Notes of a Voyage to St. Augustine, Labrador 1882

Read before the Geographical Society, 14 March 1881

Some years are past since I visited St. Augustine, on the coast of Labrador. I would recall for a few moments the incidents of this voyage, while their memory is yet clear and unfaded. I am desirous of giving a brief coherence to these fleeting reminiscences before they pass away and perish amid the confused and indistinguishable shapes and shadows of the past.

It was during the summer of 1875 that I was invited to form one of a party about to explore for minerals in the Bay of St. Augustine and at certain points along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The very name of Labrador possessed a strong and indefinable power of attraction. A land of mist and storms, of darkness and winter, and shipwreck; the “helluland” of the old Northern Saga; the land where Leif Eirekson [sic], called by Humboldt, “the discoverer of America,” first set foot more than eight centuries ago; the first spot in the Western Hemisphere to receive the visit of a European voyager. I accepted the proposal without hesitation.

On Thursday, the 17th of June, an hour before sunset, the weather being clear and fine, with a light northwesterly breeze, our schooner, the Philomène, Zephirin Gagnon, master, cast loose from her moorings at Renaud’s wharf, and floated slowly out into the stream, at the mouth of the River St. Charles. Comparatively few travellers have left Quebec by water on this its northern side. The immense sweep of buildings from the Laval grounds westward to the old city wall, and thence onward through the extensive suburbs, the densely crowded houses, filling the entire slope of the land from the ridge downwards, the bright metallic roofs reflecting the last rays of the setting sun, all rose up before us as some grand amphitheatral show, in which the huge bulk of the Laval University above, the Custom House below, and the St. John’s Church far to the right, stood predominantly conspicuous.

With a fair wind, yet scarcely strong enough to raise more than a ripple on the water, we floated silently out into the broad expanse, passing the Bay of Beauport, the south point of Orleans, the pleasant shore of Beauport and, half veiled in the darkness of night, the massive promontory of St. Joachim.

Of the early part of our voyage, passing over well-known ground, I shall say but little. Touching at Baie St. Paul on the following morning, we had to walk over nearly two miles of sand before reaching the village, it being then low water. Notable here, are the numerous stone tenements, whose walls are rent and fractured by earthquakes. Baie St. Paul has suffered much from this cause,¹ and it has been remarked that whenever slight shocks of earthquake have occurred elsewhere, they have been felt here with tenfold severity. In the damp glades behind the village I was struck with the number of low equiseta or horse-tail plants, with their grooved stems and bamboo-like aspect. I looked with interest on these degenerate descendants of those tall trees that in the coal age attained a height of thirty or forty feet.² Leaving there on Saturday, we anchored with a head wind and mid a storm of rain and hail, at Pointe aux Oies.³ On Sunday, the 20th, we set sail with a northeast wind, which shifted at 10 a.m. to the southwest, and we dashed on at a rapid pace, with the sails wing-and-wing. A fine landscape extended to the north, with patches of snow, however, still visible on the mountains. At 4:30 we passed the mouth of the Saguenay, and after a day made up of breezy sunshine and ever-changing scenery, the evening closed with a falling wind and indications of fog.

