42 BUNKING IN. 



until about dusk, when we started for the wharf again taking a cut 

 across the meadows in the direction of the water, having seen very 

 little of the town itself, though enough to commend it as an old 

 fashioned, curious place, well worth visiting and investigating. 

 Soon the wharf was gained ; a boat waiting bore us to the vessel, 

 which by this time had finished her loading and was lying at anchor 

 out in the channel, and with a dim twilight at our backs, a light- 

 house in front of us, and a bonny breeze to shape our course, we 

 hoisted sail and bade farewell to the last landing this side of "The 

 Labrador," whither we shaped our course. We were at last really 

 moving. The vessel was really gliding along under the pressure of 

 the wind towards that region so prominent on the eastern part of 

 northern North America, yet so little known, called the plateau of 

 Labrador, or, as the people themselves call it, as I have above 

 quoted, "The Labrador." 



It is by no means an easy matter to arrange four persons, let us 

 say for example two men and two ladies — though it makes very little 

 difference as to the number and sex when even a single person is, so 

 to speak, unceremoniously deposited in a small cabin of a small 

 saihng vessel, and shown a small bunk in which to sleep, scarcely 

 big enough for one yet the usual abode of two able bodied ( ?) sea- 

 men — in such contracted compartments as those we were about to oc- 

 cupy : how the affair was brought to a happy termination I cannot 

 tell. Our voyage would last about a week, our accommodations 

 for that time jnidtum in parvo, and with a more literal meaning 

 than we had ever before imagined that the words could possibly con- 

 vey. Our trunks were expelled from the cabin and confined to the 

 hold ,; our bags were insufficient at best to meet our wants ; the mat- 

 ter was thus ludicrous as well as provokingly uncomfortable and in- 

 convenient. While we were enjoying ourselves on the outside of 

 the cabin, watching the stars, the dim outlines of the shores in the 

 darkness around, and the darker yet sparkling water — sparkling 

 from the reflection of the stars — the ladies were somehow prepar- 

 ing affairs below ; soon they joined us, and we together sat watching, 

 we could hardly tell what (the custom usually seems to be when 



