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1 2 3

mimmmmm

■

i: ■

SIX MONTEIS 1

^^ ^ 1

NEWFOUNDLAND MISSIONARY'S \

JOURNAL.

•

1 1

"'w<

•I I

SIX MONTHS

OF A

NEWFOUNDLAND MISSIONARY'S
JOURNAL,

FROM

FEBRUARY TO AUGUST,

1835.

trCc^^^^-- cL L y(y ^1/

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON :
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., CORNHTLL,

BOOKSELLERS TO THEIR MAJESTIES.

1836.

! I

mmmmm

=^y^

PRIMfcU BV STEWART AND CO., OLD BAILEY.

■■■■■

,1 ;

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

''■\

In sending a Second Edition of this Journal
to the press without any revision by the Author,
the Editor is not without apprehension that she
may forfeit the kindness with which it was
received on its first appearance; but as the
sole design of its publication was to make known
the spiritual wants of the poor in Newfound-
land, so the interest which it has excited in
behalf of the destitute Members of our Church
on that island, is the sole cause of its second
appearance.

The Editor is assured, that the Author would
rather that his literary character should suffer,

than that the Church in Newfoundland should

A 3

PREFACE.

; ' f

remain unsupported. Gratefully does she ac-
knowledge, that the appeal for help has not
been made in vain. Many have come forward
most liberally, to aid and cheer the Missionary
in his arduous labours. Already has the sum of
One Thousand Pounds been contributed towards
the erection of the new Church in St. John's,
Newfoundland, which is nearly completed ; but
an equal sum is required, in order to exonerate
the Archdeacon from his personal responsibili-
ties, and secure another Clergyman to the
Island : for, as soon as the expense of the
Church is defrayed a Curate will be engaged
to assist in it, and in thej^ue settlements around
St. John's, which, in the winter of 1835-6, have
devolved wholly on the Archdeacon's care.

At the request of a few individuals (who have
not fcilt satisfied with aiding the erection of the
Church alone), a separate fund has been com-
menced, in order to supply the destitute settle-
ments, visited by the Archdeacon, with Books ;

MMi

PREFACE. Vll

and one Lady has generously offered to con-
tribute towards the support of a Missionary at
the Isle of Valen : but as the new Church at St.
John's is the primary object of this appeal, so
it is desired that it should be the first object of
consideration.

F. W.

London, June 4lh, 1836.

i i'

••^^J

!' i

-:v>r-.. ^

AN AP P EA L

ON BEHALF UF

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPALIANS OF THE
TOWN OF ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND.

The town of St. John's contains above 13,000 souls;
about 8,000 are Roman Catholics, and the remaining
5,000 are principally attached to the Protestant
Church ; and it is for the poor emigrant Protestant
Settlers in Newfoundland that this appeal is made to
the British public for the erection of a new Protestant
Episcopal Church in the capital of the Island. The
present Church in St. John's does not accommodate
more than 800 persons. There are two Dissenting
meeting-houses — one a Wesleyan, the other a Scotch
place of worship. These Chapels contain about 500
in each ; thus leaving about 3,000 Protestants without
any accommodation in a place of worship ; whilst a
second Popish Chapel is soon to be erected in our
capital — and this in a colony where the state of society
equals, if it do not exceed, in ignorance, superstition,
and insubordination, the worst parts of Ireland. This
want of Church-room exists in a town where inter-
marriages between Roman Catholics and Protestants
are lamentably frequent — in a town where a resident
Roman Catholic Bishop and three or four Priests are
not only most zealous and indefatigable in their spiri-

«■

r?i

II-: (

I ?t\

l§. I

X APPEAL.

tual duties and endeavours to make converts, but
where they also use every means in their power to
encourage the natural superstition of the people ; and
by forbidding the children of Roman Catholic parents
attending Protestant Schools, they effectually keep
them in that state of ignorance which best suits their
false and idolatrous doctrines.

A Nunnery has been established, where a variety
of fancy work is taught, to induce the Protestant chil-
dren to attend the school attached to the establish-
ment ; and no scheme of allurement or intimidation is
omitted to ensnare the poor and ignorant into the trap
laid for them. A number of Roman Catholic females,
called " Confraternity Women," are constantly em-
ployed about the town amongst the sick and dying, to
impress upon the minds of the weak the advantages
arising to all who die in the profession of the Romish
faith.

You who value the religious privileges by which
you are surrounded ! — you who have found comfort
from our beautiful Liturgy ! — you who have families
around you, and know not to what part of the world
Providence eventually may call them ! — you who are
engaged in that most interesting employment, the
Parish Sunday-School ! — you who there watch and
pray for your pupils, leading them to Christ the
Saviour, and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier — looking
upon them as the heads of future families who may be

II w

'.I

APPEAL.

iverts, but
power to
sople; and
lie parents
lally keep
suits their

I a variety
3stant chil-
establish-
nidation is
to the trap
ic females,
antly em-
dying, to
advantages
le Romish

by which
d comfort

families
the world

who are
nent, the
atch and
iRiST the
— looking
10 may be

scattered through the wilds of America, or settled
amongst idolaters, infidels, or scoffers ! — you who love
the Church of your fathers, for which Martyrs have
suffered and bled ! — you who remember that the Pro-
testant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America, which is now a blessing to millions, is a
scion from our English Church, the fruit of a seed
sown by Englisii Missionaries, watered by English
bounty, blessed by Him who has given her an abundant
increase ! To you this appeal will not be made in
vain, for funds to build a new Protestant Episcopal
Church in St. John's, Newfoundland. Two Thousand
Founds* are immediately required for the projected
building, which will be considerably enlarged if a
generous public should put a sufficient sum in the
hands of the Archdeacon of Newfoundland, who has
commence the building on his own responsibility.

Subscriptions continue to be received by

Messrs. Drummond & Co., Charing-cross.
Messrs. Barclay & Co., Lombard-street.
Me:>srs. Rivington, St. Paul's Church-yard and

Waterloo-place.
Messrs. Hatchard & Son, Piccadilly.
Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., Cornhill.

\ I

♦ Since this appeal was first circulated, One Thousand
Pounds have been collected, but another Thousand is still
required.

Y-\

Page

DEDICATORY LETTER.

V -nr AT*

St. John's, Newfoundland,
November 11, 1835.

ERRATA.

Page 54 line 2 from bottom, Jor " another path" read "
otter path."
88 „ 17 from top, for " Tutphen" read " Leitphen."
96 ,, 12 from lop, for " retiirned" read " detamed."
110 „ 3 from top, insert " so" afier " seemed."

Our remote settlements, and the interior of the
island, are so difficult of access, that many who
have been all their lives resident in Newfound-
land, have not so much knowledge of our settle-
ments along the shore, and of the interior, as
they have of the more distant provinces of North
America, which have been accurately described
to them by different tra^'sllers. Those, there-

DEDICATORY LETTER.

St. John's, Newfoundland,

November 11, 1835.
My dear Wife,

Many of my friends, who, like yourself, take a
deep interest in the spiritual condition of the
scattered members of our protestant episcopal
church, pressed me, upon my return from my
late tour of visitation to the southern and western
shores of this island, to furnish them with an
opportunity of perusing the notes of my journal.
Our remote settlements, and the interior of the
island, are so difficult of access, that many who
have been all their lives resident in Newfound-
land, have not so much knowledge of our settle-
ments along the shore, and of the interior, as
they have of the more distant provinces of North
America, which have been accurately described
to them by different travellers. Those, there-

I ,/

2 DEDICATORY LETTER.

fore, who felt a cariosity to learn something of
these parts of their own Terra Nova, which
were to them still a Terra Incognita y urged
upon me a compliance with the same request :
they expressed, too, the desire that I would
include in my journal the notice of matters
beyond the more immediate field of the Mis-
sionary's inquiry, which I might have found
interesting upon my tour, and might have
thought worthy of being recorded. I had pro-
mised myself, on my return to St. John's, a
temporary cessation of labour. This promised
ease, however, was somewhat curtailed by the
attention which the filling up the brief notes of
my journal required, superadded, as it was, to
the formidable accumulation of the correspond-
ence of six months, and the care of the churches
within this archdeaconry.

