^^mmmmmmm 



404 



AUDUBON 



from one to another, crossing fissures, holding to the moss 

 hand and foot and with difficulty, for about a mile, when 

 suddenly we came upon the deserted mansion of a 

 Labrador sealer. It looked snug outside, and we entered 

 it. It was formed of short slabs, all very well greased with 

 seal oil ; an oven without a pipe, a salt-box hung on a 

 wooden peg, a three-legged stool, and a wooden box of a 

 bedstead, with a flour-barrel containing some hundreds of 

 seine-floats, and an old Seal seine, completed the list of 

 goods and chattels. Three small windows, with four panes 

 of glass each, were still in pretty good order, and so was 

 the low door, which moved on wooden hinges, for which 

 the maker has received no patent, I '11 be bound. This 

 cabin made of hewn logs, brought from the main, was well 

 put together, about twelve feet square, well roofed with 

 bark of birch and spruce, thatched with moss, and every 

 aperture rendered air-tight with oakum. But it was 

 deserted and abandoned ; the Seals are all caught, and the 

 sealers have nought to do here now-a-days. We found a 

 pile of good hard wood close to this abode, which we will 

 have removed on board our vessel to-morrow. I dis- 

 covered that this cabin had been the abode of two French 

 Canadians ; first, because their almanac, written with chalk 

 on one of the logs, was in French; and next, the writing 

 was in two very dififerent styles. As we returned to our 

 vessel I paused several times to contemplate the raging 

 waves breaking on the stubborn, precipitous rocks beneath 

 us, and thought how dreadful they would prove to any one 

 who should be wrecked on so inhospitable a shore. No 

 vessel, the captain assured me, could stand the sea we 

 gazed upon at that moment, and I fully believed him, for 

 the surge dashed forty feet or more high against the 

 precipitous rocks. The Ravens flew above us, and a few 

 Gulls beat to windward by dint of superior sailing; the 

 horizon was hid by fog, so thick there, and on the crest of j 

 the island, that it looked like dense smoke. Though 



