Down North and Up Along 
cruel shore from Insfonish to the harbour that 
Parson Gibbons crept on hands and knees when 
the road was totally impassable, one memorable 
Christmas day of long ago, and all to bring the 
cheer of his presence to the fisher-folk of 
Neils Harbour. Perhaps he feared that unless 
the Christmas-tide could light up the world 
for them a little, they would not have cour- 
age to live through the winter, and one won- 
ders how they do manage it. It is so remote 
and forbidding in summer that one shudders 
to imagine what it must be through the long 
icy winter. 
Yet it is, perhaps, the most picturesque 
settlement on the whole coast. There is a 
narrow space of lowland near the water, with a 
hill rising sharply behind it. 
A point of land ending in a bluff on the sea- 
side holds back the waves and forms a cove 
suited to the needs of the fishing-boats ; and 
around the shore of this cove is a picturesque 
jumble of low fish-huts, flakes, boats in all 
stages of decomposition as well as those in full 
vigour of usefulness, tar, chains, evidences of 
fish everywhere. The high grass-grown bluff 
that abuts out into the water beyond all this, is 
268 
