Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the Hawk, 1859 | Page 8

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case did not satisfy him. This was told us before the service, and when,
in the service, he was asked, as the Prayer-book directs, "By whom was
this child baptized?" he answered, "By one Joseph Bird, and a fine
reader he was." This Bird, who on account of his fine readings, had
been employed to baptise many children in the bay, was a servant in a
fisherman's family.
We had two services, as usual, on board; four children were received
into the Church, and one couple married. This couple had followed us
from Bear Cove; they had before been united by a fisherman, had six
children, and were expecting shortly a seventh. The man was he who, at
Bear Cove, as before mentioned, had himself married a couple; and his
wife was the person who had baptized the children. Whether the couple
for whom he had officiated were "very well married," as to the service,
must be "very doubtful." Either he wished to be more perfect, or he was
doubtful about his own case; whatever was his reason, he very
cheerfully paid the fee, twenty shillings. He inquired also whether he
ought to be christened, having been baptized only by a fisherman,
though, as he said, with godfathers and a godmother. Here was
confusion worse confounded; and shame covered my face, while I
endeavoured to satisfy him and myself on these complicated points.
The poor man was evidently in earnest, and I gladly did all in my
power to relieve his mind, and place him and his in a more satisfactory
state. But how sad that one who had baptized and married others,
should himself apply to be baptized and married, being now the father
of six children! The wife appeared to be the general chronicler of all
events in the neighbourhood, and was looked up to as a kind of
prophetess. After the Evening Service, I went on shore to visit the
house which the man Osmond had built himself, and made comfortable
for summer and winter: there being abundance of wood for ceiling, &c.,
and birch-rind to cover the seams. He showed his gardens, full of
flourishing potatoes, where the disease had never yet reached. The

vegetation is very luxuriant, and there is plenty of pasture for cows. He
could at any time, he said, kill a deer, and had killed upwards of two
hundred! and as his neighbours in the bay all supply themselves with
the same food, the park must be supposed to be pretty large, and well
stocked. In the winter he kills foxes and martens for their skins, wild
fowls of various sorts for food. Fuel is superabundant. The water
produces fish,--salmon, herring, and mackerel; the ice brings the seals.
Osmond acknowledges that it was "very easy to get a living," and
wanted only the minister to be more than contented. His nearest
neighbours (at Lobster Harbour) are Roman Catholics, and with these
he lives on very good terms. "There was never a thee, or a thou, passed
between them." Such is Joseph Osmond, sole occupier of Seal Cove, in
White Bay, and such his condition, physical, social, and religious. It
should be added that not one person in the settlement can read. He
complains much of the French cutting spars and other sticks, besides
what they require for their use on shore; and yet more, of their leaving
many fires in the woods, by which the whole neighbourhood is
endangered. He has often gone to put out the fires thus carelessly left,
by which thousands of acres of wood might be destroyed, and the
inhabitants driven from their homes.
Monday, July 18th. At Seal Cove.--This was our first day of delay since
coming into the Bay. A strong north-east wind with a heavy lop, made
it useless to attempt to proceed. In the afternoon all the people on shore
came to our service, and I explained "the articles of our Belief, the Ten
Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer." In the evening, Mr. Tucker
went on shore to teach the younger ones to repeat the Lord's Prayer and
the creed, more perfectly; and I, with the rest of my party, rowed up
"the Southern Arm," an indraft of about three miles, winding among the
most picturesque mountains I ever saw. They rise almost
perpendicularly from the water, are clothed with wood from the base to
the summit, and are of most varied shape and outline. They surpass in
grandeur the banks of the Wye, and are more thickly clothed with wood,
in which, the beech, and birch, and maple, have almost displaced the
spruce, and no green could be more fresh and delicate. These
mountains are on each side of the Arm, to its extremity, which is nearly
closed by a round, or conical