THE SEAL FISHERY. 121 



mer's stay on the coast. Ashore, under the dark, beet- 

 ling crag, lay the fishing-hamlet of Henley Harbor. 

 The houses were small and mean, the flat roof of some 

 covered with turf, the grass or moss growing pn them, 

 while the fish-houses and "stages" were of the meanest 

 description. 



After coming to anchor we were boarded by the capv- 

 tain of one of the sealers, a brigantine of perhaps 140 tons 

 burden, lately in from Carbonear in Conception Bay. 

 Her bows and also her sides were planked and heavily 

 ironed to resist the ice in the spring sealing in the Gulf. 

 The captain had, immediately after discharging his cargo 

 of sealskins and blubber — and the smells rising up 

 through the hold and companion-way proved the fact ad 

 nauseam — only delayed long enough in port to put in 

 130 bushels of salt, and then cleared for the Labrador 

 coast without stopping to strip off the outer planking. 

 The captain was an intelligent, stalwart, English-born 

 man only twenty years old, who had been to sea for six 

 years. He was frank and communicative, and in , half 

 an hour gave, us some insight into the mysteries of fish- 

 ing and sealing. He had inherited the business, his fa- 

 ther having been a sealer for fifty years. He owned 

 the vessel and had brought along a cook ; he took, pas- 

 sage free, eleven families, numbering 130 souls, men, 

 women, and children, with goats, dogs, cats, and provi- 

 sions for the whole party, and was to land them at some 

 harbor on the coast north of the Strait, where they 

 might spend the fishing season in their rude summer 

 houses, called "tilts." 



During the voyage up the women are stowed aft and 

 in the hold, and in a storm — and when are there two 



