ng its own catch to market,
it would be a much more profitable outlay of time, if we were to
follow the large fleet of over one hundred schooners, with some thirty
thousand fishermen, women, and children which had just sailed North
for summer work along the coast of Labrador. To better aid us the
Government provided a pilot free of expense, and their splendid
Superintendent of Fisheries, Mr. Adolph Nielsen, also accepted the
invitation to accompany us, to make our experiment more exhaustive and
valuable by a special scientific inquiry into the habits and manner of
the fish as well as of the fishermen. Naturally a good deal of delay
had occurred owing to the unusual congestion of business which needed
immediate attention and the unfortunate temporary lack of facilities;
but we got under way at last, and sailing "down North" some four
hundred miles and well outside the land, eventually ran in on a
parallel and made the Labrador coast on the 4th of August.

The exhilarating memory of that day is one which will die only when we
do. A glorious sun shone over an oily ocean of cerulean blue, over a
hundred towering icebergs of every fantastic shape, and flashing all
of the colours of the rainbow from their gleaming pinnacles as they
rolled on the long and lazy swell. Birds familiar and strange left the
dense shoals of rippling fish, over which great flocks were hovering
and quarrelling in noisy enjoyment, to wave us welcome as they swept
in joyous circles overhead.

CHAPTER VI

THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR

Twenty years have passed away since that day, and a thousand more
important affairs which have occurred in the meantime have faded from
my memory; but still its events stand out clear and sharp. The large
and lofty island, its top covered with green verdure, so wonderful a
landmark from the sea, its peaks capped with the fleecy mist of early
morning, rose in a setting of the purest azure blue. For the first
time I saw the faces of its ruddy cliffs, their ledges picked out with
the homes of myriad birds. Its feet were bathed in the dark, rich
green of the Atlantic water, edged by the line of pure white breakers,
where the gigantic swell lazily hurled immeasurable mountains of water
against its titanic bastions, evoking peals of sound like thunder from
its cavernous recesses--a very riot of magnificence. The great schools
of whales, noisily slapping the calm surface of the sea with their
huge tails as in an _abandon_