Voyage of The Paper Canoe | Page 6

every side.
This wide inlet into the gulf may be called the middle portal, for at the
northern end of Newfoundland, between the great island and the coast
of Labrador, another entrance exists, which is known as the Straits of
Belle Isle, and is sometimes called "the shorter passage from England."
Still to the south of the middle entrance is another and a very narrow
one, known as the Gut of Canso, which separates the island of Cape
Breton from Nova Scotia. Through this contracted thoroughfare the
tides run with great force.
One hundred years ago, as the seaman approached the dangerous
entrance of St. Paul, now brightened at night by its light-towers, his
heart was cheered by the sight of immense flocks of a peculiar sea-fowl,

now extinct. When he saw upon the water the Great Auk (Alca
impennis), which he ignorantly called "a pengwin," he knew that land
was near at hand, for while he met other species far out upon the broad
Atlantic, the Great Auk, his "pengwin," kept near the coast. Not only
was this now extinct bird his indicator of proximity to the land, but so
strange were its habits, and so innocent was its nature, that it permitted
itself to be captured by boat-loads; and thus were the ships re-victualled
at little cost or trouble. Without any market-value a century ago, the
Great Auk now, as a stuffed skin, represents a value of fifteen hundred
dollars in gold. There are but seventy-two specimens of this bird in the
museums of Europe and America, besides a few skeletons, and
sixty-five of its eggs. It was called in ancient days Gare-fowl, and was
the Goiful of the Icelander.
Captain Whitbourne, who wrote in the reign of James the First,
quaintly said: "These Pengwins are as bigge as Geese, and flye not, for
they have but a little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely upon a
certain flat island that men drive them from thence upon a board into
their boats by hundreds at a time, as if God had made the innocency of
so poor a creature to become such an admerable instrument for the
sustenation of man."
In a copy of the English Pilot, "fourth book," published in 1761, which
I presented to the library of the United States Coast Survey, is found
this early description of this now extinct American bird: "They never
go beyond the bank [Newfoundland] as others do, for they are always
on it, or in it, several of them together, sometimes more but never less
than two together. They are large fowls, about the size a goose, a
coal-black head and back, with a white belly and a milk-white spot
under one of their eyes, which nature has ordered to be under their right
eye."
Thus has the greed of the sailor and pothunter swept from the face of
the earth an old pilot -- a trusty aid to navigation. Now the light-house,
the fog-gun, and the improved chart have taken the place of the extinct
auk as aids to navigation, and the sailor of to-day sees the bright flashes
of St. Paul's lights when nearly twenty miles at sea. Having passed the

little isle, the ship enters the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, and passes the
Magdalen Islands, shaping its course as wind and weather permit
towards the dreaded, rocky coast of Anticosti. From the entrance of the
gulf to the island of Anticosti the course to be followed is northwesterly
about one hundred and thirty-five nautical miles. The island which
divides an upper arm of the gulf into two wide channels is one hundred
and twenty-three miles long, and from ten to thirty miles wide. Across
the entrance of this great arm, or estuary, from the high cape of Gaspe
on the southern shore of the mainland to Anticosti in the narrowest
place, is a distance of about forty miles, and is called the South
Channel. From the north side of the island and near its west end to the
coast of Labrador the North Channel is fifteen miles wide. The passage
from St. Paul to Anticosti is at times dangerous. Here is an area of
strong currents, tempestuous winds, and dense fogs. When the wind is
fair for an upward run, it is the wind which usually brings misty
weather. Then, from the icy regions of the Arctic circle, from the Land
of Desolation, come floating through the Straits of Belle Isle the
dangerous bergs and ice-fields. Early in the spring these ice rafts are
covered with colonies of seals which resort to them for the purpose of
giving birth to their young. On these icy cradles, rocked by the restless
waves, tens of thousands of young seals are nursed for a few days; then,
answering the loud