1885] Life and Nature in Southern Labrador. 269 
LIFE AND NATURE IN SOUTHERN LABRADOR. 
BY A. S, PACKARD. 
HE following recollections of our student days are offered 
with the suggestion that our college boys of the present day 
might spend to advantage the long summer vacation in cruising 
on our northern coasts, and combine in agreeable proportions 
science and travel. 
In the summer of 1860, while a student in Bowdoin College, I 
joined the Williams College expedition to Labrador and Green- 
land under the charge of Professor P. A. Chadbourne. June 
27th found us on board the Nautilus, a staunch schooner of about 
140 tons, commanded by Capt. Randlett. Soon after five o’clock 
of a bright fresh morning our vessel cast off from the wharf at 
Thomaston, Me. The Thomaston band played a lively air, a 
clergyman made a parting address, calling down the blessings of 
heaven upon the argonauts; our Nestor replied, the students 
cheering for the citizens of Thomaston and the band, and with a 
favoring north-west wind the Nautilus, gliding down the current” 
of the St. George’s river, a deep fiord, in a couple of hours 
reached the open sea. 
Our course lay inside of Monhegan, with its high, bold sea 
wall. Passing on, the Camden hills recede, and we endeavor with 
the glass to make out the White mountains, said by some to have 
been seen by Weymouth from inside of Monhegan. The ocean 
swell not being conducive to historical controversy, we turn to 
watch the Mother Carey’s chickens and the grampus as well as the 
fin-back whales sporting in the waves. 
By the next morning we had sailed 190 miles from Thomaston, 
past Cape Sable, and our north-west wind still attending, we bowl 
along, through schools of porpoise, while two or three whales 
pass within a few fathoms of our vessel, showing their huge 
whitish backs. The next day our seven-knot breeze does not fail 
us, and takes us by the 30th into a region of light winds and 
calms off the Gut of Canso. 
July 1st we sail along Cape Breton island, its red shores glis- 
tening in the noon-day sun and then mantled with purple as the 
sun goes down over Louisbourg. As darkness sets in the lights of 
Sidney appear. The next morning's sun rose on Cape Ray, 
around which we beat, passing within a mile of Channels, a fish- 
