84 ONE OF FIFTY DAYS IN SOUTHERN LABRADOR. 



we lufif a little to avoid a group of Nova Scotia fisher- 

 men, fat, sleek, moon-faced fellows, whose boats, loaded 

 with fish, are busy discharging their burden, pitching up 

 on deck half-dead cod, which are seized in a trice by 

 groups of "headers," "splitters," and "gutters." And 

 then the multitudinous smells, now coming fierce and 

 strong from deck and hold, anon gentle and spicy as the 

 cook turns the morning fry. Now the surface is 

 streaked with oily films, but these break away and dis- 

 close, six or eight fathoms below, a clear, sandy bottom, 

 strewed with fish offal, on which banks of sea-urchins 

 feed. If we look long and steadily enough, we shall see 

 swarms of beautiful, delicate, transparent jelly-fish, with 

 an occasional Clio, a winged mollusk, fully as pure and 

 beautiful, only more transparent. Suddenly the bottom 

 is obscured by an immense shoal of caplin, slowly swim- 

 ming just above the bottom. The rocks now reveal 

 green, sunny declivities ; little valleys, sprinkled with 

 flowers ; an arctic butterfly comes out to our vessel ; and 

 now we open upon a house; it is only a deserted fish- 

 house, but a cur, keeping up an incessant barking on the 

 other side of the hill, lets us know that there are human 

 beings, as well as canine, not far off. If we may believe 

 it, there is a small, stunted, homely, Quebec cow feeding 

 on the side of the hill. Here was a clear case of unnat- 

 ural selection. The scenic features of this coast do not 

 demand a cow to grace the foreground. Her nautical 

 owner informs us, in sturdy Labradorian dialect, that 

 she had been brought up this spring. " I made her fast 

 to her moorings, and there let her bide to eat the grass." 

 Her husband had broken loose from his moorings, and 

 was emulating the roar of the waves on the " land-wash." 



