CHAPTER I
TO NEWFOUNDLAND
Notwithstanding my resolve that the Vancouver trip should be my last one, the call of the wild was once more too strong, and the summer of 1910 found me planning an expedition to Newfoundland.
I think J. G. Millais' charming book Newfoundland and its Untrodden Ways, as well as the description he personally gave me of the country, were largely responsible for my decision.
I sailed from Southampton on August 5th by the Cincinnati, of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, bound for St. John's, Newfoundland, via New York.
The ship was crowded and the voyage as monotonous as all Atlantic voyages are, while being a slow boat we only arrived at New York on the morning of the 14th. The heat of New York was intense, and I was not sorry to leave it at midnight for Boston, and straight on via St. John's, New Brunswick, to Sydney, where I took the Bruce, which runs between Sydney and Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, a distance of a hundred miles.
I would recommend any one who is taking this route, and is not a total abstainer, to provide himself with a bottle of whisky, for Maine, through which a good portion of the journey lies, is a teetotal state, and even on board the Bruce not a drop of any form of liquor, even beer, was allowed to be served until the steamer was under way.
Getting away at eleven o'clock, and after a rather rough passage, for the Bruce is only about 800 tons, we arrived at Port aux Basques at 7 a.m. on the 17th.
It was a lovely morning, and the rocky shores of Newfoundland looked particularly wild and attractive in the bright sunshine. Port aux Basques is a small settlement, and so far as I could ascertain does not contain an hotel, but no doubt some form of lodging-house exists, where, as throughout the island, the visitor would be given a warm welcome and whatever was going, be it little or much.
The train was waiting for the steamer. The line is a narrow-gauge one, but the cars were quite comfortable, and the prospect of seeing a new country is always attractive. But how we did bump over that line; whether it was the fault of the laying of the permanent way or the driving I cannot say, but in a long experience of railway travelling I never have been so jolted, the driver seeming to take a special pleasure in pulling up with a jerk sufficient to knock over any one standing up, and then to start, if possible, in a rougher manner. However, no one seemed to mind, and after all passengers should be grateful for having a line at all. My mouth watered at accounts I heard of sea trout fishing, about three hours by launch from Port aux Basques. I was told that a few days previously three rods got 110 sea trout, averaging three pounds, in the Garia River, in a few hours.