THE LABRADOR JOURNAL 



397 



4 



ledges which projected everywhere, and sent the angry 

 waters foaming into the air. The wind now freshened, the 

 "Ripley's" sails swelled, and she was gently propelled 

 through the water and came within sight of the harbor, 

 on the rocks of which we stood waiting for her, when all of 

 a sudden she veered, and we saw her topsails hauled in 

 and bent in a moment; we thought she must have seen a 

 sunken rock, and had thus wheeled to avoid it, but soon 

 saw her coming up again and learned that it was merely 

 because she had nearly passed the entrance of the harbor 

 ere aware of it. Our harbor is the very representation of 

 the bottom of a large bowl, in the centre of which our vessel 

 is now safely at anchor, surrounded by rocks fully a thou- 

 sand feet high, and the wildest-looking place I ever was in. 

 After supper we all went ashore ; some scampered up the 

 steepest hills next to us, but John, Shattuck, and myself 

 went up the harbor, and after climbing to the top of a 

 mountain (for I cannot call it a hill) went down a steep 

 incline, up another hill, and so on till we reached the crest 

 of the island, and surveyed all beneath us. Nothing but 

 rocks — barren rocks — wild as the wildest of the Apen- 

 nines everywhere ; the moss only a few inches deep, and 

 the soil or decomposed matter beneath it so moist that, 

 wherever there was an incline, the whole slipped from 

 under our feet like an avalanche, and down we slid for feet 

 or yards. The labor was excessive ; at the bottom of each 

 dividing ravine the scrub bushes intercepted our way for 

 twenty or thirty paces, over which we had to scramble 

 with great exertion, and on our return we slid down fifty 

 feet or more into an unknown pit of moss and mire, more 

 or less deep. We started a female Black-cap Warbler 

 from her nest, and I found it with four eggs, placed in the 

 fork of a bush about three feet from the ground ; a beauti- 

 ful little mansion, and I will describe it to-morrow. I am 

 wet through, and find the mosquitoes as troublesome as in 

 the Floridas. 



