University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
A STRANGE COUNTRY IN THE WATERS.

UP go the surges on the coast of Newfoundland,
and down, again, into the sea. The huge island,
in which the scene of our story lies, stands, with
its sheer, beetling cliffs, out of the ocean, a monstrous
mass of rock and gravel, almost without soil, like a strange
thing from the bottom of the great deep, lifted up, suddenly,
into sunshine and storm, but belonging to the watery
darkness out of which it has been reared. The eye,
accustomed to richer and softer scenes, finds something of
a strange and almost startling beauty in its bold, hard
outlines, cut out on every side, against the sky.

There came up with, or after it, but never yet got to
open air, those mountain-sisters, that, holding their huge
heads not far below the surface, make the shoals or Banks
of Newfoundland.

There are great bays in the island's sides, and harbors
in the shores of the great bays; and in and out of these
washes the water that used, perhaps, to float all over;
and on the banks and in these bays and harbors, the fish

have found new homes, for their old haunts that have
been lifted up into the air out of their reach.

Towards the eastern end of Newfoundland, two of
these great bays, called Trinity and Placentia, come in,
from opposite sides, north and south, and almost cut the
island through; an isthmus only three or four miles wide,
in one part, keeping them still asunder. Up one of these
bays, and down the other, crossing the neck between, the
telegraph-cable has been drawn.

Inland, surrounded by a fringe of small forests on the
coast, is a vast wilderness of moss, and rock, and lake,
and dwarf firs about breast-high. These little trees are
so close and stiff, and flat-topped, that one can almost
walk them; of course they are very hard things to make
way through and among.

Around the bays, in coves and harbors, (chiefly on
Avalon, the piece almost cut off,) the people live: there
are no fertile fields to tempt them inland, and they get
their harvests from the sea.

In March or April almost all the men go out in fleets
to meet the ice that floats down from the northern regions,
and to kill the seals that come down on it. In
early summer a third part or a half of all the people go,
by families, in their schooners, to the coast of Labrador,
and spend the summer, fishing there; and in the winter,
half of them are living in the woods, in “tilts,” to have
their fuel near them. At home or abroad, during the
season, the men are on the water for seals or cod. The
women sow, and plant, and tend the little gardens, and dry
the fish: in short they do the land-work; and are the
better for it.

Every town in the country is a fishing town. St.
John's, the capital, has grown into a city of twenty thou

sand or more people; but it is still a fishing town. Stages,
[1] and flakes,[2] and store-houses, for fish, are met
wherever a fit place offers itself, near the water, in every
settlement.

The little town of Peterport, along one of the slits in
the shore of Conception Bay, was a pretty place, thirty
or forty years ago, with its cliffs and ridges and coves.

Its people (four fifths of whom were church-people[3] )
lived by clans—Yarls, Franks, Marchants, and Ressles,—
in different settlements, on its main strip of land and
Indian Point, wherever a beach or jutting cliff made a
good place for flakes or stages, or offered shelter for their
boats. They had one minister (“pareson,” they called him,
in their kindly tongue,) five merchants, one schoolmaster,
two smiths, three coopers; every man, woman, and child,
beside, wrought in the fishery. In summer, most of the
heads of families, with their sons and daughters, of all
ages, were gone, for the season, to the coast of Labrador.
Almost all the harbor-schooners, at the time in which our
story opens, were there. The only square-rigged vessel
(of six or eight belonging here) was the brig Spring-Bird,
Captain (not Skipper) John Nolesworth, a foreign
trader, of Worner, Grose & Co.

The church stood midway on the harbor road; having
a flag-staff upon one of the most conspicuous cliffs; on
which staff a fair large flag, bearing a white cross, called
the people to prayers,—at half-mast to funerals. A
schoolhouse stood near the church; dwelling-houses, larger
and less, better and worse, stood in and about the different
coves; storehouses upon the merchants' “rooms,” each

with its “house-flag” staff; and everywhere along the
water, flakes and stages. One road went down the harbor,
winding with the winding shore, but going straight
across when its companion, as at Beachy Cove, made
a wide sweep into the sea. Along this pretty thorough-fare
there dwelt much innocence and peace; as over it
there went the feet of many sturdy toilers, and thronging
churchward-goers.