Upon our return we found the musquitoes, a peculiarly hungry and poisonous species, coming down from the woods in numbers. We determined to crush that mischief in the bud, and did it most effectually, by filling the cabin with the dense smoke of spruce boughs, and then, upon its escape, covering the entrance with a sheet. One only came feebly and timidly singing about my face before I got to sleep. About one o’clock, there were sounds above: shaking of blocks and cordage, now and then a thump with a creak of booms, and jerking of the rudder. I went up; there was no watch; all were soundly sleeping. The ship’s cat was out on the rail, running from place to place, and mewing mournfully. The sky looked ominous, and there was the roar of wind outside. The waters and the woods of the bay, so prettily named, were gloomy as the crypt of a temple. I crept to my dreams, out of which in no long time I was startled by the painter. He was getting up to have his look. He reported breezes, but in the wrong direction, and without comment felt his way back to bed. At two, the voice of the Captain put an end to slumbers, fore and aft. He was calling all hands to the deck, where presently all was noise and bustle, hoisting sail, and heaving at the anchor. The old motion was soon perceptible, and we knew that we were taking leave of Temple Bay—a fact of which we were assured by the Captain, who peeped in upon us, by lifting a corner of the musquito-sheet, and announced the good tidings that the wind, northeast, was blowing briskly, and that the straits would give us no further trouble.
No sooner were we clear of the “tickle,” or narrows, than “Iceberg ahead!”—“Ice on the lee bow!” was cried by the man forward. It was no more to our purpose to go up and look at ices. It was a comfortable reflection that we were now bidding them farewell. By way of a parting salute, one of the bergs burst asunder with a great noise, before that we were out of the reach of its shells. But its thunder fell but faintly on our practised ears, and rather encouraged than disturbed our disposition to sleep. When daylight was broad upon the straits, we were over the worst, and the last iceberg, like the top of some solitary mausoleum of the desert, was sinking below the horizon. The high wind and sea were after us, and we ran with speed and comparative stillness. By noon we were fairly through; with Forteau, the last of Labrador, on the north—to the south, the coast of Newfoundland, and the broad gulf of St. Lawrence expanding before us. We felt that we might then breathe freely. The breeze most surely did, and we sped on our way southward toward Cape Breton.
CHAPTER LII.
COAST SCENERY.—FAREWELL TO LABRADOR.
The coast of Labrador was really fine, all the forenoon, and sometimes strikingly grand. It has lost something of the desolate and savage character it has about the Capes St. Louis and St. Charles, and seems more like a habitable land. There are long and graceful slopes and outlines of pale green hills slanting down to the sea, along which is the craggy shore-line, black, brown and red. The last few miles, and which is near the Canadian border, the red sandstone shore is exceedingly picturesque. It has a right royal presence along the deep. Lofty, semicircular promontories descend in regular terraces nearly down, then sweep out gracefully with an ample lap to the margin. No art could produce better effect. The long, terraced galleries are touched with a tender green, and the well-hollowed vales, now and then occurring, and ascending to the distant horizon between ranks of rounded hills, look green and pasture-like. All, you must bear in mind, is treeless nearly, and utterly lonely. Here and there are small detachments of dwarf firs, looking as if they were either on their retreat to the woodlands of a warmer clime, or on their march from it, in order to get a foothold, and make a forest settlement remote from the woodman’s axe. Anyway, in their lonesome and inhospitable halt, they darken the light greens and the gray greens with very lively effect.
The Battery, as sailors call it, is a wall of red sandstone, of some two or three miles in extent, with horizontal lines extending from one extreme to the other, and perpendicular fissures resembling embrasures and gateways. Swelling out with grand proportions toward the sea, it has a most military and picturesque appearance. At one point of this huge citadel of solitude, there is the resemblance of a giant portal, with stupendous piers two hundred feet or more in elevation. They are much broken by the yearly assaults of the frost, and the eye darts up the ruddy ruins with surprise. If there was anything to defend, here is a Gibraltar at hand, with comparatively small labor, whose guns could nearly cross the strait. Beneath its precipitous cliffs the debris slopes like a glacis to the beach, with both smooth and broken surfaces, and all very handsomely decorated with rank herbage. Above the great walls, there is a range of terraces ascending with marked regularity for quite a distance. Miles of ascending country, prairie-like, greet the eye along this edge of Labrador. “Arms of gold”—is it? Possibly these promontories, golden in the rising and the setting sun, may have suggested to Cabot or some other explorer, before or since, the propriety of christening this dead body of a country by some redeeming name.
Among the very pretty and refreshing features of the coast are its brooks, seen occasionally falling over the rocks in white cascades. Harbors are passed now and then with small fishing fleets and dwellings. Forteau has a church-spire pointing heavenward among its white buildings and brown masts, and is the most eastern place in the diocese of Newfoundland visited by Bishop Field. It is not unlikely that he is now there engaged in the sacred duties of his office, and certainly would have attracted us thither, could we have spared a day. On the point from which we took our final departure from the north shore, stands a high lighthouse, erected at great cost, and around its base are clustering the greens of a kitchen garden! Adieu, bleak Labrador! They tell me that the warmest of summers is now upon thy honeyless and milkless land. If this is thy July—I say it under an overcoat of the deepest nap—spare me thy December.
But why, at parting, should I speak roughly unto thee, and whet the temper to talk ill of thee, in the presence of rich gardens, yellow fields, and ruddy orchards? Hast not thou thy horned cariboo, thy reindeer, thy fox of costly fur, and thy wild-fowl of wintry plumage? Hast not thou thy bright-eyed salmon, graced with lines as delicate and lovely as those of beauty’s arm, and complexioned like the marigold “damasked by the neighboring rose”?—thy whales and seals to fill with oil the lighthouse lamp, to fill with starry flame the lighthouse lantern?—thy pale green capelin, silvery-sided myriads that allure the “fish,” calling their millions to the hooks and seines of thy toiling fishermen—hardy, hospitable people, whose kentles of white-fleshed cod buy the ruby wine and yellow fruits of Cuba and Oporto? Hast thou not dealt kindly with us, and shown us these thy fat things, and all thy richer, nobler treasures? Hast thou not uncurtained thy resplendent pictures of the sky, the ocean, and the land? And have we not gazed delighted and awe-struck upon the grandeur of a great and terrible wilderness, upon the gloom of its shadowy atmosphere, upon the brilliancy of its sunlight? Have we not heard the footsteps of the billows marching to their encampment in the grottoes of the cliffs; and seen the silent, inshore deeps; the imprisoned islands and grim headlands armed with impenetrable granite; the vales and dells, and hill-sides with their mosses and their flowers, sweet odors, and sweet melodies?—most beautiful, most wonderful of all, thine icebergs, and thy twilight heavens? All these, and more, of thy greatness and thy glory, have we looked upon, and they will have their reflections, and their echoes in the memory forever. Beauty may watch, and supplicate, and weep sometimes upon the crags now receding from our view, but she is surely there, and native to the wildest pinnacle and cavern. And while to the careless eye and thoughtless heart thou art verily dark and bleak, yet art thou neither barren nor unfruitful. Old Labrador, farewell!
CHAPTER LIII.
WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND.—THE BAY, THE ISLANDS, AND THE HIGHLANDS OF ST. JOHNS.—INGORNACHOIX BAY.