All the wildness and waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole earth, brought together to wed and enhance each other, and then relieved by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the world,—that is Labrador.
I have dreamed that it was created on this wise. Ahriman, having long been defeated in his evil purposes by Ormuzd, fled away secretly to a distant part of the world, and there in silence made a land which should be utterly his own. He brought together every element of dread and terror,—barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog, crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd, lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking, beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came to it, and, seeking to change nothing, uplifted over it a token of immortal, unutterable beauty, that even this land might bear witness to his celestial sovereignty.
But these waste lands have use as well as beauty. At Sleupe Harbor dwelt one Michael Cantè, the patriarch of the neighborhood, if neighborhood it were to be called, where were only three houses within a space of as many miles. His years were now threescore and ten, but he was hale as a pine forest and sweet as maple sap. A French Canadian, he spoke English, not only like a native, but like a well-bred native,—was not ignorant of thoughts and books,—and altogether seemed a man superior to most in nature, intelligence, and manners. His birthplace was Quebec, and he had formerly possessed a very considerable fortune; but losing this through fraud, and finding himself deserted by "summer friends," he had conceived a disgust at polite society, and escaped to these solitudes. Here his wounds had healed, and his nature recovered its tone. His labors prospered; a healthy and handsome family grew up to enrich his household; and no regrets drew him back to the big world he had left behind. Nature preserves to herself the right of asylum, no matter how the Louis Napoleon of civilization may demand its surrender,—preserves a place of rest and refuge for the weary hearts which are self-sent into spiritual exile.
It is also to be considered whether this terrible region does not play a most serviceable part in the physical geography of the continent. I have not science enough to speak here with entire confidence; and yet I am rationally convinced. Without the ice-fields in the North, and the frigid current which these send down to meet the tepid waters of the Gulf Stream, would not this low and level America, with its dry atmosphere, suffer fearfully for want of rain? would it not, indeed, be one great desert? Could we dispense with the collisions and sudden interchanges of cold and hot currents of air which are due to these causes? Do we not obtain thus the same effects which in South America are produced by the snowy summits of the Andes? The cold current meets the warm, chills its vapor, precipitates this in fruitful rain. Our northeast winds are the chief bringers of rain. Take these away, and what about wheat and corn? Take away Labrador and the Arctic current, and what about northeast winds? They would still blow; would they still force the warm air to yield its vapor for the benefit of our fields? The extreme changeableness of our climate is, I am fully persuaded, connected very closely and indispensably with the fertility of the continent. Thank God, therefore, for Labrador!
CHAPTER VI.
LIFE ON BOARD.
I have recounted above the manner in which the good divinity spoiled the Labrador triumph of the malign god. To that veracious history belongs the following addendum. The evil power was deeply chagrined to be so robbed of his victory. Rubbing his brow with vexation, he chanced to break the skin with his nails. The venom of the viper is poisonous to its own blood; and in like manner, the malignity of the demon afflicted his own flesh with a festering pain. The slight anguish gave him a thought. "Ha! now I have it!" he cried; "now I will be quits with him!" He caused, accordingly, a boggy moss to grow in the hollows of this dreary land, and made this to generate in countless multitudes a small, winged, venomous fiend, named mosquito. "Ahriman is victor, after all!" he shouted, as the humming imps trooped forth upon the air.
I think he was!
Delighted with this success, the demon tried to repeat it in other lands; but it fared with him as with every genius, good or bad, who begins to repeat himself: the imitation was but a feeble copy of the original. The mosquito of Labrador would spoil Eden itself. The imitated fiend I am indifferent to, but from the original spare me!
We were spared in a degree. Ormuzd turned the weapons of his enemy against himself: rain, hail, and snow fought for us against the mosquito; but when fair weather came, this pest came with it. It is clear that Dante was not a man of genius! Otherwise he would have put the mosquito (the original, of course) in his "Inferno."