It was under great difficulties that I had kept
even the slightest diary of my journey ; my ink
would frequently freeze, notwithstanding all my

f^.

.*ft::*-.v-i.L*.v'

3thing of
I, which
I, urged
request :
I would

matters
the Mis-
e found
jht have
had pro-
ohn's, a
promised
1 by the
notes of
: was, to
respond -

hurches

lad kept
my ink
all my

DEDICATORY LETTZa. 3

precautions ; my supply of paper was always ne-
cessarily scanty, and it occasionally altogether
failed me, in districts where it would have been
as reasonable to have expected a gas-lamp for
my convenience at night, as a sheet of letter-
paper by day. Had it not been for some boxes
of paper, which had been dispersed along the
shore from different wrecks, I might have failed
entirely in procuring this convenience in some
places where my application was successful.
The notes which I succeeded in keeping, under
all these disadvantages, were, moreover, very
slight ; they were intended merely to furnish
me with brief particulars of dates and journeys,
and duties performed, for the information of the
committee of the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign PartSy under which
society I have had the honour to be a missionary
in British North America nearly ten years.
They are, therefore, destitute of that information
respecting the population and other particulars,

B 2

j^r

■\':' '■

I-

DEDICATORY LETTER.

B !

» ft

which it would have been my endeavour to have
collected and accurately noted, had I anticipated
the present application of my journal.

Brief, however, as the notes necessarily were,
which I had been able to take while engaged
upon my laborious tour, they have increased
under my hand, since I have endeavoured to
reduce them into a regular journal, until they
have almost alarmed me by their bulk. Had
they been confined to details strictly Missionary,
— although, on the solicitation of my friends, 1
had resolved on giving them a greater publicity
than my correspondence with the Reverend
Archibald Campbell, the secretary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, would have
given them, — I, yet, could not have wished for
them a fitter, or more flattering mode of intro-
duction to the reading world than they would
have had, if I could have solicited and obtained
the honour of being allowed to dedicate the
humble journal to his Grace the venerated

r to have
iticipated

rily were,
engaged
increased
^oured to
ntil they
ik. Had
issionary,
friends, 1
publicity
leverend
e Society
uld have
ished for
)f intro-
;y would
obtained
:ate the
2nerated

DEDICATORY LETTER. O

President, or the respected Board of that Society,
or to our own beloved Diocesan. But the ma-
terial is not worthy, I deeply feel, of such dis-
tinction. I must consequently send it forth
without an introduction, or seek for it the in-
terest of some one, who, from partiality to the
Missionary, and sympathy with his occupation,
may be disposed to overlook the defects of his
journal ; and, from a knowledge of the extreme
difficulty of keeping a requisite supply of writing
materials, or of using them in such circum-
stances, and amid such latitudes, may make
all due allowances for its many imperfections.
— Whom, then, could I, upon such deter-
mination, select more properly than yourself?
— who have cheered me in the intervals of my
Missionary wanderings, and have rendered my
long seasons of absence from my dear home,
and its scenes of domestic comfort, more support-
able, by the assurance that the work of the
church, and the education of the young in the

I /

DEDICATORY LETTER.

Sunday-school, were making progress under
your judicious care and indefatigable attention,
while I was unavoidably away. You have con-
stantly felt all a Missionary's anxiety for all a
Missionary's objects. Again, to whom could I,
in duty, more fitly dedicate this journal, than to
you, who experienced so much anxiety for my
safety during my somewhat perilous tour ? — an
anxiety, heightened by its having been im-
practicable for me, through the want of oppor-
tunities of communicating with the capital, to
inform you for months together of my occupa-
tions, of my whereabouts, or of my safety ;
during which time you were living in a town,
which, for the lawlessness of a large portion of
its inhabitants, who are excited to frequent,
breaches of the peace by a most seditious Ro-
mish priesthood, is as little desirable a place of
residence as many of the disturbed townships
in Ireland ? To whom, lastly, could I more
fitly dedicate it, than to you, who so deeply

DEDICATORY LETTER. 7

sympathized with me when I was prevented, in
the visit which 1 was obliged to undertake, two
years ago, to England, for the restoration of my
shattered health — from urging upon the mem-
bers of the church at home, the need which
there is of some larger provision for the accom-
modation of the poor protestant emigrant, with
the means of protestant worship in the capital
of the island, — and who are now so deeply con-
cerned at witnessing the same want, that you
have resolved to forego, for a time, all the
comforts of your home, — to rend yourself from
the sphere of your interesting duties here, and
to expose yourself to the discomforts of a voyage
across the Atlantic, at this most inclement sea-
son, that you may superintend the urgent appeal
which I am about to make frorn hence, before
it be too late, through the public press in England ,
for aid in the erection of the new church, which,
after having painfully witnessed the want of it
for more than five years, I feel it, at length, my

.■^

B DEDICATORY LETTER.

imperative duty to undertake, in Faith, for the
protestants of St John's, who, to a greater
number than 3,000, are without any means
whatever of assembling to worship God, after
the manner of their fathers ?

May God prosper you, and grant that we
may yet have the satisfaction of beholding the
answer to our many prayers, and of witnessing
the meetings of a consistent christian assembly,
in this House which we are so anxious to see
dedicated to CHRIST, and coiisecrated for ever,
for the pure services of the protestant episcopal
church ; which may be a blessing to generations,
when we may have gone to give an account of
our labours.

I am, my dear wife,
and dearest Fellow-worker in the
Missionary Field,
ever most affectionately your's,
Edward Wix.

:\\

■,t-

SIX MONTHS

OF A

NEWFOUNDLAND MISSIONARY'S
JOURNAL.

February, 1835.

As *^he truvelling over the snow in Newfoundland
is less difficult in the month of March, than
walking" overland is at any other season of the
year, ! had long had an intention of commencing
a visitation of the southern and western shores
of the island, in the early part of that month;
and, for this purpose, had made an appoint-
ment with a guide, who lives in Trinity Bay,
that he should come across at that time to be
my pilot through the country. His recom-
mendation to me was the fact of his having
lived, some time back, four years with the
Micmac Indians, — a probation which must have
given him, I conceived, some acquaintance
with the mode of travelling in this untractable

CONCEPTION BAY.

island. He caine to St. John's, however, in
February. The season was more than usually
advanced ; and a greater quantity of snow
having fallen than had been remembered for
twenty years, the travelling was more easy than
it commonly is in the winter : he had no diffi-
culty, therefore, in inducing me to start with
him immediately. This I did on the afternoon of

I f

Tuesday J 17,— Being driven in a sulky
sleigh* as far as the new road to Topsail
Beech, upon the commencement of which the
Legislature have lately expended a small sum.
I then proceeded with my knapsack, in which
were 141bs. weight, (to which my guide had
restricted me,) to the south shore of Conception
Bay. For some distance we missed our way,
but as we could ascertain the points of the
compass by observing the inclination of the
topmast branches of the juniper* or larch-trees,
wc regained our path some time after dark ; and
by a slippery wood-path, on which we had
many falls, we reached the south shore of
Conception Bay, and the house of Miller, a

* A " sulky sleigh " takes two persons, in seats, one
behind the othor, and in drawn by a horse.

