“We shall stop to-morrow at Moville, the port of Londonderry,” said Mr. Beal. “A few hours after we leave we shall sink the Irish coast. Make notes of the time you lose sight of the light-houses of Ireland, and of the time when you first see Labrador, and compare the dates towards the end of the voyage,” said Mr. Beal.
Past the green hills of Ireland the steamer glided along, among ships so numerous that the sea seemed a moving city, or the suburbs of a moving city; for Liverpool itself, with her seven miles of wonderful docks, is a city of the sea.
The Giant’s Causeway, the sunny port of Moville, the rocky islands with their white light-houses, were passed, and at one o’clock on Monday morning the last light dropped into the calm sea, fading like a star.
The Atlantic was perfectly calm—as “calm as a mill-pond” as the expression is, during the tranquillity of the ocean that follows the settled summer weather. The steamer was heavily loaded, and had little apparent motion; bright days and bright nights succeeded each other. A flock of gulls followed the steamer far out to sea. For three days no object of interest was seen on the level ocean except the occasional spouting of a whale.
The sky was a glory in the long twilights. The sun when half set made the distant ocean seem like an island of fire, and the light clouds after sunset like hazes drifting away from a Paradisic sphere.
On Thursday morning the shadowy coast of Labrador appeared. The voyage seemed now virtually ended after four days from land to land. There were three days more, but the steamer would be in calm water, with land constantly in view.
The Straits of Belle Isle, some six miles wide, were as calm as had been the ocean. The Gulf of St. Lawrence—the fishing field of the world—was like a surface of glass. The sunrise and moonrise were now magnificent; the sunsets brought scenes to view as wonderful as the skies of Italy; gigantic mountains rose; clustering sails broke the monotonous expanse of the glassy sea, and now and then appeared an Indian canoe such as Jacques Cartier and the early explorers saw nearly three centuries ago.
The wild shores of Anticosti rose and sunk.
“We are now in the Greater Rhine,” said Mr. Beal to the boys,—“the Rhine of the West.”
“How is that?” asked Charlie Leland. “Is not the Hudson the American Rhine?”