Voyage of The Paper Canoe | Page 7

calls of their mothers, they accompany them into
the briny deep, there to follow the promptings of their instincts. The
loud roarings of the old seals on these ice rafts can be heard in a quiet
night for several miles, and strike terror into the hearts of the
superstitious sailor who is ignorant of the origin of the tumult.
Frequently dense fogs cover the water, and while slowly moving along,
guided only by the needle, a warning sound alarms the watchful master.
Through the heavy mists comes the roar of breaking waters. He listens.
The dull, swashy noise of waves meeting with resistance is now plainly
heard. The atmosphere becomes suddenly chilled: it is the breath of the
iceberg!
Then the shrill cry of "All hands on deck!" startles the watch below
from the bunks. Anxiously now does the whole ship's company lean
upon the weather-rail and peer out into the thick air with an earnestness

born of terror. "Surely," says the master to his mate, "I am past the
Magdalens, and still far from Anticosti, yet we have breakers; which
way can we turn?" The riddle solves itself; for out of the gloom come
whitened walls, beautiful but terrible to behold.
Those terror-stricken sailors watch the slowly moving berg as it drifts
past their vessel, fearing that their own ship will be drawn towards it
from the peculiar power of attraction they believe the iceberg to possess.
And as they watch, against the icy base of the mountain in the sea the
waves beat and break as if expending their forces upon a rocky shore.
Down the furrowed sides of the disintegrating berg streamlets trickle,
and miniature cascades leap, mingling their waters with the briny sea.
The intruder slowly drifts out of sight, disappearing in the gloom, while
the sailor thanks his lucky stars that he has rid himself of another
danger. The ill-omened Anticosti, the graveyard of many seamen, is yet
to he passed. The ship skirts along its southern shore, a coast destitute
of bays or harbors of any kind, rock-bound and inhospitable.
Wrecks of vessels strew the rocky shores, and four light-houses warn
the mariner of danger. Once past the island the ship is well within the
estuary of the gulf into which the St. Lawrence River flows,
contributing the waters of the great lakes of the continent to the sea. As
the north coast is approached the superstitious sailor is again alarmed if
perchance, the compass-needle shows sympathy with some disturbing
element, the cause of which he believes to exist in the mountains which
rise along the shore. He repeats the stories of ancient skippers, of
vessels having been lured out of their course by the deviation of the
guiding-needle, which succumbed to the potent influence exerted in
those hills of iron ore; heeding not the fact that the disturbing agent is
the iron on board of his own ship, and not the magnetic oxide of the
distant mines.
The ship being now within the estuary of the St. Lawrence River, must
encounter many risks before she reaches the true mouth of the river, at
the Bic Islands.
The shores along this arm of the gulf are wild and sombre. Rocky
precipices frown upon the swift tidal current that rushes past their bases.

A few small settlements of fishermen and pilots, like Metis, Father
Point, and Rimousky, are discovered at long intervals along the coast.
In these St. Lawrence hamlets, and throughout Lower Canada, a patois
is spoken which is unintelligible to the Londoner or Parisian; and these
villagers, the descendants of the French colonists, may be said to be a
people destitute of a written language, and strangers to a literature.
While holding a commission from Francis the First, king of France,
Jacques Cartier discovered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, during his first
voyage of exploration in the new world. He entered the gulf on St.
Lawrence's day, in the spring of 1534, and named it in honor of the
event. Cartier explored no farther to the west than about the mouth of
the estuary which is divided by the island of Anticosti. It was during his
second voyage, in the following year, that he discovered and explored
the great river. Of the desolate shores of Labrador, on the north coast,
he said, "It might as well as not be taken for the country assigned by
God to Cain."
The distance from Quebec to Cape Gaspe, measured upon a course
which a steamer would be compelled to take, is four hundred and seven
statute miles. The ship first enters the current of the river St. Lawrence
at the two Bic Islands, where it has a width of about twenty miles. By
consulting most maps the reader will find that geographers carry the
river nearly two hundred