Bowdoin Boys in Labrador | Page 5

kicking up a nasty
sea very soon. We double reefed the mainsail reefed the foresail and
hauled the flying jib down. About 8 P.M. we laid to with the jib hauled
down, on the starboard tack. The wind had backed to the east about
four points and was blowing a gale. About 12 M. it suddenly dropped, a
flat calm, leaving a tremendous sea running from the southeast,
combined with a smaller one from the east. Our motions, jumps, rolls
and pitches, can be better imagined than described. It seemed at times
that our bow and our stern were where the mastheads usually are, and
our rails were frequently rolled under.
Rice and Hunt stood one watch, Cary and I the second, and here Rice,
though a good sailor and an experienced yachtsman, finally succumbed.
We hauled everything down with infinite difficulty, owing to the
violent motion, and made it fast, then let her roll and pitch to her heart's
content. A sorrier looking place than our wardroom, and a sicker set of
fellows it would be hard to find. The dishes had some play in the racks,
and kept up an infernal racket that I tried in every way to stop and
could not. To cap all, the wind came off a gale northwest about 4 A.M.,
and made yet another sea. As soon as possible we set a double-reefed
foresail, and then I turned in. When I turned out at noon we had made
Newfoundland and set a whole foresail, jib and one reef out of the
mainsail. We were becalmed, but found excellent fishing, so did not
care. The sea had gone down and we began to enjoy the Norway-like
rugged coast of Newfoundland. The mountains come right down to the
water, and are about 1,400 feet high, by our measurement, using
angular altitude by sextant and base line, our distance off shore as
shown by our observation for latitude and longitude.
There are many deep, narrow-mouthed coves and harbors, a good
number of islands and points making a most magnificent coast line. In
many cases 50 or 75 fathoms are found right under the shore. Great
patches of snow, miles in extent, cover the mountain sides. Great
brown patches, which the professor thinks are washings from the fine
examples of erosion, but which look to me like patches of brown grass
as we see in Penobscot Bay on the islands, vary with what is apparently
a scrubby evergreen growth and bald, bare rocks. As we are about 18
miles off, the blue haze over all makes an enlarged, roughened and

much more deeply indented Camden mountain coast line. The bays are
in some cases so deep that we can look into narrow entrances and see
between great cliffs, only a few miles apart, a water horizon on the
other side. We wished very much to get in towards the shore, but the
calm and very strong westerly current, about 1-1/2 knots, prevented.
While enjoying the calm in pleasant contrast to our late shaking up, it
will be well to introduce the members of the party whom Bowdoin has
thought worthy to bear her name into regions seldom vexed by a
college yell, and to whom she has entrusted the high duties of scientific
investigation, in which, since the days of Professor Cleaveland, she has
kept a worthy place.
[Members of the Expedition] In command is Prof. Leslie A. Lee, of the
Biological Department of Bowdoin. With a life-long experience in all
branches of natural history, the experience which a year in charge of
the scientific staff of the U.S. Fish Commission Steamer "Albatross" in
a voyage from Washington around Cape Horn to Alaska, and an
intimate connection with the Commission of many year's standing, and
the training that scholarly habits, platform lecturing and collegic
instruction have given him, you see a man still young, for he was
graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1872, and equal to all the
fatigues that out-of-door, raw-material, scientific work demands.
The rest of the party have yet to prove their mettle, and of them but
little can now be said. Dr. Parker, who, with the Professor, captain and
mate, occupies the cabin proper, is an '86 man, cut out for a physician
and thoroughly prepared to fulfil all the functions of a medical staff,
from administering quinine to repairing broken limbs.
Cary of '87, who is even now planning for his struggle with the
difficulties on the way to the Grand Falls, has had the most experience
in work of the sort the expedition hopes to do, save the Professor and
Cole. Logging and hunting in the Maine forests in the vicinity of his
home in Machias, and fishing on the Georges from Cape Ann smacks,
have fitted him physically, as