RED BAY 13 



discontent : and on shore he sees that the doctor is not too hard 

 worked in making the botanical collections. 



For two days we lazily drifted, the elements seeming to be mak- 

 ing up for their late riot; but the weather was clear and bright, the 

 scenery way oft* to our starboard was grand, and no one was troubled 

 by the delay, except as the thoughts of the Grand River men turned 

 to the great distance and the short time of their trip. At last, how- 

 ever, the breeze came, with which I opened this letter, and which 

 we then hoped would continue till we reached Battle Harbor. 



We just flew up the straits, saw many fishermen at anchor with 

 their dories off at the trawls, schooners and dories both jumping in 

 great shape; also a school of whales and an "ovea" or whale-killer, 

 with a fin over three feet long sticking straight up. He also broke 

 rio-ht alongside and blew. Considerable excitement attended our 

 first sight of an iceberg; it was a rotten white one, but soon we 

 saw a lot, some very dark and deep-colored. 



Our first sight of the long-desired coast was between Belle 

 Armours Point and the cliffs near Red Bay, the thick haze making 

 the outlines very indistinct. Just two weeks out from Rockland 

 we made our first harbor on the Labrador coast. Red Bay is a 

 beautiful little place, and with the added features of two magnifi- 

 cent icebergs close by which we passed in entering, the towering 

 red cliffs on the left from which it takes its name, and the snug little 

 island in the middle, and the odd houses we saw dotting the shores of 

 the summer settlement of the natives, it seemed a sample fully equal 

 to our expectations of what we should find in Labrador. 



There is an inner harbor into which we could have gone, with 

 seven fathoms of water and in which vessels sometimes winter as it 

 is so secure, but we did not enter it because the captain was doubt- 

 ful which of the two entrances to take and the chart seemed indefi- 

 nite on the point. There are about one hundred and seventy-five 

 people in the settlement, some of them staying there the year round, 

 fishing in the summer and hunting the rest of the time. They have 

 another settlement of winter houses at the head of the inner harbor, 

 but, for convenience in getting at their cod traps, live on the island in 

 the middle, and on the sides of the outer harbor in the summer. 

 Their houses are made of logs about the size of small railroad ties, 

 which are stood on end and clapboarded. The winter houses are 

 built in a similar way with earth packed around and over them. 



The party for Grand River — Cary, Cole, W. R. Smith and 

 Young — have decided to dispense with a guide ; very wisely, I think, 