* The j uniper, or larch, always points to the east.

CONCEPTION BAY.

respectable planter, by ten, p. m. The men of
the family had retired to bed, after the fatigue of
their day's labour in the woods, before I reached
the house : I assembled the females of the family,
however, and read and explained a chapter of the
Bible, and offered up prayers with them before I
retired to be'' ; and the next morning,

Wednesday J 18. — The men, before their
work, joined us in the same employment.
After this, I started in the snow for Mr. W.
Smith's, passing a building which is erecting
as a place of worship for the members of the
Protestant episcopal communion on this shore.
There I met the Rev. Thomas Martin Wood,
who, in addition to his usual labours at Petty
Harbour, pays monthly visits to the people of
his old charge upon this south shore of Con-
ception Bay, and again at Pouch Cove, near
Cape Francis. After attending and assisting at
a marriage which he was solemnizing, I crossed
through the " slob ice," which was very thick in
Conception Bay, to Port de Grave, four leagues,
in three hours. This is the centre of the mission
of the Reverend Charles Blackman. One of
his circuit churches, that^^ of St. Mark's Church,

,-'■ *

HMW

^gjgijjg0tmmi>i

SEVERITY OF CLIMATE.

at Bare Need, requires enlarging. I had been
more fortunate in my passage across the bay
than three young men of St. John's, who
undertook it on the same day with myself, in
another boat : they were obliged to leave it
at a by-place along the shore, after it had been
fixed several hours in the ice. I was confined a
day at Mr. Blackman's hospitable house, by a
snow-storm, but, on the morning of

Friday y 20. — We took a heavy mallet, with
a long handle, which the people call an ice-
pounder, and escaped some hours of very labo-
rious walking, by crossing in a boat to Bay
Roberts. I regretted to find that Mr. Joyce, an
exceedingly kind friend to the church and clergy,
whom I had found here on former visits, had
paid the debt of nature. JVir. Blackman had
been engaged to attend a funeral at Bay Roberts
yesterday; but the storm had made all close
prisoners to their houses. It may give some
idea of the difficulty of communication in the
winter, even in the neighbourhood of St. John's,
if I state here that gentlemen at Port de Grave
had not seen a St. John's newspaper for a
month, when I arrived amongst them; and that

• \

■v

TRINITY BAY.

in Trinity Bay,* I found that the sum of forty
shillings had been, on a late occasion, demanded,
and twenty-five shillings actually paid, for the
casual conveyance of a single letter, overland,
by one of the cross-country guides. I found
that Ridout, a respectable young man, who had
been used to keep a congregation together upon
the south shore of Conception Bay, had died
laso spring, from the exertion and exposure
consequent on going round the head of the bay at

that inclement season on foot ; and Hodge,

the packet-man of Killigrews, was just recover-
ing from a most severe cold caught a few days
before, from his having been washed overboard
in a gale. The Reverend John Burt, the Pro-
testant episcopal missionary at St. Paul's, Har-
bour Grace, was dangerously ill, and I wished
much to go to see him; but as the Reverend
William Nisbett, of St. Mary's Churtu, Heart's
Content, Trinity Bay, was with him, assisting
him in his duties, I did not delay my journey to
visit him. Mr. Blackman kindly accompanied
me to Spaniard's Bay Beech. Here my guide
and I struck into the woods at eleven, a. m.,

* Port de Grave is 57 miles distant from St. John's, and
Trinity Bay 67 miles.

\ 1

;4««tWllMriMMMMMw»' >—■ •

DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVELLING.

and crossed the neck which divides Conception
from Trinity Bay. I broke into the ice of one
brook on my way, and by half-past seven, p.m.
reached the house of Mr. Charles Nieuhook,
jun., of New Harbour, a late worthy parishioner
of the Reverend William Bullock, at St. Paul's
Church, Trinity, whose father is of French
Huguenot extraction. The distance is not more
than fifteen miles by my compass, but the
necessarily circuitous course which we were
obliged to take to avoid a steep hill in one
direction, a running brook, or a thick wood, in
another, made it at least twenty. The distance
which persons, liable to serve on petty juries,
may be obliged to travel that they may meet the
circuit judges in this island, is, from these cir-
cumstances, not very easily defined. I have
met with places in Fortune Bay, two or three
miles only from each other, to visit which by
land in winter, it might be necessary to make a
circuit of fifteen miles, to get round the deep
precipitous chasms or '* gulshes" and ravines
which cross from the coast into the interior.
** Why, it is but seven miles, my friend, as the
crow flies," observed a judr*^ to a remonstrant
petty juryman, who pleaded the difficulty and

SERVICES AT NEW HARBOUR.

iception
\ of one
n, P.M.
euhook,
ishioner
. Paul's
French
ot more
but the
^e were

in one
ood, in
iistance
' juries,
leet the
ese cir-
I have
three
lich by
make a
le deep
ravines
nterior.

as the
nstrant
ty and

the distance. — " That may be," replied he ;
" but as I cannot go as the crow goes, I make
the distance fifteen or sixteen."

Saturday, 21. — This day was spent in visiting
the people of New Harbour, and the adjoining
settlement of Dildo Cove, with Charles Elford,
the lay-reader, who has, for some years, been
employed under the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel. The church of St. George's,
New Harbour, which was opened for Divine
service in 1815, is neat, and in a very pic-
turesque situation. It had been decently painted
last summer, through Mr. Bullock's exertions.
I gave notice of my intention of administering
the holy communion in it on

Sunday J 22. (Sexagesima Sunday.) — There
were fourteen communicants after morning ser-
vice at church, and I also administered the same
sacrament to an aged person, a man of seventy-
seven, in his own house, who remembered the
French being in Trinity Bay in 1766. I held
two full services, baptized two children at church,
and one in private. As there was no stove in
the church which could be lighted, and tlie

^ >

SAMUEL PRETTY.

weather was exceedingly cold, we suffered much
during the service. After the two services I
walked to Dildo Cove, by a church-path made
by the people, which is very creditable to the
devotional feeling of the settlers. Here the
weather detained me at the house of Samuel
Pretty, a respectable old planter. It was de-
lightful to hear this old churchman contrast,
with gratitude, the spiritual condition of the
people in this part of the island now, with
what it was when he first came out from Chard,
in Somersetshire, sixty years ago : — " It is bad
enough, now, sir; but then, twelve months
and twelve months would pass without our
hearing a word of a book, or any talk about a
church." New Harbour and Dildo Cove, are
places which present fine scenery to the admirer
of nature; yet I learned that, before .'!r.
Pretty came thither, they had been the scenes of
some very savage murders, into which, such was
the imperfect state of the magistracy of New-
foundland at that period, no inquiry what-
ever was made. Indeed, in some parts of the
island which I have visited, infanticide, and
violence terminating in death, would scarcely
create inquiry now. While I was there, New

I il<WiL. r .

:ji

jl»4^l^>^^liriSifiif^^r■l^

NEW HARBOUR.

Harbour was the scene of a sad drunken revel
at a Roman Catholic funeral and wake. A
wolf had been shot in this neighbourhood a
short time before my visit. Also a large species
of fish, called the horse mackarel, resembling
that fish in every particular, but ten feet in
length, had been killed here last summer, by a
girl with a " pew," or fork used for throwing
fish from the boats on to the ** stages." This
horse-mackarel, I learned afterwards, is not
uncommon in other parts of the island. Several
old Bedlamer seals had been already killed
here, which, with the sea-birds which were now
very numerous, supplied the inhabitants with
very acceptable provisions after the scarcity of
a long unbroken winter.

