254 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. CHAP. xvr. 



burnt wood was seen ; but at 2.30 P.M. of that day the 

 sun was obscured, and a total darkness set in, which con- 

 tinued until about sunset. 



The Chief Justice's own observations were as follows : 

 ' July 1814 Sunday. A most extraordinary day. In 

 the morning dark thick weather, and fog of a deep yellow 

 colour, which increased in density and colour until 4 

 o'clock P.M., at which hour the cabin was entirely dark, 

 and we dined by candle-light; the binnacle also was 

 lighted shortly after.' 



The relative positions of the different observers at the 

 time when the phenomena described in the preceding 

 paragraph occurred, shows that the northerly wind which 

 blew on July 2nd carried clouds of ashes, sand, smoke, 

 and vapour across the Eiver St. Lawrence, in a line from 

 the Bay of Seven Islands, to Cape Chat, and then by 

 the westerly wind which set in on the night of July 2nd 

 across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Island of New- 

 foundland to the great banks, and on July 3rd enveloped 

 the vessel in which the Chief Justice was sailing in the 

 same obscurity with which the other ships off the Canada 

 coast were shrouded on the preceding day. 



Chief Justice Sewell attributes these phenomena to 

 volcanic action rather than to an extensive conflagration. 

 He says : ' As to the conflagration of a forest. The facts 

 of which we are in possession, do not appear to warrant 

 a belief that such can be the cause. It seems impos- 

 sible to suppose that the conflagration of a forest could 

 have produced a mass of smoke so dense and so extensive 

 as to overspread, as it did in October 1785, the surface of 

 a territory exceeding certainly 300 miles in length, and 



