- Ship Fare.- A
Labrador Veteran- Literary Clerks.- Curious Travellers.- Robinson Crusoe's Island.- Quarter-Deck Quarrels.- Falkland Islands.- A Wild-Goose Chase.- Port Egmont.- Epitaph Hunting.- Old Mortality- Penguin Shooting.- Sportsmen Left in the Lurch.-A Hard Pull.- Further Altercations.- Arrival at Owyhee.
"Yes, Vancouver's about as far as any vessel need want to go; and then I have caught seals off the coast of
Labrador, and walked my way through the raspberry plains at the back of the White Mountains."
Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and
Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all tried it on him, and all failed.
It is indeed a remarkable fact to see so many of the same plants living on the snowy regions of the Alps or Pyrenees, and in the extreme northern parts of Europe; but it is far more remarkable, that the plants on the White Mountains, in the United States of America, are all the same with those of
Labrador, and nearly all the same, as we hear from Asa Gray, with those on the loftiest mountains of Europe.
But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long--enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the
Labrador.
The chances of battle and the weather conspired to maroon him in
Labrador, and there he raged for six long days, while war and wonder swept the world.
Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from
Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they entered.
In any case, their voyage would probably end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of
Labrador. But what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently day by day in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean?
A large bell rang in the lower regions -- quick, shambling footsteps pattered on the stone corridor outside -- the door opened suddenly -- and a tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips, fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two huge
Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat in a violent hurry.
Every dialect from
Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all.
And all this happened far away to the north, beyond
Labrador, beyond Hudson's Strait, where the great tides heave the ice about, north of Melville Peninsula--north even of the narrow Fury and Hecla Straits--on the north shore of Baffin Land, where Bylot's Island stands above the ice of Lancaster Sound like a pudding-bowl wrong side up.
A man is like a bit of
Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.