Wednesday, 25. — Having read and prayed
with the inhabitants, and visited the sick, and
made my residence as useful as I could to the
people during my detention, I was up on Wednes-
day at two A. M., and before six a. m., before the
first dawn of light, made a more successful
attempt than we made yesterday morning, to
start from Andrew's Cove. The snow- path was
stained with the blood of Bedlamer seals, which

^iK'

CHAPEL ARM.

had been hauled over it. We had plenty of
work for the ice-pounder in this cove and in the
bay, as it was full of a species of ice, signifi-
cantly called by the people, " swish-ice,"
which, when struck with the oar, makes a sound
similar to that of straw when thrashed with a
stick. By 9i o'clock we reached Chapel Arm,
where, and at Little Gut in its neighbourhood,
were about seventy souls, chiefly from New
Harbour, for winter's work. Assembled two
dozen people, all who had not gone into the
woods for their work before our arrival, for full
service, at the tilt of William Pollett. As we
passed a point in our boat, I got sight of. a
black fox close to the water's edge, and was
informed by the people, that I might expect
shortly to see an otter, which I soon did, and
on going to the spot, found several holes
which the otter had made on the slob-ice when
diving for fish, which the fox, at this period of
scarcity of other provisions, would monopolize
on his bringing it up, or share with him. The
otter and the fox, consequently, at this season,
are generally to be found very near each other.
I had a cliff pointed out to me at Norman's
Cove, not far from hence, a part of which, from

r:u

!RJ,*UJ — "— T

LONG HARBOUR.

its losing the power of cohesion (no uncommon
event here after our long winter), had fallen
down a few springs since, and had buried
several men, friends of my present guides, in its
fall. The " barber," a vapour so called from
its cutting qualities, was distinctly visible upon
the water this morning. It arises, I believe,
from the air's being colder than the water. I
was glad, on the approach of day, to turn myself
towards the sun, which rose most brilliantly
this cold morning. No description can convey
an idea of the beauty of the overfalling stalac-
tites of ice, some white through, some transpa-
rent, which hung down from the rugged cliffs on
the side of this fine arm of the sea, till they
nearly touched the water.

The unremitting attention, and the not un-
frequent visits of the Rev. William Bullock, of
Trinity, and of his assistant upon the south
shore of the bay, the Rev. William Nesbitt, left
me no children, beyond mere infants, to baptize
in this neighbourhood. Before one p. m. I was
again upon my way, on foot through the woods,
leaving the remarkable hill, called the Chapel
Tolt, behind, and the Long Hill Deer country,
on my left ; and by half-past five got over the

c 2

THE SILVER THAW.

crusted snow of Long Harbour, in Placentia
Bay. The country at this time presented an
appearance quite different from that produced
by the vegetation when affected by a moistness of
the atmosphere which is afterwards operated upon
by sudden frosts, and is improperly denominated
here, a silver thaw. The present appearance
was even more beautiful, although the former
cannot but be much admired. The under cur-
rent of air had been sufficiently cold to freeze
rain upon its reaching the earth, or alighting
upon any exposed vegetable object, although
the upper media, through which it had passed,
permitted it still to fall as rain : as soon as this
transparent liquid had alighted upon a branch
of evergreen, or on a blade of grass, which pro-
jected above the snow, it had congealed ; giving,
through its transparent covering, a brighter
tint to every colour of the objects which it
enveloped. As the rain had continued to
fall very fast for several hours while the lower
air was in this state, this bright incrustation
had collected on every object, even on those
which were most minute, and offered the least
firm support to such a weighty girdle, to the
depth of at least an inch. The splendour of

•v*-

THE SILVER THAW.

I-,

the spectacle which was presented by woods,
shrubs, and under-brush, thus brilliantly illu-
minated in a morning of unclouded sunshine,
was greater than any effort of art could come
near to imitate. It left all the spectacles of
scenic illusion, or the imaginative creations of
fairy descriptions, far, far behind the reality of
the natural phenomenon, which, though it was
calculated most surely to fix the gaze of ad-
miring crowds, only called forth now the grate-
ful admiration of one fond admirer of the gospel
of nature. Yet this profusion of sparkling
beauty was not lost : — " O ye frost and cold !
O ye ice and snow ! bless ye the Lord ; pi aise
him and magnify him for ever I"
^ Every hole and corner in the cabin which I
first visited in Placentia Bay, that was not
taken up by the human inmates, being occupied
by pigs, ducks, fowls, sheep, or dogs, I was glad
to find a more roomy and a cleaner retreat in
another tilt ; here, though the door did not close
by at least a foot, to prevent the inconvenience
of smoke, which is almost universal in these
winter houses, I sat upon a chest until dawn.
The poor widower, who was my host, spoke of
his deceased wife with deep affection : the

■'\

t j. i ftmrm , i ,«»

<K'

ROMAN CATHOLICS.

anxiety, too, which he showed to bring rp his
children well by catechising them, and hearing
them repeat their prayers oefore they retired to
the single bed which served for the entire family
of eight, was very creditable. Although these
services, which I begged my presence might
not be permitted to interrupt, were mixed with
much which I deem error, yet I could not bat
wish that many a careless protestant could have
seen this pious Romanist, and been led to
imitate so praiseworthy an attention to the re-
ligious interests of his children. The winter
settlers at Long Harbour are chiefly of Irish
extraction, from Ram Islands, in Placentia
Bay. I heard in the evening, that of three
Englishmen who had been for years settled
among them, one alone, a native of Greenwich,
had not turned to the Romish faith. I went,
therefore, to visit him on the morning of

Thursday^ 26. — At his tilt, over a frozen
pond or lake, about two miles from the harbour.
When I reached his comfortless tilt, of which
there was no part, except the excavated door-
way, and the top of the chimney visible above
the snow, I founu he was from home. He had

*VT

ENTERTAINED BY J. G.

''• i

heard the preceding evening of the arrival in the
settlement of a clergyman of his church, and
attempted to cross the ice of the harbour after
dark to have some conversation with me ; had
broken through the ice in the attempt, and had
in consequence of his wet condition, slept at
a tilt in the harbour, which I had passed at day-
break. I returned thither, and found him at
the house of J. D. of Arundel, one of the Eng-
lishmen who had turned Papist ; he would not,
however, permit me to go back again for some
private conversation to poor J. G.'s tilt, until I
had promised to accompany J. G. back to
breakfast, when he gave me a very hospitable
entertainment. On conversing with J. G. I
found that he had been twenty-one years in the
country, and was still pennyless, the poor ser-
vant of the other Englishman, H. M., from
RedclifFe, who was scarcely less poor than him-
self. His fondness for ardent spirits, he in-
formed me, had kept him thus poor, and he
could trace to this source all his lapses, and all
his misfortunes. He assured me in our con-
versation that he had foresworn the further use
of spirits. I told him of a strength greater
than his own ; this I entreated him to implore.

• ;»" i "WW | WW|«B i|| fr ;-

■fJt^xiarfn' <W!f m ' ii! U '.w w w i i««I W!i i<yy»w

THE USE OF ARDENT SPIRITS.

