A DESERTED HUT. 275 



Three small windows, with four panes of glass each, were btill 

 in pretty good order, and so was the low door, which swung on 

 wooden hinges, for which I will be bound the maker had asked 

 for no patent. The cabin was made of hewn logs, brought from 

 the mainland, about twelve feet square, and well put together. 

 It was roofed with- birch bark and spruce, well thatched with 

 moss a foot thick ; every chink was crammed 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 nothing to do now-a-days. We found a pile of 

 good hard wood close to the cabin, and this we hope to appro- 

 priate to-morrow. I found out that the place had been in- 

 habited by two Canadians, by the chalk marks on the walls, 

 and their almanac on one of the logs ran thus : L 24, M 25, 

 M 26, 1 27, V 28, S 29, D 30, giving the first letter of the day 

 of the week. On returning to the vessel, I stopped several 

 times to look on the raging waves rolling in upon these 

 precipitous rocks below us, and thought how dreadful it would 

 be for .any one to be wrecked on this inhospitable shore. The 

 surges of surf which rolled in on the rocks were forty or fifty 

 feet high where they dashed on the precipices beneath us, and 

 any vessel cast ashore there must have been immediately 

 dashed to pieces. 



" July 20. The country of Labrador deserves credit for one 

 fine day. This has been, until evening, calm, warm, and really 

 such a day as one might expect in the middle states about, the 

 middle of May. I drew until ten o'clock, and then made a trip 

 to the island next to us, and shot several birds. We passed 

 several small bays, where we found vast quantities of stones 

 thrown up by the sea, and some of them of enormous size. I 

 now think that these stones are brought from the sea on the 

 thick drift ice, or icebergs, which come down from the arctic 

 regions, and are driven in here and broken by the jagged rocks ; 

 they are stranded, and melt, and leave these enormous pebbles 

 in layers from ten to one hundred feet deep. 



" July 21. I write now from a harbour which has no name, 

 for we have mistaken it for the one we were looking for, which 

 lies two miles east of this. But it matters little, for the coast 

 of Labrador is all alike, comfortless, cold, and foggy. We left 



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