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.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
AFTER THE BAY ST. LOUIS ICEBERG.—WINDSOR CASTLE ICEBERG.—FOUNDERS SUDDENLY.—A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE.
After dinner, upon the heights of Battle Island, gathering roots, plants, and mosses to carry home. We notice with pleasure the largest iceberg by far that we have ever yet seen. It is the last arrival from Greenland, and is abreast Cape St. Louis, in the northeast. It is a stupendous thing, and reminds me of Windsor Castle, as I know it from pictures and engravings. It appears to be wheeling in toward the bay, with a front of great elevation and extent, finely adorned with projections and massive towers not unlike those of the regal structure of which it reminds me. I see by the watch it is nearly 4 P. M., the time set for our departure to a Bay St. Louis berg. Pencil and note-book must be pocketed, and haste be made with my vegetable gatherings.
Pencil and note-book reappear, and the sketch recommences. Half-way to the chosen iceberg, in the mouth of the bay, rowing slowly over the glassy, low swells, as they move in from sea. These are the swells for me: broad, imperial swells, full of majesty, dignity, and grace; placid and serene of countenance; solemn, slow, and silent in their roll. They are the swells of olden time, royal and aristocratic, legitimately descended from those that bore the ark upon their bosom, and used to bear the unbroken images of the orbs of heaven. Replete with gentleness and love and power, they lift us lightly, and pass us over tenderly from hand to hand, and toss us pleasantly and softly from breast to breast, and roll us carefully from lap to lap, and smile upon us with their shining smiles. Grand and gracious seas! With you I love the ocean. With you I am not afraid. And with you, how kind and compassionate of you, ye old patrician billows! with you I am not sea-sick. Save us from those plebeian waves, that rabble-rout of surges, that democratic “lop,” lately born, and puffed into noisy importance! They scare me, and, worst of all, make me sick and miserable.
Every few minutes we hear the artillery of the icebergs, and are on the watch for fine displays, this warm afternoon. C—— is sketching hastily, with the pencil, Windsor Castle berg, now in complete view, and distant, I should guess, five miles. It is a mighty and imposing structure.
Between making my last dot and now—an interval of ten minutes—Windsor Castle has experienced the convulsions of an earthquake, and gone to ruin. To use the term common here, it has “foundered.” A magazine of powder fired in its centre, could not more effectually, and not much more quickly, have blown it up. While in the act of sketching, C—— suddenly exclaimed: when, lo! walls and towers were falling asunder, and tumbling at various angles with apparent silence into the ocean, attended with the most prodigious dashing and commotion of water. Enormous sheaves of foam sprung aloft and burst in air; high, green waves, crested with white-caps, rolled away in circles, mingling with leaping shafts and fragments of ice reappearing from the deep in all directions. Nearly the whole of this brilliant spectacle was the performance of a minute, and to us as noiseless as the motions of a cloud, for a length of time I had not expected. When the uproar reached us, it was thunder doubled and redoubled, rolling upon the ear like the quick successive strokes of a drum, or volleys of the largest ordnance. It was awfully grand, and altogether the most startling exhibition I ever witnessed. At this moment, there is a large field of ruins, some of them huge masses like towers prone along the waters, with a lofty steeple left alone standing in the midst, and rocking slowly to and fro.