He ^vas muc affected by a prayer in which I
proposed he should join me in his tilt : he kept
a standing posture when I commenced, but the
poor fellow soon sunk upon his knees., and,
before the conclusion of my prayer on his behalf,
he was weeping* like a child. It will give some
idea of the prevailing use of spirits in this
island, and of the consequent discouragement
which the minister is doomed to experience, if I
mention that notwithstanding all which I had said
against the use of this intoxicating stimulant, in
all which he had heartily acquiesced, and bring-
ing the test of his own melanclioly experience,
had declared voluntarilyj that he had left it off,
he yet offered to myself, on my rising from my
knees, what is called ** a morning," from a
little keg, which he drew from under his straw
bed ; and, on my reminding him, when about
to help himself, that he had engaged to break
off this habit, he excused himself by saying he
had made a reservation for the use of the re-
maining contents of that keg. I was reminded of
Jeremiah xiii. 23. I prom-sed the poor fellow a
prayer-book, which he was most anxious to pos-
sess ; a few other suitable books shall accompany
it, and I pray, though almost against hope, that

POOLE.

he rray be assmted to keep his resolution. A
cock crowing during the preceding night, was
iiaid, by an old woman in the company, to por-
tend rain : I found the next day as I subse-
quently did on many other occasions during my
present trip, that this augury was quite correct.
We were put across Long Harbour arm, below
the ice^ "n a p mt, and walked from the quay, a
point in the woods, through some brushwood,
and over barrens, to Ship Harbour Point, oppo-
site to Little Placentia. Here a storm of snow
and wind, followed by rain, which prevented my
proceeding by land or by water, detained me till

Monday^ March 2. — There is not so much
** slob-ice " during the winter in Placentia and
St. Mary's bays, as in the northern bays. At
this time last year, however, (1834) persons
might walk from this side of Placentia Bay
direct to Burin, which is at least twenty-four
leagues across the open bay on the firm ice.
As I had sent my man by land to Placentia to
give notice of my being so near, Mr. Tucker, of
the firm of Penny and Neve, of Poole, took
advantage of a lull in the wind, and kindly
sent a boat for me, which landed me at his

•

GREAT PIACENTM.

*harf ,„ the afternoon. Her. f »
'"debted ,0 Mrs. Tucker f f ^''""y

""ention, and uJ^^- '" """='' humane

for the 6;t 11 " '" " «°""'»»able bed

■e nrst time since I had left New H i.

T"n.ty Bay, on the 25th ult. "''""'

Tuesday, 3.-Went partlv in » i • ,
P-'y on foot, by the' Ma'rt se Vea'f ' '"'
""'es, to Great Piacentia Wh , . ' "'""

'-"beion.ed.otheFethr:/^'^'""'"'-
-« of government. W^hin h' '^ ''"

-eralofthepresentinhabUnt Pia^T'^'
" garrison town of our own ■' , "" '"'-

"•« remains of bomb pUrbatTel ."^ T ''''
-Pa-:r, faced with PorLnd sto e V! T
"■ne persons, the small remnant f '""^''''
"'■on. in the old ^^ u "'^"""■'^ommu.

™en>oryofm\:1ij;;t'e,t»^' '"'''" '^^
fi««d by the garrison td l! ' ^"'"^'^'y
inhabitants, under th.!! ."™«™us protestant

^^a.terHar;i:t„;t:Z7;':''';«--<^
successive protestanrl . '" ^'^"'' ">«

^^- is her: a:r:,7:::r ^^^;-n-es.

P'-te, which bears an inscrip „ 1';"""""'°"
■' "as given bv h,= p„?! "'. "°"'^^"'« "
Wdliam Hen

■'y h'« Royal Highness p'ri
ry, m 1787. There

nee
9 re also, a

'^^

r»y

— rftf-.-'f-ij^H-.^

O. i". SWEETMAN, ESQ.

splendid folio prayer-book and bible, and a new
version of the Psalms, which were presented to
the church in 1790, by Thomas Saunders, Esq.,
the founder of the present mercantile house of
O. F. Sweetman, Esq., a member of our New-
foundland House of Assembly. He is a RomarL
catholic, but most hospitably invited me to his
house, and entertained me, although he was
very busily engaged in sending out his sealing
vessels to the ice, and was, besides, an invalid ;
and so good a feeling towards the church exists
generally in this part of Newfoundland, that an
aged widow lady, a Roman catholic, to whom,
in conversing respecting the communion plate,
I expressed the wish that it could be used
monthly, and the books each week, responded
evidently from the heart, with the wish that it
could be so. It should be observed, in justice
to the Roman catholics of this bay, that they
are of a character very different from that of
the more recent Irish settlers in the vicinity
of St. John's, who, being misled by a newly-
imported priesthood, who have more of the
character of political partizans than of re-
ligious cr moral instructors, have by their
licentious and cruel acts rendered our journals

\^-

ROMAN CATHOIICS.

of late years more lilo .1,

•J'^'ricts ;„ the siste t .' '"""'' °'' '"''"bed

-'' orderly ;„rreS"''^"°^^'°^^'
Pfality with which r °"y- '^''« I'O''-

pleasantly back, i„ recot , '^ """'" ""^
-ription given y o„r S ' "' '° '"^ "-
'"•s own reception"^ T c!! ""' ^"^P^^''' o''
e'ewman of the eTtabI Tr" ^^^^ '"^''e
-"W go in the .r! L ;t' '''"^'' "« ^'y
P« '' t^e district b„ L ""'^ "'™"='' ^"y
-•"" - -t mark „; L""' ""' ''"'"'"
refreshment at anv h'""' '"'' «»" for
as an honour; and thatTi.'''' '"=''"owIedged
«"' "ore ilhlv hn '>^''''=°''^'<ie'ed

«^-„ded to t\i: r;: .r^ ^ -

-"rse of his clerical visitM^^„^ « "" '" «"«
"'ere attended to with th '^'""''°«'

anxious care, even bv th u °" ""'^''^ """
'"e -ostbi,oted Romaic thT' '"''""'''"' "'
Newfoundland, p 240 W." ^^"'P^<='''''

the pleasure with which I f.' ""''^ ''^'^<'
anxiety of a R„m,„ j' ' ''''' -'"essed the

".■•» «"■•'<»- in that ; r Tv° '■'"' "P

*'ew, was the nurture !l!> .""'"^ '° f"''
I^rd ; r mav ,1, , admonition of the

• may, therefore, without h^-

' "''°"* ''eing suspected

I'LACENTIA.

of a wish to misrepresent the general conduct of
the members of this body, express the concern
which I felt, at seeing in this and some other
districts, the playing of cards and games of
chance upon the Lord's Day. In St. John s,
their dancing-houses are full on the evening of
the Lord's Day. The poor fellow did not know
the meaning of the terras he was using ; — but
one of this communion made me smile, when,
to recommend himself to me, as distinguished
from a strict Romanist, he told me he was a
** Liberal," — and then, as though he had not
gone far enough, he corrected himself, and
said, ** I am a Latitudinarian, sir, I mean."
He might have added, too, " a hard drinker;"
but I feel too much indebted to him for his
hearty kindness, to subject him to ecclesiastical
censure for his volunteer deprecations of an
intolerant creed, or for the last named besetting
sin. Placentia has been visited, since the
removal of a regular Missionary from the station,
by the Bishop of Nova Scotia, and by Reverend
Messrs. Bullock, Burt, Robertson, Laugherne,
and Pering; — yet so long has the church been
shut up, that this was the first occasion on
which the royal donor of the communion service

(\-

PLACENTIA.

had been prayed for here in public liturgy, as
King. There is in the church-yard of this place
a broken tomb-stone, with a French inscription,
bearing the date 1690.

As there was a rapid tide down the S. E. and
N. E. guts, and the wind was piercingly cold
from the N. E., our passage over these streams
on our return was far from agreeable, and it was
some time before we could by quick walking
recover ourselves from our chill. Within a few
days of my reaching Placentia, a messenger
arrived who had crossed through the interior
overland direct from St. John's, since I left
it. A road, which is much needed, is projected
from St. John's to this place. This messenger
brought the distressing intelligence, that Mr.
Hervey, an estimable young man, the junior
partner in the house of Messrs. Robinson,
Brooking, Garland, & Co., at St. John's, had
died within the last few days, after a very short
illness. I had left him extremely ill from a cold
caught in going to St. Bartholomew's Church,
Portugal Cove, on the last Sunday but one on
which I had officiated there before my departure :
the weather, on that day (February 8), having
varied eighteen degrees, as will be seen by the

- >' ■-

.J'

TILLY COVE.

meteorological table annexed to this Journal,
was most trying to the constitution of those
exposed to it.