In the silence of that summer midnight we drifted through those broad portals, old as creation itself, which at the Point de Monts, open as it were, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence.⁴ Here the river, expanding to more than double its width, loses its name, and becomes an arm or estuary of the sea. In the morning we were wrapt in mist. At 5 p.m. we first caught a glimpse of land—the Seven Islands to the left. Shoals of porpoises were rolling around us, and three whales were blowing in the distance. We seemed to have all at once emerged from a land-bound river and to have come, unawares, on the great deep itself, shoreless and illimitable. All appeared vast and spacious. The land visible seemed in the boundless plain of waters, as mere points on the horizon. At 6 p.m., when opposite La Boule Island, a squall struck the schooner from the northwest.⁵ I was lying in my berth at the time, and found myself, to my surprise, suddenly deposited on the floor, while the books on the shelf above me fell rattling by my side. For a few moments all was confusion, uproar, and trampling of feet. The schooner was nearly on her beam ends. The jib was split from top to bottom. Both the large sails were let down with a run, and for some time the little craft, having righted, lay under bare poles, pitching and rolling in the boiling surge. It was soon over. At about dark, the repairs being made, we again hoisted sail, and started with a southwest wind. On the following day, we basked in a dead calm of hazy sunshine, off the Maniton [sic], watching the seals and ducks as they floated past. On our way we met a school of harp seals, swimming in regular order arranged in the form of a hollow square. A grampus⁶ showed himself: several fishing boats appeared. The Perrequet Islands, the scene of so many shipwrecks, were covered with wild fowl.⁷ At noon we were anchored at Mingan.⁸ We lost no time in visiting the post, and its surroundings, and admired the magnificent fox skins in the store, some of them silver-grey and of great value, worth from $60 to $80 each. The next day brought us to Esquimault Point, which we reached shortly after noon. We found here a large village containing about a thousand souls, several two-story houses, the streets sandy and dreadfully fatiguing to get through. We visited Mr. LeGros, one of the chief commercants, at whose residence we found books, music, and all the etceteras of civilization. Esquimault Point may be regarded as the last considerable outpost of civilized life on the North Shore. Being detained here a few days, we visited the island opposite, Ile du Havre, made up of limestones and sand stones of the Potsdam period. The quantity of living whelks on its shores is remarkable. We found a small primrose, the Primula farinosa or bird’s-eye primrose; also, a handsome shrub with pinkish compound flower, the Rhodora canadensis,⁹ very abundant. In rear of the village the Ledum, or Labrador Tea,¹⁰ is every where. In the afternoon of the third day, 26 June, a general discharge of musketry and hoisting of flags announced the arrival, from the east, of Bishop Langevin,¹¹ on his episcopal tour. The whole village seemed astir; and the Acadians, who compose the greater part of the population, fell on their knees in the highways whenever the bishop passed: a people evidently of sincere and simple piety, but not poetic in aspect—tall, gaunt, and ungainly, with long striped dresses of a peculiar and patriarchal type. The earliest of these Acadians arrived here in 1857, under the guidance of Ferman Boudreault, from the Magdalen Islands.¹² They now number sixty families and have twelve schooners for fishing. Their language has a foreign sound: and some of the words are peculiar. An ox is called atlage, and a fence, bouchure. On Tuesday, the 29th June, we left the Point, and at night were off Natashquan, the next largest Acadian colony, having forty families, with three fishing schooners. Off Cape Whittle we saw, next day, two enormous icebergs stranded on the shore, one shaped like a tent, the other tri-cuspid. We passed Little Mecatina Island at 4 p.m., and shortly afterwards came to Bull Head Harbour, a sort of sheltered creek between two islands.¹³ Here we anchored and visited Mr. Manger to obtain information. On the other side of the Island (St. Anthony’s) we saw and inspected the metalliferous veins. The rock here is Lower Laurentian, the oldest metamorphic, quite distinguishable from the Upper Laurentian of St. Paul’s Bay. The flora was represented by mulberries, raspberries, Labrador tea, mosses, and lichens. These flat beds of grey rock reminded one of the Helluland, or land of broad flat stones, of the old Saga of Leif Eirekson [sic]. No epithet could be more descriptive. The shoreline is wet with perpetual spray. On the worn edges of these islands the heavy surges of the sea beat unceasingly, with a dull and mournful sound. We seemed to hear the “planctus illisae rupibus undae” which Lucan speaks of, though the “sylvarum sonus” was certainly wanting.¹⁴ As to the fauna of the vicinity, Mr. William Canty, our guide, told us that sharks had been seen off St. Augustine, and that a squid, or devil-fish, having arms twenty-two feet long and a body of fourteen feet, had seized hold of a boat in the offing.¹⁵ Having completed our search, and looked at some old blastings, which contained nothing but a few specks of galena, we left on the 3rd July, sailing with a fresh breeze through an archipelago of islands. The sun shone, the water flashed and sparkled, seagulls flew around, a couple of icebergs loomed up in front, and on our left, close at hand, a fleet of small fishing boats, with red sails, flitted about like winged insects. This redness is produced by staining the sails with a decoction of birch bark or juniper, or sometimes with “goudron” or tar. Ere sunset we dropped anchor in Mutton Bay, a charming land-locked little harbour, with a score of schooners therein, chiefly from Newfoundland. The next day being Sunday, we attended divine service at the house of Mr. Hepburne, the Anglican missionary. He himself being absent at Natashquan, Mr. Ingram, an English fisherman, read the lessons, the two Misses Hepburne officiated at the harmonium, forty or fifty were present, fishermen and their families, all devout and attentive. A flag was hoisted at the flagstaff near the house—the red cross of St. George—to announce the hour of service.¹⁶ During the afternoon we ascended a lofty hill in the vicinity, some five or six hundred feet high, from whence the opposite coast of Newfoundland was dimly visible. The hills that enclose the Bay are all moutonnées or rounded on top: their faces are seamed with deep crevices or fissures, the result probably of geologic crystallization. Two days afterwards, our exploration being completed, we resumed our route: the wind being fair, and several other schooners going down to St. Augustine’s at the same time, whose course we wished to follow in taking the Sandy Island channel. At 11 a.m., we passed the south point of Grand Mecatina Island, and noticed the numerous boats along the shore, engaged in the search for the eggs of seafowl. At 11:40 we passed Baie Rouge with a chapel visible; then the Bay of LaTabatière; after which the rugged sierra edge of a continuous mountain range was visible to the north. Wild duck and other game flew past constantly: we kept up a running fire from the schooner, but not always with success. After a pleasant run we anchored to the south of Sandy Island at about 4 p.m. From fishermen coming with salmon, we secured two sixteen-pounders for half a dollar each. There is here quite an archipelago of islands, behind which to the northwest is the discharge of the St. Augustine River. In this delightful bay, with its innumerable islets, we remained many days, exploring the various metalliferous veins chiefly in Sandy Island and Isle à l’Eau Salée. We found the land in the larger islands dreadfully rough and broken—bare rock, or covered in many places with a matting of dwarf juniper which caught the foot like a mat of hooks or claws. Often deep holes were concealed by this matting, into which the unwary pedestrian was plunged unawares. On the high land the wind was generally blowing so strong that it was scarce possible to stand against it. I may note that during our stay the wind rose every day, with periodic regularity, fresh from the west at about 10 a.m. At 4 p.m. it was at its strongest; and at sunset it fell almost to a calm. The days were never warm, though the sun ranged high over our heads. A perpetual mist seemed to keep half his rays from reaching us.

