After Icebergs with a Painter / A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland.

by Louis Legrand Noble

ST. PAUL’S ISLAND.—CAPE NORTH.—COAST OF CAPE BRETON.—SYDNEY LIGHT AND HARBOR.—THE END OF OUR VOYAGE TO LABRADOR, AND AROUND NEWFOUNDLAND.

Thursday, July 21. After a boisterous night we are on deck again, and find a pleasant change in the wind. It is gray and rainy, but then our sails swell, and we rush southward.

A dome of inhospitable rock peers through the mist, one of nature’s penitentiaries, which no living man would own, and so has been deeded to St. Paul: Melita is Eden to it. The saints, it appears to me, have been gifted with the ruggedest odds and ends. Wherever, on all these cast-iron shores, there is a flinty promontory, upon which Prometheus himself would have shuddered to be chained, there the name of an apostle has been transfixed. Yonder is Cape North, the stony arrow-head of Cape Breton, a headland, rather a multitudinous group of mountain headlands, draped with gloomy grandeur, against the black cliffs of which the surf is now firing its snowy rockets. How is it they have not called it Cape St. Mary or St. John? All in all, this is a fine termination of the picturesque isle. Steep and lofty, its summits are darkened by steepled evergreens, and its many sides gashed with horrid fissures and ravines.

Here we part from the broad gulf, and enter the broader ocean, passing between the promontories of Cape Breton and the last capes of Newfoundland, Cape Anguille, and Cape Ray with its rocky domes and tables. Thus have we fairly encompassed this Ireland of America, in all but climate. White seabirds, with long wings tipped with black, sweep the air. We speed onward and homeward past the many-folded mountains. The eye slides along their graceful outlines, and follows their winding shores. Through the deep valleys we look upon the landscapes interior, softened by a purple atmosphere. Clouds are breaking around the woody summits, seas of forest-tops are smiling in the sunshine, and shadows are filling the rocky gorges with a kind of twilight. At last the sun is sinking behind the distant heights, and leaving his red footsteps on the clouds. C⁠—— is painting his last picture, and these are the last pencillings of the voyage. We hail the cliffs of Sydney—those remarkable cliffs that sat upon the horizon like tinted sea-shells, on the Sunday afternoon we were on our way to St. Johns. And yonder is the Sydney light twinkling through the dusk of evening. Our summer sail to Labrador and around Newfoundland is over. Where the anchor brings the vessel to a pause, there shall we leave the brave little pinkstern. May her wanderings in the future under the Union Jack be as happy as those of the present have been under the Stars and Stripes. Thankful for the Divine care, we will ask protection for the night, and guidance home, the final haven where we would be.

CHAPTER LVII.

FAREWELL TO CAPTAIN KNIGHT.—ON OUR WAY ACROSS CAPE BRETON.—A MERRY RIDE, AND THE RUSTIC LOVER.

Friday, July 22. Sydney harbor. A bright morning, and the wind from the quarter where we should be happy to find it, were we going to sea. But, selfish souls! because it puts us to a small inconvenience, we now wish that it did not blow, and that we may have calm weather. We are to breakfast, to finish packing, and take our leave of Captain Knight, from whom we part with emotions of regret. He will depart in the next steamer for St. Johns, and we start for Halifax by an inland route.

Here we are, on our way across the Island of Cape Breton, bound for Nova Scotia. Our baggage—trunks, carpet-bags, reindeer-horns, snow-shoes, plants, and mosses—in a one-horse wagon, goes ahead; we follow in another. We are delighted with the change from rolling waves to rolling wheels. We are delighted with our spirited nag. We are delighted with the scenery, which, however, is in no way remarkable. I believe that we should be delighted if we were riding through a smoky tunnel. The truth is the delight is in us, and will flow out, and would, be the world about us what it might. Every thing amuses us, even the provoking trick our pony has of slightly kicking up, every time the breeching cuts into his hams upon going down hill. As may be supposed, said pony is a creature of importance to us, now that he is our motive power. We do not look at the clouds now, and watch the temper of the atmosphere; our eyes are upon the body and legs of the little fellow wrapped in this brown skin. After the first effervescence of spirit upon starting, with which, of course, we were much delighted, he began to lag a trifle, and to raise suspicions that he was not the horse good-natured Mr. Dearing, his master, said he was. We are pleased to find ourselves mistaken. Our very blunders are satisfactory. The longer he goes the smarter he grows, giving us symptoms of a disposition to run away, when ordinarily we might look for any thing else. Let him run. We can ride as fast, and come in not a length behind, at the end of our thirty-two miles, the distance to a tavern.

The ride along the shore of Sydney harbor, over a smooth, hard road, was really charming, and would have been to travellers of ill temper. Wild roses incensed the fresh air, and the sunshine was bright upon the clover-fields. On the steamer down from Halifax to Sydney, I became acquainted with a tradesman, an intelligent Scotch Presbyterian. Who should come running out of a little country store by the road-side, with a shout that brought our nag down upon his haunches, but our friend! He, too, was delighted, and shook us heartily by the hand, asking after “the Labrador,” the icebergs, and our voyage in general. Set in the midst of our pleasure was one regret: our want of time to visit Louisburg, or the ruins of it. We talked it over, and then dismissed both the ruins and the regret.

From the bay of Sydney the way is wonderfully serpentine for a main road, winding about apparently for the mere love of winding, and when there seems no more real necessity for it than for a brook in a level meadow. We have liked it all the better, though, running, as it does, around the slightest hills, wooded with the perpetual spruce, intermingled with the birch and maple, crossing with a graceful twist little farms, and coming around garden fences, by the farmers’ doors, under the willows and the apple trees. The native Indians, tricked out with cheap, showy finery, whose huts are seen lazily smoking among the bushes, were occasionally met, and chatted with. A young Mc. something, upon whose sleepy face was the moonshine of a smile, was found trotting his chestnut filly close behind our wagon. The persistence in the thing was becoming disagreeable, and we looked round several times with an expression which said plainly: “Please keep a little back.” Mc. was in no humor to take the hint. When our pace quickened, the click of his horse’s shoes, and the breath of his steed, which carried a high head, were close upon us; a sudden slackening of our speed brought him, horse-head and all, as suddenly into our midst. Presently he changed his tactics, and dashed by, brushing the wheels with his stirrup, and so trotting on ahead, taking occasion to twist himself on the saddle, when a walk permitted, and look back. The fellow was a character, although of the softer kind, and we struck up an acquaintance, during which, in the effort to sustain his part of the conversation, he rode around us in all possible ways. A particularly favorite position was in the gutter at our side, where, in spite of our united care, he would now and then be literally run up a stump, or a bank. Whether on the lead, or following, we kept him frequently at break-neck speed, during which the conversation was mostly confined to monosyllables—loud and few—and, when forward, discharged now over one, and then over the other shoulder. Mc. was a farmer, and lived with “the old folks at home.” He had been on a courting expedition, in which he considered himself successful. In fact, he made a clean breast of it, and told us the pleasant story of his love, and the fine qualities of the lass of whom he was enamored. Although she might not be thought handsome by a great many, yet she was handsome to him. Never errant knight rehearsed a softer tale in shorter periods, with a louder voice, or happier heart. He was full of it, and it mattered little to whom, or how he uttered it. For what distance he was intending to bear us company, I have no notion. The house of an acquaintance, at the gate of which were several persons, who seemed at once to understand him, and whose faces were so many open doors of curiosity, finally relieved us of him. It was evidently undesigned, and he pulled up, I thought, somewhat reluctantly.