One Fine Day. 335 



pipe, a salt-box hung to a wooden peg, a three-legged 

 stool for a table, and wooden b* f :>r a bedstead, were all 

 its furniture. An old flour-barrel, containing some hun- 

 dreds of seine floats, and an old seal seine, comprised 

 the assets of goods and chattels. Three small windows, 

 with four panes of glass each, were still in pretty good 

 order, and so was the low door, which swung on \x>oden 

 hinges, for which I will be bound the maker had asked 

 for no patent. The cabin was made of hewn logs, 

 brought from the mainland, about twelve feet square, and 

 well put together. It was roofed with birch bark and 

 spruce, well thatched with moss a foot thick; every 

 chink was crammed with moss, and every aperture render- 

 ed air-tight with oakum. But it was deserted and aban- 

 doned. The seals are all caught, and the sailors have 

 nothing to do now-a-days. We found a pile of good hard 

 wood close to the cabin, and this we hope to appro- 

 priate to-morrow. I found out that the place had been 

 inhabited by two Canadians, by the chalk marks on the 

 walls, and their almanac on one of the logs ran thus : L 

 24, M 25, M 26, I 27, V 28, S 29, D 3o, giving the first 

 letter of the day of the week. On returning to the ves- 

 sel, I stopped several times to look on the raging waves 

 rolling in upon the precipitous rocks below us, and thought 

 how dreadful it would be for any one to be wrecked on 

 this inhospitable shore. The surges of surf which rolled 

 in on the rocks were forty or fifty feet high where they 

 dashed on the precipices beneath us, and any vessel cast 

 ashore there must have been immediately dashed to 

 pieces. 



"July 20. The country of Labrador deserves credit for 

 one fine day. This has been, until evening, calm, warm, 

 and really such a day as one might expect in the Middle 

 States about the middle of May. I drew until ten 

 o'clock, and then made a trip to the island next to us. 