On one occasion when returning to the schooner from our day’s work, shortly after sunset, such is the number of these islands and their resemblance to each other, that we lost our way, though the night was clear and starlit. We rowed hither and thither, from one channel to another, till a gun fired from the schooner relieved our perplexity. Often, during the quietude of those long summer afternoons, amid the profound solitude of these unpeopled wastes, where no church-bell has ever sounded, and no fane for Christian worship has arisen, have I climbed to the summit of some island rock, and there, resting beneath the shelter of a mossy stone, and looking far inland, I have lost myself in a reverie of conjectures as to the past of this strange mysterious land. These stony plains, geologically the oldest on the continent which stretch all round Hudson’s Bay on the south, were above water when all besides was submerged. Who can tell the countless ages that have passed since they rose above the primal sea. They are older than all things, older than light itself: for light means life, and, if we except the enigmatic “eozoon,”¹⁷ these rocks are azoic, are lifeless.¹⁸ In the beginning was darkness on the earth, and then long ages of troubled gloom. The atmosphere, charged with vapours, refused to admit the sunlight. Upon this heated surface, and in this darkness made visible, organic life was not possible. None lived, save One alone; and it was at His command that the dry land appeared, and these, the first-born of creation, rose from the abyss. Since then the world has grown old, the vast panorama of living nature has been disclosed, successive generations of men have come and gone, as the autumn leaves that perish, deluge and earthquake have changed the face of the earth, the rains and storms of unnumbered winters have descended, all has changed and died and has been renewed, and these old rocks have lasted on through all, always the same, always unchanged—like the great sea itself, a type and mirror of their immutable Author.

