Then one feels the serenity of power, then all his
blood is exalted and pure, and the globules sail through his veins like
rich argosies before trade-winds. Then an irritable haste and a weak
lassitude are alike impossible; one's nerves are made of a metal finer
than steel, and he becomes truly a lord in Nature.

It was on such a day that we ran some fifty miles through a passage,
resembling a river, between islands and the main. The wind blew warm and
vigorous from the land,--sometimes, when it came to us without passing
over considerable spaces of water, seeming positively hot, as if it came
from an oven; yet in such an atmosphere one felt that he could live
forever, either in an oven or in the case of an iceberg, and wish only
to live there forever! A great fleet of schooners was pushing swiftly
along this passage, on its way to fishing-grounds in the North; and as
we flew past one and another, while the astonished crews gathered at the
side to stare at our speed, our schooner seemed the very genius of
Victory, and our wishes to be supreme powers. I have never elsewhere
experienced so _cool_ and perfect an exhilaration,--physical
exhilaration, that is.

In the early afternoon a dense haze filled the sky. The sun, seen
through this, became a globe of glowing ruby, and its glade on the sea
looked as if the water had been strown, almost enough to conceal it,
with a crystalline ruby dust, or with fine mineral _spiculae_ of
vermilion bordering upon crimson. The peculiarity of this ruddy dust was
that it seemed to possess _body_, and, while it glowed, did not in the
smallest degree dazzle,--as if the brilliancy of each ruby particle came
from the heart of it rather than from the surface. The effect was in
truth indescribable, and I try to suggest it with more sense of
helplessness than I have felt hitherto in preparing these papers. It was
beautiful _beyond_ expression,--any expression, at least, which is at
my command.

Such a spectacle, I suppose, one might chance to see anywhere, though
the chance certainly never occurred to me before. It could scarcely have
escaped me through want of attention, for I could well believe myself a
child of the sun, so deep an appeal to my feeling is made by effects of
light and color: light before all.

But the atmosphere of Labrador has its own secret of beauty, and charms
the eye with aspects which one may be pardoned for believing
incomparable in their way. The blue of distant hill