140 BOTANY OF THE 
tions being taken for the ship's place during the two previous … 
days, we found ourselves in a deep bay or bight of the southern- 
most coast of Newfoundland, near Cape Royal, some distance to 
the westward of Cape Race, completely land-locked, and running 
directly on the line of two awkward-looking rocks not much more 
than a cable’s length a-head of us when first discovered. Happily 
the wind was light and a-head, with very little sea: the engines 
were reversed, and the jib set im a trice, when the ship’s head 
payed off just in time to avoid striking on the upper part of the 
reef; but her bottom slightly grazed the submerged part, when 
she was afloat again in sixty fathoms. A multitude of fishing 
vessels, of all sizes, were at hand to have afforded us assistance if 
needed, it being then the height of the fishing season ; but the 
iron-bound coast, encumbered even at this late period of the 
year with masses of ice piled upon the beach, and the wild, rugged, 
and mountainous country beyond, sprinkled with small stunted 
pines, awakened no very agreeable thoughts of what might have 
been our fate had we but arrived there a little sooner than we did, 
whilst the fog was still thickly shrouding the perils we had so 
providentially escaped. The scenery, however, was not without 
much of picturesque beauty: its stern features were softened by 
the verdure which clothed the slopes of the hills and the imme- 
diate valleys, that, shutting in the horizon nearly all round, gave — — 
to the deep bay, into which we had so unaccountably penetrated, a 
the character of an alpine lake. The temperature of the air was 61°, — 
of the water 47°, a difference quite sufficient to account for the — 
dense fog which cla the moment before prevailed. Our troubles — 
and adversities were soon forgotten in the contemplation of the 
noble panorama, and the acquisition to the dinner-table of certain — 
splendid fresh cod, which from charitable or mercenary motives, — 
(let us hope the former), were pitched on board from a fishing — 
schooner as we slowly steered past her, on our way out by the U 
same channel we had entered. " 
The weather, for the first two days after my arrival at New * 
PAS was as dark and misty as it could possibly have been at this 
or any a eason in our own much calumniated —— jt 