)

Wednesday, 4, (Ash-Wed.) — Assembled a very
attentive congregation of twenty-one,in the net-
menders* room on Mr. Tucker's wharf. I must
record the pleasure with which I heard here, as
I did, indeed, in many parts of Placentia Bay
afterwards, most grateful mention made of the
labours of Mr. William Walker, who had been,
for some time, stationed at L ue Placentia, in one
of the schools of the Newfoundland and Britisli
North America School Society — a society which
is doing much for the scriptural education of the
youth of this island.

In the afternoon of March 4, Mr. Tucker
manned a boat for me, in which I went to Bald
Head, past St. Croix Bay. Thence I went,
after walking a little distance in the snow, in a
punt of Joseph Dick's, past Money's Cove and
Corben's Head to Tilley Cove, six leagues,
where the family of his respectable father,
Christopher Dicks, amounting to twelve, formed
an attentive congregation. Here, as I did at
several other places during the season of Lent,

.-\

*" " ; •

... ...v..

FAMISH GUT.

I assumed a licence as my own ordinary, and
used the Commination Service, afterwards ex-
plaining it to the hearers familiarly in the place
of a sermon.

Thursday, 5. — Was up before day-light, and
after full service, administered the holy commu-
nion to this respectable old planter, who had
for many years been desiring such an oppor-
tunity. A snow-storm prevented my proceeding
to-day to Harbour Beaufit, upon Long Island,
where I was very anxious to visit a family whom
I had known at Petty Harbour, near St. John's.
I did not allow it, however, to prevent my
walking by Red Cove and Back Cove to Famish
Gut, which 1 had reached by ten, a. m., and
assembled nine adults, besides children, at the
winter house of Thomas Upshore, where I held
full service, and baptized two children. It was
providential that a man, who lived some two
miles from his summer house, in the interior, in
a spot which it would have been most difficult,
nay, quite impracticable, to have found, in the
untracked snow, which was falling fast at the
time, should have come out for some family
supplies to his summer house, just as I reached

-■ «.J: ' ^^

il'a

SBESBCST-

TRINITY BAY.

the harbour. He was delighted at the encounter,
and was rejoiced at the opportunity of intro-
ducing to the little settlement a minister of his
church. By one, p. m., as the weather cleared
up, I left this place, and took the ice upon a
level lead of ponds, expecting to find my way
to the adjoining settlement of Pinch Gut. There
I learned were some persons who had recently
settled from the west of England, and I wished
much to visit them ; but we missed our point,
and were benighted, and as, through the gross
negligence of my guide, we had proceeded
without a hatchet, our situation was one of
danger, the night being extremely cold. On
coming out, however, after dark, to the salt water,
I discovered upon the snow, by the land-wash, a
gunner's track. This led us by nine, p.m., much
fatigued, to a house, which we found, contrary to
our expectations, to be at Big Chance Cove, in
Trinity Bay. Here I heard, to my comfort, that
one Kelly, a regular pilot, who had last v/inter
walked round the head of Placentia Bay, the
route on which I now was, and had received 18/.
for his journey, declared that he would not
undertake such a trip again for 50/. My dog
howled, as I walked to-day, from fatigue : and,

STOCK COVE.

whenever I stopped to look about me, or set my
compass, he would scratch about and make
himself a bed for a few minutes' repose in the
soft snow.

Friday, 6. — Up by seven, a.m. Assembled
twenty-four persons to full service. As not one
in this settlement '^ould read, I was requested to
read a letter containing intelligence, of the most
interesting kind, of which the family had been
in ignorance, although they had had it by them
for weeks. In many similar settlements, I was
engaged in writing letters for the people to
relatives who had been settled, some ten, some
twenty years, in other parts of the island, and
with whom they had been unable to hold any
communication since their original settlement in
the country, or, at least, since their dispersion.
At eight, A.M., started through the " young ice"
in a new punt, which was stained with blood
from a recent freight of fresh-killed seals ;
passed Bentham, Master's Head, and Ram's
Head, to Stock Cove, which I reached at ten.
After some refreshment, engaged at half-past
two, P.M. in a very laborious walk over the
country, by Stock Cove Deer-look-out, to

n .■"--■

BAY BULL S ARM.

Frenchman's Island, where I took the ice of
Bay Bull's Arm. At tlie head of this arm,
I found four families in winter tilts. I as-
sembled fifteen persons for full service, by the
light of a piece of ignited seal's fat, placed in a
scollop shell, which served for the lamp of our
humble sanctuary in the woods. I made ac-
quaintance here, too, for the first time, with
a decoction of the tops of the spruce branches,
to which I afterwards became much accustomed,
as a substitute for tea, and which, from experi-
ence, I can pronounce to be very salutary and
bracing, though not so palatable, as the bever-
age supplied by the Honourable East India
Company. A man (Sowards) whom I had met
at Stoke Cove in the morning, had last summer
gone round in an open fishing punt, from Come-
by-Chance, at the bottom of placentia Bay,
accompanied only by a small boy of fifteen,
along-shore and outside of St. John's, to this
place, a distance of 142 leagues by water,
although the distance between the two places is
only one league by land. He was changing his
residence from one Bay to the other, and not
finding a purchaser for his punt, he had gone
round with it. From the top of Sainter's Hill,

D 5?

SAINTER S HILL.

I /

I ,

/I !:

a conspicuous object in this neighbourhood, thef
seven bays of Despair, Fortune, St. Mary,
Trinity, Bonavista, Conception, and Placentia,
may be seen at one time. Here I slept in a tilt ;
and starting by half-past six, next morning, in
less than an hour had crossed the swamp and
neck of land which at this part divided Placentia
from Trinity Bay, having now crossed the
dividing neck of land at three different places.
On this path the " ways," or cross-beamS; over
which the French when they held Placentia,
were in the habit of drawing their boats from
one bay to the other, are still to be seen :
although, as they were at this time covered wi
snow, I had not a view of them. After cii«
unexpected incursion of this kind, they had
once burned, in the memory of an old person
who related the fact to me, an English brig
which was lying in Bay Bull's Arm ; and it was
this circumstance which gave its name to the
point which is called Frenchman's Island, men-
tioned above. — After walking about a mile down
Come-by-Chance River, we came to some win-
ter tilts, in one of which I assembled seventeen
for full service, baptized a child, and churched
its mother, in our little congregation. On the

j|\^:V...:l.

.r<"

COME-BY-CHANCE RIVER.

banks of this Come-by-Chance River, ruins of
buildings, iron bolts and nails, are found ; relics
of former structures and cannon-balls are also
frequently picked up, as though there had been
formerly some engagement, if not a fort, in this
neighbourhood. The people are very laborious
in this part of Placentia Bay, and live very hard :
from the time at which they begin to catch fish,
which is generally in April, until near Christ-
mas, they scarcely sleep a whole night toge-
ther in bed, except on Sunday night. From
their poverty, too, they are co-istrained to part
with their fish to the supplying merchant in a
*' green " state, by which, I was informed, that
they are considerable losers, as three ** quintals"
on an average are thus taken for one. I was
much struck here with the homely, but touch-
ing remark of one R. W., in whose house I had
officiated :— " Ah! sir; if any of us be sick or
sore, there is no one near to visit us, or to care
for our souls."

