AMID SPRUCES AND SEA-GIRT ROCKS 173 



and saw enough to rouse a strong desire for a longer stay. 

 Various plans to repeat the trip had fallen through. But 

 now, as a party of us were returning from the Magdalen 

 Islands, the time seemed opportune. So, before crossing by 

 steamer from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Boston, we branched 

 off on a new railroad, completed only as far as Barrington, 

 on the way to Halifax. None of the station-agents in the 

 northern part of the Province knew the name of this road, or, 

 indeed, of its existence, and our plans were long in delight- 

 ful uncertainty. Fortunately there was a connecting train ; 

 and the night of the last day of June found us at Barrington 

 Passage, ready to be sailed across to Seal Island. 



Though a Nova Scotia fog prevailed that night, we were 

 not worried about reaching the island. We had just been to 

 Bird Rock, far more inaccessible, in an open boat, and this 

 trip seemed like small game in comparison. So we con- 

 fidently engaged a skipper and sail-boat, and slept the sleep 

 of the just. Yet that twenty-mile stretch of ocean between 

 Cape Sable and Seal Island is as rough and dangerous an 

 area as can well be found, with its powerful currents, tide- 

 rips, cross-seas, and sunken reefs. To traverse it even in fair 

 weather is no boy's play, and much less now when we arose 

 and found weather conditions of thick fog, rain-squalls, and 

 a heavy wind from the southwest, directly ahead. Our skipper 

 confessed his inability to get us to the island in his little 

 cockle-shell, and suggested that we try to engage some 

 larger craft. We spent half the day trying to bribe various 

 owners to undertake it by sail or steam, then gave it up, and 

 explored the wet and dense spruce woods. The following 

 day was just as bad, with no sign of fog or wind letting up. 

 No one would start, and we began to feel rather blue, when 

 by great good fortune we met a man who was part owner of 

 a wrecking-steamer which had recently put into a neighbor- 



