120 WANDERINGS AND MEMORIES 



these gentry, who was said to possess extraordinary 

 powers. He seemed to be a very ignorant man, and 

 after a few moments' silence, he proceeded to talk 

 the most abject rubbish for some ten minutes. As I 

 was dressed in naval uniform (on purpose to mislead 

 him), he talked much of the sea, the war, and certain 

 friends (purely imaginary), so I was quite bored, and 

 made a sign to my wife that it was time to go, when 

 all at once he began to speak of our eldest boy, who 

 was killed in the big advance in 1918, and described 

 him so accurately, both his appearance and charac- 

 teristics, that I was at once interested. 



Of what we may call the supernatural I have had 

 only one experience, and that a most unpleasant 

 one, and as the matter may be of interest to my 

 readers, I will put it down exactly as it happened. 1 



In the year 1906 I resolved to continue my labours 

 in the mapping of the central part of Newfoundland, 

 which at that time was still uncharted owing to the 

 difficulty of reaching the interior. No one seemed 

 to have been in the Mount Sylvester region since 

 Cormack crossed the island in 1827, and the whole 

 district, from the south at Long Harbour to the 

 Gander River in the centre, and the east at Maelpeg 

 to eighty miles to the west of Mount Sylvester, was 

 quite unknown. I was, too, resolved to ascend the 

 Long Harbour River, practically a long series of 

 rapids and overfalls, because Howley, the Govern- 

 ment surveyor, and an excellent traveller, had failed 

 to do so, and said it was " impossible." 



To accomplish this journey I reached Belloram 



1 I did not refer to this matter in my work Newfoundland 

 and its Untrodden Ways, as Ryan was then still alive, and I 

 feared it might hurt his feelings. 



