﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 117 



the entire coast, from Nova Scotia to Labrador." ' An intelligent 

 white native of Grand Manan, being asked in my presence about its 

 great tides, at once mentioned the two feet or three feet tides of the 

 Magdalen Islands, which he had visited — a contrast as sharp as that 

 between the sea-level upper coast in 1003, and his own miles of 

 towering cliffs. The latter would lose little in impressiveness by 

 30 feet or even 60 feet of lowering ; and the great rush of water up 

 Straumfiord (Grand Manan Channel) along their northwestern 

 front, would perhaps be a little greater than it is now, but certainly 

 not less. 



The same applies to the series of more than picturesque, deep, 

 broad, fiord-like indentions, mountain-sentineled, with lofty islands 

 out before them or in them, and contours for the most part necessarily 

 unchanging in a thousand years, which characterize the upper sea- 

 coast of Maine, beginning with Passamaquoddy Bay. For Grand 

 Manan, lying across the front of the admirable inner expanse, visible, 

 as Denys says, from afar at sea, and necessarily the next land for the 

 explorers as they crossed the Bay of Fundy (heading a little west of 

 north after rounding the nose of Nova Scotia, and avoiding the shoals 

 of the Admiralty chart) was indeed the herald of a new order of 

 things. It is no wonder that even these Icelanders, accustomed to 

 mountains and sea-currents, were deeply impressed by the change. 



Osgood's book on the Maritime Provinces wakens to something of 

 an outburst about " Grand Manan," which " lies in the mouth of the 

 Bay of Fundy, whose giant tides sweep imperiously by its shores." 

 This, however, would not now apply quite perfectly to the sloping, 

 harbor-indented, inhabited southeastern side, with its outlying fringe 

 of low islands, though the official chart shows violent tide rips, and Dr. 

 Fewkes testifies to " currents of great power." It is the " back of the 

 island," as they call it, the wilderness side (whence you may look 

 down on Campobello near Eastport and plainly distinguish many of 

 the western mainland mountains), which enjoys the roughest kisses 

 of the racing tide. No one who watches the gulls sway backward and 

 forward in great fleets in the rush of water and the long eddy off the 

 north point by the fog whistle, or keeps company a bit with the dulse- 

 gatherers on the slippery rocks, or looks down from the southern 

 cliffs on the foam about their bases, or considers the wave-carven 



1 The following figures are given by Verplanck Colvin in his Calculations on 

 "Plutarch's Account of Ancient Voyages to the New World," p. 3 : Hopedale, 

 Labrador 7 feet; Anticosti, 5 feet; St. Johns, N. F., 6 feet; Trinity Bay. N. 

 F., 3i feet; Kennebec, 9 feet; Portland, 9.9 feet; Boston, 11 feet; New 

 London, 3 feet; New York, 5 feet. 



