1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 653 



" No ! no !" replied he ; " not on our side of the island, at least. We 

 have suffered dearly by them; and if ever I forget or forgive!"- 



" Mr. English had great patience with that poor woman." 



" Mr. English was a great fool to think to change a crab into a flying* 

 fish ! He took three years to find out what any one might have known 

 in three days, and what even I (child as I was) became certain of in three 

 weeks that she was a mere savage, and that no good could be expected 

 of her by fair means. My grandfather might have known it too, if his 

 hope of a share of the 100/. hadn't blinded his judgment. If I had had 

 the care of her, I would have starved her into obedience ; or, if she had 

 continued obstinate to the month's end, shot her to save time." 



"Would you have murdered the poor creature?" said I in astonish- 

 ment. 



" Yes !" said he calmly, " if my grandfather had let me, as readily 

 as I would a shark or a polecat. I don't know what any of these pesti- 

 lent vermin are good for, except to destroy fish and game, and devour 

 them raw." 



et And pray what good do you do in the world ? What right would you 

 plead to your life, if her tribe displayed a similar readiness to take it?" 



" Let them take it when they can !" replied he with a fierce short 

 laugh of derision. " I value not my life, and I value not theirs. Whilst 

 I am above the waves, I live to comfort that old man, and to revenge my 

 father !" 



" Revenge is not a Christian frame of mind, young man." 



u I get enough of preaching on the island," said he, cutting me short ; 

 and as I did not foresee any beneficial result from proceeding in this strain, 

 I did not renew it. " What a task a preacher must have," thought I, 

 " to make his sermon work for good on one of the hundreds who appear 

 to listen to it, ignorant as he must be of the under-current of their 

 . thoughts ! This young scapegrace thinks vengeance a virtue ; and may 

 I be hanged instead of him, if 1 know how to * put in' an argument 

 that will touch him." 



Early the next day we doubled Cape Bauld, and stood into the Straits 

 of Belle-isle. Here we fell in with a magnificent iceberg, glittering in 

 the morning sunshine, and glowing with all the hues of the rainbow. 

 The ice was brightly crystalline, and the side next to us freshly broken. 

 It was the fragment of a huge floating mountain from Davis Strait, 

 which had been wrecked and shattered in the dangerous embrace of 

 some gigantic nymph of the North Pole, as they sported on the azure 

 fields of ocean, and yielded with irresistible impetus to the seductive in- 

 fluence of each other's accumulated attractions. Darwin has sung "The 

 Loves of the Plants," Moore " The Loves of the Angels/' Canning* 

 " The Loves of the Triangles :" Sir Walter sings, 



" Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, 

 And men below and saints above ;" 



but it yet remains for some mightier poet to do justice to the chaste yet 

 melting Loves of the Icebergs. 



It floated by. a pile of picturesque beauty, strongly resembling a Gothic 

 cathedral. The pointed caverns, worn by the dashing waves below, 

 yawned like portals and archways around the base ; shivered splinters 

 stood like buttresses to guard the front and sides, and their points 



