CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SUNDAY IN LABRADOR.—EVENING WALK TO THE GRAVEYARD.—THE ROCKY OCEAN SHORE.
Sunday evening, July 10. We have had a beautiful and interesting day. Early in the morning, flags were flying from the shipping, and from the tall staff in front of the church, the only bell-tower of the town. Boats, with people in their Sunday best, soon came rowing in from different quarters, for the services of the day, in which I had the pleasure of assisting. The house, seating about two hundred people, was crowded, morning and afternoon, with a devout and attentive congregation, responding loudly, and singing very spiritedly.
Before sunset, we left the parsonage for a quiet walk. Falling into a crooked path, we followed it to the burying-ground in the bottom of a narrow, deep hollow, where time has gathered from the surrounding rocks a depth of earth sufficient for shallow graves. While yet the sunshine was bright upon the high, overhanging cliffs, dotted with lichens and tufted with their summer greenery, the little vale below, with its brown gravestones nearly lost in the rank verdure, was immersed in cool and lonesome shadows. An unavoidable incumbrance of the sacred field was several large bowlders, among which the long grass, and weeds and tablets were irregularly dispersed.
It is the custom of the English church to consecrate burying-grounds. Eleven years ago, Bishop Field consecrated this. It was a pleasant Sunday morning, and the procession, with the bishop at its head clothed in his official robes, descended by the winding path, and performed the appointed service. Nearly the whole population of the region was present, either in the procession, or looking down with silent admiration from the rocky galleries around. A better resting-place, when one lies down weary from the tasks and troubles of the present life, could not well be imagined. Its perpetual solitude, never profaned by the noisy feet of the busy world, draped alternately with snowy fleeces and blooming verdure, is always made musical by the solemn murmurs of the ocean. I found by the inscriptions, that England was the native country of most of those whose bones repose below, and whose names are gathering moss and lichens, while the sea, close by, sings their mournful requiem.
From this lone hamlet of the dead, we picked our way among broken rocks out to the sea shore, all white with the sounding surf, and gazed with silent pleasure on the blue Atlantic, the dark headlands, and the icebergs glittering in the sunset. Glittering in the sunset! They glowed with golden fire—pointed, motionless, and solid flames.
Battle Island, had there never been any bloody contest of angry men, would be an appropriate name. The whole northeastern shore, once a lofty precipice, no doubt, but now a descent of indescribable ruggedness, is an extended field, whereon for ages flinty rocks and mighty waves have contended in battle. A favorite walk of Hutchinson’s, during the wintry tempests, is along the height overlooking this mighty slope or glacis. His quiet description of the terrible grandeur of the scene, was truly thrilling. In the course of our walk, we came upon the verge of a fissure, which looked like an original intention to split the island through its centre. Banks of snow still lay in the nooks and closets of its gloomy chambers, through which, every now and then, boomed the low thunder of the plunging surf.
Upon our return, late in the evening, although quite light, we wandered over tracts of the elastic, flowering moss. The step is rendered exceedingly bouyant, and invites you to skip and bound through the richly carpeted hollows. After prayer at the parsonage, we returned to the vessel, and talked in our berths until slumber made us silent, past midnight.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE SAIL TO FOX HARBOR.—A DAY WITH THE ESQUIMAUX, AND OUR RETURN.