This way passed Leif, the son of Eirek [sic], when he discovered America.¹⁹ The Codex Flateiensis, a MS. of remarkable beauty, long preserved at Flatö in Iceland, and bearing its own date, 1387, includes under the Saga of Olaf Fryggvesson, the Sagas of Eric the Red and of Leif his son, the discoverers of Greenland and of Vinland.²⁰ It is told how Leif set out from Greenland in the year 1000; how he came first to the land which Biorn Heriulfson in 986 sailing from Iceland, and seeking Greenland, had seen last; how he landed, found no grass but vast icy mountains in the interior, and between them and the shore a plain of flat stones, and the Saga says, “it appeared to them a country of no advantages:” from these flat stones (hella) he called it Helluland, a land of naked rocks. No description of the Labrador Coast could be more accurate than this given by Leif. The shores are, for the most part, flat, stony, and treeless. The mountains rise in snowy ridges behind. This was the land which Biorn had seen but would not stay to land at. How did Biorn describe it? He speaks of it as a land high and covered with glaciers; and coasting along it they saw it was an island: that is, they came to that large inlet of the sea, thirty miles in breadth, known as Esquimaux Bay, or Hamilton Inlet. Sailing thence with a southwest wind, in four days Biorn reached Heriulfsness, in Greenland, his father’s abode. The high land which he saw was probably the Mealy Mountains or the lofty plateau to the southeast. The Mealy Range is first perceived about one hundred miles south of Esquimaux Bay, it runs nearly parallel to the coast, and is said by Cartwright and the Moravian missionaries to be always covered with snow. The memory of these adventurous Norsemen has not perished on the continent. To this day, as we are informed by Mr. Robertson, long a resident all the coast, the Esquimaux preserve a tradition that these Norsemen were a gigantic race, of great strength, very fierce, and delighting to kill people, and would not themselves be killed by either dart or arrow, which rebound from their breasts as from a rock. They suppose these giants still to exist, but very far north. After that notable pestilence, the black death, in the middle of the fourteenth century, their influence waned. The shadow of these mighty sons of Thor had scarce passed from the land when the Basques appeared—the Basques, the living embodiment of all that is daring or romantic in maritime discovery. Cabot in his first voyage found a Basque vessel on the coast of Newfoundland, and the Basques are always mentioned as having been met with in the early voyages of the time.²¹ During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they held the whaling trade of Europe almost exclusively in their hands. All along the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, the coasts of Labrador, and the shores adjacent, they have left memorials of their existence, footprints of their coming, in innumerable myths, legends and names of localities. Then the Bretons of France seem to have assumed the predominance. Early in the sixteenth century the town of Brest, now called Bradore, was founded in the Strait of Belle Isle, in the interest of the fishing trade. It became the centre of French dominion in these parts. Before the close of the century it had grown to be the chief town of New France and the residence of the Governor. The ruins and terraces of the old town yet remain visible on the iron-bound coast, to shew how the vast and expansive trading energies of the time set at naught alike the horrors of a desert shore and the perils of a dark and stormy sea.

It was pleasant to ruminate of these matters, or to talk them over with the co-mates of my voyage—Mr. Wilkens, a graduate of McGill in applied science, and Mr. W. Scott, a most intelligent officer of the H. B. Company. These two with myself and my son formed the whole of the party.²²

But now the time came when we must think of our departure. Our last day’s work was done, and it was with a feeling, almost of regret, that we entered our boat on the last homeward trip, from the inner channel to the schooner. The distance was some five miles, and each took his place in silence as he looked round for the last time on the well-known features of the haunts which daily usage had made familiar. Silently, save for the measured beat of the oars, we swept slowly past the grand and imposing show of the multitudinous capes and headlands. The night was resplendent. The sky clear and starlit. The moon descending in the west cast a long train of brilliant scintillations on the level water before us. The very air seemed soft and balmy. One steep tall rock rose up beside us, its head hid in mist, such as that, one might fancy, on which the great protagonist of the Athenian Drama,²³ fettered yet uncomplaining, had ennobled and sanctified suffering. Again, we passed the “island of echoes,” where so many times we had tested the manifold reverberations of sound. It was all silent now. But, as it stood there alone, half seen, half hid in vapour, it seemed to suggest that other “island rock” in the far east, whose echoes of old were roused by the war-song of the Greeks on the morning of Salamis.²⁴ It was a delicious hour of dreaminess. A large seal, the only living thing we saw, seized perhaps with a fit of very excusable curiosity, followed us till we reached the schooner. Once arrived there, we were not ashamed to exchange imagination and romance for a substantial reality in the shape of a very solid repast, and turned in, feeling at peace with ourselves and with all mankind.

On the following morning we hoisted sail and prepared for the homeward voyage. Having gained the offing, I was struck with the effect of distance on the stern and rugged scenery of the coast. The eye is deceived by the green moss and lichens which cover the shore, and one could easily fancy it is a cleared and cultivated country rather than a mass of barren rocks. Perhaps it was in this way, if the story be true as told by Joachim Lelewel, that Gaspard Cortereal, the Portuguese navigator, having, in 1500, coasted the Gulf of St. Lawrence, eastward to the straits, called the land to the north TERRA DE LABRADOR, “terre de laboureur,” “des agriculteuls,” the cultivator’s land.²⁵ However this be, it appears that the indistinctness of the facts has necessitated a mythus and that we are called on to believe in a mythical personage, one Labrador, a Basque whaler of the 15th century, from whom the country took its name. Be this as it may, it is impossible not to believe that a gradual refrigeration of climate is now going on in all northern lands. Perhaps the earth is now entering on another glacial period. The ice is increasing, the growth of forest trees is retreating southward. In Newfoundland and the Saguenay district the traces of a gigantic forest flora are still visible. Many of these subarctic lands which are now hopelessly sterile, may have been quite cultivable four or five centuries ago. During the last few years the ice has increased far towards the south; and between Greenland and the Arctic Sea colossal masses of ice have accumulated. On European coasts navigators now frequently find ice in latitudes where it never existed before during the summer months, and the cold prevailing upon the Scandinavian peninsula in recent summers seems due to the masses of ice which are floating in the region where the Gulf Stream bends towards these coasts. The unusual vicinity of this ice has rendered the climate of Iceland so cold that corn no longer ripens there, and the Icelanders, in fear of a coming famine and icy climate, are beginning to migrate to the western continent.