Started at half-past ten, a. m., and before
twelve had reached Emberley's, having mounted
a precipice which was somewhat alarming, Whit-
tle's Cove Head. Twelve wolves had very lately
been seen in one company in this neighbour^

1 1

■ f

III

yr^^.

SOUND ISLAND.

hood. Here v;e mended up a leaky punt, and
took advantage of a mild day, which reminded
me of the Indian summer in Nova Scotia, to go
to Sound Island. We started at half-past
twelve, were unceasino- in our exercise at baling
out the watei, and b;, *en minutes after three,
reached in safety Betty's Hole, Sound Island, a
most picturesque nook, within view of the fine
hills which are known as Powder-horn Hill, at
the bottom of Piacentia Bay, and Sainter's Hill^
at the head of that of Trinity.

Walked a short mile to Mr. Hollett's, a most
respectable planter at New Town. Finding that
many of the people were at Piper's Hol.-^, nine
miles up a river, at their winter's work, I deter-
mined to walk up to them upon the ice, and
devote to them the morni^ig of the following
day, Sunday ; appointing: divine service at
Sound Island in the afternoon, on my r,'}turr, I
reached the tilt of Giles, a worthy Somersets uire
man, by .ime, p. m., where I slept, after having
had prayers with his little household.

Sunday, 8. — Walked to SrJmon Hole, at the
very top of Piper's Hole, (about a mile and a
half,) at day-break, and held an early service

BUkMl.f/' S»i*» A.

MR. HOLLETT.

in the house of John Hollett, jun., to eighteen
persons. By twenty minutes to nine, a.m., I
was on my way back to Sound Island, where I
found a congregation of thirty, at the elder Mr.
Hollett's house, assembled to meet me at two,
p. M. I baptized one child in full service.
I'he style o^ singing here, as well as at Piper's
Hole, gratified me much. I read the prayers
from a fine 8vo. prayer-book, of the ** P yer
Book and Homily Society," presented to old
Mr. Hollett, by the Reverend Charles Norman,
Manningtree, Essex, April, 1834. This gene-
rous individual, Hollet has never seen ; but his
name had been mentioned to Mr. Norman, by a
servant, whose brother, a fisherman in New-
foundland, had been 'n tha habit of attending
Mr. Hollett's reading of the church service on
the Lord's Day, in his house on Sound Island ;
and Mr. Hollett has, for some time, received
from him a packet of books each year. These,
he is humbly endeavouring to mahe instrumental
to the spiritual improvement of his neighbour-
hood ; and his efforts, I should say, judging from
the demeanour of the congregation, which I was
gratified to meet at his house, — and their re-
sponse, and the manner in which they join in

r^.i^^il'^.^if^m -'ka'lN-S^

»«->l)|»^»i|^-V ff |'y Mi « i'>tp»*«

^tS^tbc^i^inrMt w

•4WWWW11I*"**

WANT OF SCHOOLS.

\ ■-,.

the psalmody, have been blessed by God's Holy
Spirit. How would the missionary, and the
intelligent member of the church, be strength-
ened in a foreign land, if the friends of evan-
gelical truth at home would more generally
exhibit such a spirit as this unknown bene-
factor, — and send us, in larger quantities, these
requisite materials, with which we may enlighten
the ignorant, and comfort the sorrowing, and
train up the rising generation in the faith and
fear of God ! Here, as at very many other
places, I was painfully oppressed by receiving
applications of the most earnest kind for schools,
where, before the applications, I could see they
were most needed : yet, alas ! I felt that 1
could hold out to the Christian parents, who
were most anxious to secure Christian instruc-
tion for their dear children, no promise what-
ever, — no immediate hope of aid.

Finding that the night was likely to be
stormy, I started at four over Sound Island, and
across the Tickle, upon the ice, to the Andrews's,
Woody Island, about six miles, which I reached
in two hou.s, just before the threatened storm
came on. Read a chapter of the bible, and had
prayers before retiring to rest.

—•—'•• — •^■■'iis

*'^-«t.P^*»Vf_

BARREN ISLAND.

Monday f 9. — ^The two Andrews's, my hosts,
took different routes round the settlement, to
prepare the people for my holding prayers at
ten, A. M. Thirteen families reside in this neigh-
bourhood. I had a congregation of twenty,
churched a mother, and baptized her child in
full service. Just as I was starting in an open
boat for Barren Island, a young woman, who
had waded, with difficulty, through the deep
snow, which had been falling all night, arrived,
to request me to baptize her infant child, and
to church herself. Here, as at many places
which I have visited, a request was made me
that I would consecrate a piece of ground,
which, in most settlements, is enclosed end set
apart for a place of interment. I told the people
that this ceremony of our church is reserved for
our bishops; but recomme ed their keeping it
neatly enclosed ; and assured them that, in the
event of his ever visiting this bay, it would
then give satisfaction to our excellent diocesan,
Bishop Inglis, to comply with this, their very
proper desire. For the first time since leaving
Conception Bay, we were able to use a sail to-
day, and were put up to Barren Island in two
hours. Here the inhabitants are principally

i"W--'M!«?)llWWf?tt

MR. JOHN COSENS.

Romanists ; but, as an Englishman, Robert
Burt, who had died somewhat suddenly, was
then lying unburied, I resolved to wait till to-
morrow, that I might inter him.

Tuesday, 10. — A congregation of thirty-five
met in a large store, one hundred feet long, be-
longing to Mr. John Cosens, which had been
built by the late firm of Spurrier, and had been
sold for a trifle. We had a fire similar to that
on a ship's deck, in the centre of the store, to
protect us from the weather, which was extremely
cold, and, although there was no provision for
the escape of the smoke, the building was so
spacious, that we suiFered little inconvenience.
The bell which usually rings to call the people
together for their meals, or work, was tolled by
my direction. The psalms and lessons of the
morning were evidently felt by the people to be
very appropriate to the melancholy service, and
the sermon, which I had put together for the
occasion from Psalm 1. 22, 23, seemed to affect
the hearers, — may I hope not without edifica-
tion ? While I was thus engaged, Mr. John
Cosens, who had been absent, returned, and
heard with much satisfaction, of the very hospi-

•r^

SCENES or POVERTY.

table reception wliich his ** skipper " had given
me on my arrival.

Wednesday , 1 1. — He kindly took me, at nine,
A. M., of the next day, in a large western boat,
by the island of Meraiiheen, to the Isle of Valen,
where he has an establishment, and a very
pleasant neighbour in Mr. Isaac Moore, another
merchant. In my visits to the different cabins,
I was much shocked at the poverty of the
people, which wa? greater here, than any which
I had ever witnessed in Newfoundland. Some
married females in one house were literally
almost in a state of nudity ; their manifest want
of cleanliness, however, made it seem probable, —
as I was afterwards informed was the case, —
that part of their poverty might be traced to
mismanagement. It must be most distressing
to any merchant, or other settler, who is him-
self raised above poverty, and is possessed of
human feeling, to live in a place where the
improvidence of the people makes them so
wretchedly dependent, for a greater part of the
year, as the people are in this settlement.
While I am arranging these notes to send to
England, I have heard of the decease of one of

: i

SCENES OF POVERTY.

the wretched females mentioned above. I had
service in Mr. Cosens' house and a congregation
of thirty-five, baptized one child, and churched
the mother ; and the next day,

Thursday J 12. — Baptized three children at
their home, the mothers being too plainly with-
out sufficient clothing to permit their exposing
themselves to the air at this inclement season ;
returned thanks, with the mothers, for their
preservation in child-bed, and held another full
service to forty. One tilt was visited by me in
this island, the dimensions of which were only
twelve feet by ten, and I found living in it a
man and his wife, — the master and mistress of
the house, — two married daughters with their
husbands and children, amounting, in all, to
fifteen souls ! I found a fine old widow lady
here who has forty grandchildren living : her
feelings had been severely tried at the death of
her husband, to whom she had been many years
allied, and was fondly attached. She had, in
early youth, been a Romanist, but from convic-
tioii had renounced the errors of that faith, and
attached herself to the church of her husband.
On her making the anxious inquiry of her hus-

DEATH-BED SCEWE.

band on his death-bed, " Whether he would
like to turn ?" he, affixing a very different mean-
ing to her affectionate inquiry, than that which
merely implied his being turned in his bed,
begged that the poor woman would go out of
his sight, and not disturb his last moments,
adding, " that he had occasionally before
doubted the sincerity of her professed conver-
sion, but he had rather have cherished the delu-
sion to the last, than have been thus cruelly
undeceived at such a moment !"

