Upon the fields just mentioned, the seals come from the ocean, in the depth of winter, and bring forth their young by thousands. There, while their parents come and go, the young things lie on the ice, fattening on their mothers’ milk with marvellous rapidity, helpless and white as lambs, with expressive eyes almost human, and with the piteous cries of little children. In March, about as soon as the voyagers can reach them, they are of suitable age and size for capture, which is effected by a blow on the head with a club, a much more compassionate way of killing these poor lambs of the sea than by the gun, which is much used in taking the old ones. Occasionally they are drawn bodily to the vessel, but usually skinned on the spot, the fat, two or three inches deep, coming off from the tough, red carcass with the hide, which, with several others is made into a bundle, dragged in by a rope, and thrown upon deck to cool. After a little, they are packed away as solidly as possible, to remain until discharged in port. Five, six, and seven thousand skins are frequently thus laid down, loading the vessel to the water’s edge. An accident to which the lucky sealer was formerly liable, was the melting of the fat into oil from the sliding of the skins, caused by the rolling of the ship in stormy weather. To such an extent was this dissolving process sometimes carried, as to reduce the cargo to skins and oil, half filling cabin and forecastle, driving the crew on deck, rendering the vessel unmanageable in rough weather, and requiring it to be abandoned. This is now securely guarded against by numbers of upright posts, which crib, and hold the cargo from shifting.
Several years ago, Captain Knight, while beset with the kind of ice, described as so beautiful in the bright nights, encountered, with many others, a terrific gale, to this day, a mournful remembrance to many people. If I am not mistaken, some eighty sail were wrecked, at the time, along these iron shores. In fact, very few that were out escaped. Several crews left their vessels and fled to land over the rolling ice-fields, the more prudent way. A forlorn hope was to put to sea, the course adopted by Captain Knight. By skill and coolness he slipped from the teeth of destruction, and in the face of the tempest escaped into the broad ocean. It was but an escape, just the next thing to a wreck. One single sea, the largest he ever experienced in numerous voyages along this dreadful coast, swept his deck, and nearly made a wreck of him in a moment, carrying overboard one man, nine boats, every sealing-boat on board, and every thing else that could be wrenched away. Another gigantic roller of the kind would have destroyed him. But he triumphed, and returned to St. Johns in time to refit, and start again.
Captain Knight was less fortunate, no later than last April, when he lost a fine brig with a costly outfit for a sealing voyage, under the following circumstances: Immersed in the densest fog, and driven by the gale, he was running down a narrow lane or opening in the ice, when the shout of breakers ahead, and the crash of the bows upon a reef, came in the same moment. Instantly, overboard they sprang, forty men of them, and saw their strong and beautiful vessel almost immediately buried in the ocean. There they stood, on the heaving field of ice, gazing in mournful silence upon the great, black billows as they rolled on, one after another, bursting in thunder on the sunken cliffs, a tremendous display of surf where the trembling spars of the brig had disappeared forever. To the west of them were the precipitous shores of Cape Bonavista, lashed by the surge, and the dizzy roost of wild sea-birds. For this, the nearest land, in single file, with Captain Knight at their head, they commenced at sunset their dreadful, and almost hopeless march. All night, without refreshment or rest, they went stumbling and plunging on their perilous way, now and then sinking into the slush between the pans or ice-cakes, and having to be drawn out by their companions. But for their leader and a few bold spirits, the party would have sunk down with fatigue and despair, and perished. At daybreak, they were still on the rolling ice-fields, beclouded with fog, and with nothing in prospect but the terrible Cape and its solitary chance of escape. Thirsty, famished, and worn down, they toiled on, all the morning, all the forenoon, all the afternoon, more and more slowly, and with increasing silence, bewildered and lost in the dreadful cloud travelling along parallel with the coast, and passing the Cape, but without knowing it at the time. But for some remarkable interposition of Divine Providence, the approaching sunset would be their last. Only the most determined would continue the march into the next night. The worn-out and hopeless ones would drop down singly, or gather into little groups on the cold ice, and die. As the Captain looked back on them, a drawn-out line of suffering men, now in the hollow of the waves, and then crossing the ridge, the last of them scarcely seen in the mist, he prayed that God would interpose, and save them. A man who prays in fair weather, may trust God in the storm. So thought Captain Knight, when he thought of home, and wife and children, and the wives and the children of his men, and made his supplication. They had shouted until they were hoarse, and looked into the endless, gray cloud until they had no heart for looking any longer. Wonderful to tell! Just before sundown they came to a vessel. A few rods to the right or to the left, and they must have missed it, and been lost. It was owing to this disaster that Captain Knight was at leisure in St. Johns upon our arrival, and found it agreeable to undertake, for a few weeks, our guidance after the icebergs.
CHAPTER XXIX.
BELLE ISLE AND THE COAST.—AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION.—FIRST VIEW OF LABRADOR.—ICEBERGS.—THE OCEAN AND THE SUNSET.
Wednesday, July 6. After a quiet night, with a mild and favorable breeze, the morning opens with the promise of a bright day. Our little cloud of sail is all up in the early sunshine, and moving before the cool south wind steadily forward down the northern sea. Brilliantly as the summer sun looks abroad upon the mighty waters, I walk the clean, wet deck, in the heaviest winter clothing, and have that pleasant tingling in the veins which one feels in a brisk walk on a frosty autumnal morning. We are abreast of South Belle Isle, high lands fronting the ocean, with huge precipices, the fashion of most of the eastern coast of Newfoundland. With all their sameness, their rugged grandeur and the ceaseless battle of the waves below make them ever interesting. Imagine the Palisades of the Hudson, and the steeper parts of the Highlands exposed to the open Atlantic, and you will have no imperfect picture of these shores. They have no great bank of earth and loose rocks heaped up along their base, but step at once into the great deep; so deep that the icebergs, several of which are in sight, float close in, and seem to dare their very crags.
Afternoon. We have a pleasant custom of coming up, after dinner, and eating nuts and fruits on deck. It is one of the merry seasons of the day, when John Bull and Jonathan are apt to meet in those pleasant encounters which bring up the past, and draw rather largely upon the future, of their history. John is always the greatest, of course, and ever will be, secula seculorum. Jonathan, “considering,” is greater than John. To be sure he is thinner, and eats his dinner in a minute; but then he has every thing to do, and the longest roads on earth to travel, in the shortest time. In fact, he has many of the roads to make, and the least help and the shortest purse of any fellow in the world that undertakes and completes grand things. John’s first thousand years is behind him; Jonathan’s, before him. One’s work is done; the other’s begun. John’s fine roads were made by his forefathers; Jonathan is the forefather himself, and is making roads for his posterity. In fact, Jonathan is a youth only, and John an old man. When the lad gets his growth, he will be everywhere, and the old fogy, by that time, comparatively nowhere. Jonathan insists that he is up earlier in the morning than John, and smarter, faster, and more ingenious. He contends that he has seen his worst days, and John his very best. The longer the diverging lines of the dispute continue, the further they get from any end; and wind up finally with one general outburst of rhetoric, distinguished for its noise, in which each springs up entirely conscious of a perfect victory. In the complicated enjoyment of almonds, figs, and victory, we betake ourselves to reading, the pencil and the brush.
PLATE No. 3.
AN ARCHED ICEBERG IN THE AFTERNOON LIGHT
Lith. of Sarony Major & Knapp, 449 Broadway NY.