( 6i ) 



CHAPTER III. 



NEWFOUNDLAND {continued). 



I828-I835. 



EARLY In Aiic^ust, 1828, Philip Gosse was sent for by 

 Mr. Elson, and told that he must get himself ready 

 to go and take his place in the office at St. Mary's. 

 This he knew of only as an obscure, semi-barbarous settle- 

 ment on the south- coast of Newfoundland, where, as the 

 clerks had gathered, the firm had just purchased an old 

 establishment. The young man's heart sank within him 

 as this command was delivered to him in Mr. Elson's dry, 

 short, peremptory manner. Remonstrance, of course, was 

 out of the question, but it seemed an exile to the antipodes, 

 to be severed from all his pleasant companions and en- 

 vironment, to be shut up in an out-of-the-world hole, for 

 an indefinite period, since no hint was given of any term 

 to this banishment. He could only bow in silence, and 

 rush down to the counting-house, there to pour forth his 

 sorrows to his sympathizing fellows, not without tears. 



The Plover, a schooner recently purchased by Mr. 

 Elson, was being sent round with a cargo of supplies. On 

 board this vessel Gosse sailed a few days later, enveloped, 

 as the ship ran down the coast, in a dense sea-fog, raw, 

 damp, cold, and miserable. On the second day he saw a 

 curious phenomenon, which roused him a little out of his 

 depression. Mounting the rigging some twenty feet or so 



