

A VISIT TO SABLE ISLAND 205 



After storms and during thick weather they are obliged to patrol 

 the whole island at least once a day. 



By the evening fire, before a hearth glittering with sheets of 

 burnished copper torn from some shipwrecked keel, in a room 

 where the light plays on the rich Spanish mahogany facing of 

 carved lockers, and touches with a golden salience billets of English 

 oak perforated with many a nail-hole, the stranger listens to tale 

 after tale of hairbreadth escapes or sad stories of ocean's havoc, 

 not without a due touch of the supernatural. It may be the story 

 of the Paris gentleman who always appears to wrecked Frenchmen 

 and bitterly complains of Henry IV for banishing his wife with 

 the convicts of 1598. It may be one of the regicides of Charles I, 

 who, tradition says, made this island his hiding-place, and lived 

 and died here. This spectre on the 2Qth of May marches round 

 beneath a broad-brimmed hat, singing psalms through his nose 

 so loudly as to be heard above the storm which, by the by, 

 is something of a performance, for steam-sirens are here rendered 

 nugatory from being drowned by the roar of the waves. 



If it were not for the hardy grasses of the island, no herbivorous 

 animals could here exist ; but fortunately the sand keeps perpetually 

 clothing itself with a panoply of beach-grass which serves as a 

 coat of mail against the attacking winds. 



Great vigilance is exercised near the stations to guard against 

 any breach in the sod, which is quickly repaired, else the gales 

 would discover the weak spot and proceed to scoop out a hollow, 

 and eventually undermine the buildings. One night's drift of 

 sand will often bury a telephone post entirely out of sight. 



The wild grass roots itself very firmly, and is probably superior 

 to the recently imported Falkland Island tussock grass, which has 

 been planted by way of experiment as a safeguard against the 

 devastating powers of winds and waves. The beach-grass during 

 spring and summer grows to the height of about two feet. The 

 sand may be heaped over it to a great depth, yet it forces its sharp- 

 pointed spears to the surface and sprouts from the summit. 



Two years ago the Minister of Marine and Fisheries Depart- 

 ment in Canada sent experts to France in order to purchase every 

 kind of tree and shrub that had been found serviceable in staying 

 the inroads of the sea on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. 

 Every variety of the pine was sent out : cluster pine, Scotch fir, 

 Australian pine by the ten thousand each, with lots of five 

 thousand and two thousand and one hundred each of other pines. 

 Spruce, cedar, and juniper were planted almost^s profusely. To 

 these were added all the common trees of the ordinary forest, roe- 

 bushes, creeping plants, flowering shrubs, pea-vines<~ hawthorns, 



