it, presses close past
Caribou Island. This explains the sterility of the latter.

The Arctic current varies much in different years, not only in the
amount of ice it brings, but also in its direction. Unexpected effects
depend upon this variation. It will be remembered that in 1863 several
ships were wrecked on Cape Race, owing to some "unaccountable"
disturbance of the currents. The Gulf Stream, it was found at length,
ran thirty miles farther north than usual. _Was_ this unaccountable?
When Captain Handy, our whaling Mentor, was penetrating Hudson's Strait
in June, 1863, he found vast headlands of floe ice resting against the
land, and pushing far out to sea.

"Mr. Bailey," said he to his mate, "there will be many wrecks on Cape
Race this year."

The prediction was fulfilled. Do you see why it should be?

The floe ice rose ten feet above the water; it therefore extended near
one hundred feet beneath. At this depth it acted upon the current
precisely as if it were land, pushing the former far to the east. The
current, therefore, did not meet and repel the Gulf Stream at the usual
point; and the latter was thus at liberty to press on beyond its custom
to the north. Captain Handy not only saw the facts before him, but
reasoned upon them. Even when these immense bodies of ice do not rest
upon the land, they produce the same effect. At the depth of a hundred
feet they go below the current into the still water or counter current
beneath, and thus still resist the surface flow.

The coast of Labrador has no fellow for sternness and abruptness on the
earth. Huge headlands, stubborn cliffs, precipitous hills rise suddenly
from the sea, bold, harsh, immitigable, yet softened by their aspect of
gray endurance. Hacked and scored, tossed, fissured, and torn,
weather-beaten and bleached, their bluntness becomes grave, their
hardness pathetic. About their caverned bases the billow thunders in
perpetual assault, proclaiming the purpose of the sea to reclaim what it
has lost. Above, the frost inserts its potent lever, and flings down
from time to time some bellowing fragment to its ally below. The shores,
as if to escape from this warfare, hurry down, and plunge to quiet
depths of ocean, where the surge never heaves, nor frost, even by the
deep ploughshare of its icebergs, can reach. It is, indeed, a terrible
coast, and remains to represent that period in Nature when her powers
were all Titanic, untamed,--playing their wild game