26 WHO FIRST SAW THE LABRADOR COAST? 



" Nautilus" left Godthaab Aug. 13th, and entered the 

 Strait of Belle Isle Aug. 24th, anchoring at Bonne 

 Esperance Aug. 25th. Then sailing from Bonne Espe- 

 rance Aug. 26th, owing to calms and a storm she did not 

 reach Thomaston until September i ith, a period of about 

 fifteen days. It thus appears that the voyage from the 

 mo.uth of the Penobscot River, Maine, to southern 

 Greenland, through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a shorter 

 route than that of the Northmen east of Newfoundland,, 

 took nineteen days, not including the detention on the 

 Labrador coast, while the return voyage from southern 

 Greenland to Maine required 27 days. 



In 1864 ray second trip to the Labrador coast was 

 made in a Welltleet oysterman, a schooner of about 140 

 tons, built for speed, with long spars and large sails,. 

 She was probably the fastest vessel which ever visited 

 the Labrador coast. The vo3'age from Boston to 

 Mecatina Island on the Labrador coast, through the 

 Gut of Canso, was made in seven days ; it was probably 

 the quickest voyage from Massachusetts to Labrador 

 ever made. We ran from Provincetown to Port Mul- 

 grave in the Gut of Canso in just forty-eight hours. 

 The return trip from Caribou Island to Boston, a dis- 

 tance of about nine hundred miles, was made in nine 

 days. The average was therefore just a hundred miles 

 a day. How could a Norseman's clumsy craft of forty 

 or fifty tons, with but a mainsail and a jib, outdo such 

 saiHng as that ? 



The Norse record says that Biarne's "return pa.ssage 

 occupied nine days," and Kohl adds that " from New- 

 foundland to the southern part of Greenland a North- 

 man navigator, with fresh breezes, might easily sail m 



