feet above the ocean, in a bright day, would enable the eye to pierce it to an extraordinary depth.