It were needless to recapitulate the events of our homeward voyage. A few scattered notes may suffice. At noon on the first day (15 July), fog coming on, we dropped anchors in a harbour just west of the Boule, our bowsprit almost touching the rock. The fog lightening a little we got as far as Téte à Baleine à l’Est (Mr. Cowes), where we remained. Just before getting in, a large whale rose ahead, nearly under the schooner’s bows. The captain, who was at the helm, mistook it for a rock, and put the tiller hard aport in extreme trepidation. On the evening of the next day, after a foggy morning, followed by a headwind, we got as far as Tabatière Bay, the residence of a son of the late well-known Mr. Samuel Robertson, who in his lifetime acquired large wealth by seal fishing.

Then followed a spell of heavy weather with frequent headwinds. The swell of the sea was tremendous. On the 22nd July at 1 a.m. we passed Natashquan. It was pitch dark at the time: I was on deck but could see nothing. The captain, however, who was on the lookout exclaimed, with true professional instinct, “Nous avons passé Natashquan—la mer est changee!”²⁶ He explained to me that off the point there was always a heavy ripple and swell, which we had now passed.

In truth it was a dreary time along there, between Scylla and Charybdis—Labrador on the one hand and Anticosti on the other. I felt disposed to give prompt credit to the Acadian tradition, that God gave Labrador and Anticosti to Cain as a heritage, pronouncing on these lands, at the same time, a sentence of perpetual silence and desolation. The Indians called the island “Natiscoti,” the “country of wailing,” whence, by metathesis, the modern name Anticosti.²⁷ The schooner anchored at the west point for a few hours, and we looked with awe on the low and treacherous coast, the scene of so many shipwrecks. How many gallant hearts have here gone down in darkness amid the stifling waters, or, haply, have famished on the land, amid the agonies of protracted dissolution. All honour then, to the brain that has conceived, and to the energy that has carried through, that telegraphic system in the Gulf, for the protection and solace of the imperilled mariner.²⁸ It is a measure of magnificent philanthropy. Let us hope that the life of its author, who is also the founder of this Society, may be long and happily preserved.²⁹

Yet, side by side with the dangers and difficulties of Gulf navigation, have appeared from time to time, perhaps as their necessary outcome and complement, repeated acts of quiet and unobtrusive heroism. An episode in the life of an Anticosti lighthouse keeper may serve as an illustration and an example; and with this brief narrative my notes of travel may be fitly brought to a close.

In the autumn of 1869, the family of Edward Pope, keeper of the Ellis Bay lighthouse, was stricken down by typhoid fever, and, to add to his misfortunes, the revolving apparatus of his light broke. The Government steamer had gone. Pope had no means of communicating with the Marine Department at Quebec, or elsewhere. The light revolved, or flashed, as the technical phrase is, every minute and a half, and, if it flashed no more, it would probably be mistaken by passing vessels, in that region of fog, for the stationary light at the west point of the island, and thus lead to loss of life. Pope found that, with a little exertion, he could turn it and make it flash, and at once determined to take the place of the automatic gear. Accordingly this humble hero sat in the turret, with his watch by his side, turning the light regularly at the allotted time every night, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., from the middle of August until the first of December, and from the first of April until the end of June, when the Government steamer came to his relief with a new apparatus. All through the first season Pope’s daughter and grandchildren were ill unto death, with nobody save him to nurse them. He waited on them tenderly during the day, but as night fell on the iron-bound coast he hastened to his vigil in the turret, steeling his heart against their plaints, and doing his duty to his employers and to humanity at large with unflinching devotion. In the second season, his daughter, who had lived through the fever, took turns with him in the light-room. This man may have saved a thousand lives. He died in 1872, his deed unchronicled, his life unknown; yet he was a true hero, and worthy to take a place in that Valhalla of lofty spirits whose highest ambition has been that of doing good to their fellowmen.

E.T.F.

Quebec, 14 March 1881