Friday f 13. — Went off on a bitter cold morn-
ing, in a bait skiff, two hours* sail to Clatters'
Harbour, at the back of the Isle of Valen. The
slob and swish ice becoming thicker, prevented
our getting up the arm ; walked, in conse-
quence, to the head of the north-east passage,
by thickly wooded " gulshes," three miles or
more ; thence across a neck of land to Chand-
ler's Harbour in Paradise Sound, about one
mile ; thence I went along the hills by the
shore, towards the south-east bight, which I
had hoped to reach by night. W^e got be-
nighted, however ; the moon became obscured,
and as a drift cauie on, with a drizzling snow

NIGHT FIRES.

and rain, we made a nigiit fire. For feeding
this, we felled in the course of the night, a suf-
ficient quantity of spruce and birch to have
made a most shady retreat in a space equal to
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and there we waited for
the dawn. This is a more accurate account of
such a night, than it would be to record that we
had slept in the woods ; for the traveller, lying
on a few fir branches upon the snow, freezes on
one side, while the blazing flame scorches him
on the other. I did not, at this early period of
my cruise, understand so well, as I afterwards
did, the plan of making a fire in the woods ; and
in my hurry to greet the welcome sight of a
cheerful fire, by which I might break the fast
which I had kept since seven in the morning, I
had neglected the necessary preliminary of dig-
ging out a hole in the eight feet of snow, which
were on the ground. The immense fire which
we kindled, for want of this precaution, con-
tinued to melt down the snow, lower and lower
by degrees, till, before the dawn of morning, I
was left to the action of the piercing winds, on
the top of a bank of snow, the fire being in a
hole much below my level, and only benefiting
me by its smoke, which threatened to blind, as

RED COVE.

well as to stifle me. I may mention, that the
first tree, which I felled, nearly demolished my
faithful dog which accompanied me, as it fell
across the terrified creature's loins ; the soft
newly-fallen snow, however, offered no resist-
ance to his body, but sunk under his weight, so
that he received no injury.

Saturday y 14. — In the morning started in
the sleet and rain, and in a very wet condition
from my last night's lair, to find the south-east
bight, and was more successful in my search
than the preceding evening. I was most hu-
manely entertained by a Roman Catholic plan-
ter, Handlin and his wife, at whose house I
dried and warmed myself, and after breakfast,
was put over the bight in a punt, whilst it was
blowing very heavily, and afterwards proceeded
on foot to the winter-house of Mr. William
Cooke, (of Biddestone, England) at Red Cove.
As Mrs. Cooke, much to my regret, had, on the
first intimation of my arrival, walked nearly
three miles to their summer residence at Adam's
Island, in Paradise Harbour, to receive me
there, I accompanied her husband to this place >
where he has been settled eighteen years,, an J

PUSHTU ROUGH.

lias a fine establishment. Finding that Mrs. C,
who is the mother of a very interesting family,
(if not a native,) was formerly a resident of
Liverpool, in Nova Scotia, to the inhabitants of
which place I am warmly attached, it was de-
lightful to me to have an opportunity of speak-
ing of scenes and persons which will ever be
dear to my memory.

Sunday J 15. — Rose with lassitude; read
prayers and a sermon to Mr. Cooke's family, his
neighbours being all Romanists.

Monday y 16. — Left Paradise Harbour at
eight, A.M., in a punt. Passed Nonsuch Har-
bour and Petit Forte without stopping, and got to
Pushthrough, between Little and Great Gallows
Harbour by eleven. Was reminded by an Irish
servant in the boat of the approaching festival
of St. Patrick, as he was exulting in alluding to
the quantity of spirits which would be drunk
before breakfast the next day, in Newfoundland,
in honour of the patron saint of the Emerald
Island. As there were no protestants residing
where I left the boat, I pushed on, starting by
the north-east brook, and walking till three p.m.

BAY DE LEAU.

I came out in the same little harbour, about
ten yards from the place we had started four
hours before. I persevered, made a second
trial, and threading our path through the thick
woods, without the vestige of a track, got at
length to the ice on Bay de I'Eau, beyond Little
Harbour ; followed, upon the ice of the bay,
nearly nine miles, and came to the winter- tilt of
William Chick, of Oderin, by half-past eight,
P.M. I had discovered this cabin by the
*' flankers," or bright sparks, which flew up his
chimney to some height in the clear star-lit sky,
from his brisk birch fire. As 1 had fully ex-
pected to pass another night in the woods in
my wearied and wet condition, I was most
thankful to discover these welcome signs of our
proximity to some human abode. None but
those who have traversed unknown woods in the
untracked snow, can conceive the joy with
which the sight of the track of a human foot,
or of a racket,* is welcomed, even though such
tracks, being only of persons who have been
** rummaging," or searching for fire-sticks of

* Rackets are used for walking over the snow, as they
throw the weight of the hody over a large space, and thus
render persons less liable to sink.

•

. \

CHICK S TILT.

timber in the woods, may again and again have
raised deceptive hopes, respecting their leading
immediately to some habitation or settlement.
Even the sight of a ** whiting" in the woods,
that is, of a tree stripped of its bark for the
uses of the fishery, which tells of the place's
having been visited, though in the preceding
summer, or a year or two before, by the foot of
man ; — the marks, even, of the axe, where tim-
ber has, in former years, been cut and carried
away, seem to remind the lone traveller of the
link which binds him to the rest of his species.
I lost no time, on my arrival at Chick's, in
assembling fourteen persons, from his and the
adjoining tilts, to full service ; and after some
very seasopa)|le refreshment, slept soundly, on
a bed which my kind hostess had spread by the
fire upon the floor for me. She begged me to
send her some books, observing, '* I am fond of
church books ; a neighbour of mine * faults' the
church-catechism in his talk, sir; but to my
belief, though I am no scholar, there is not like
to be a better." The women in Placentia Bay
are very industrious and neat in their work.
They plait bonnets and hats of the shavings of
birch, cut very thin, like what I have seen in

BAY DE L ARGENT.

England, made of the cuttings of stiff paper. I
was glad to procure a pair of ** cuffs," or mit-
tens, made in th*s bay, of a kind of thick
woollen or swan-skin : these, with ear-caps, which
they also make and ovnament very neatly, are
most essential to the comfort of those who ven-
ture on any out-of-door exercise or employ-
ment in winter. I had undertaken to go, the
next morning.

Tuesday, 18, — to the island of Oderin ; but
the wind being too wild, I started by land,
at half-past nine, over the country, steering
nearly north-west by my chart and compass, for
the south shore of Fortune Bay. I was the less
anxious to visit Burin or Fortune, as I learned
that there were very worthy Wesleyan Mis-
sionaries in these districts. I came out at
Bay de I'Argent, by three p.m., down a rapid
brook, which had a fall of water in it, and
marks of a recent freshet in immense " clumpets"
of ii.e, a yard and a half thick, which had been
carried a hundred yards into the v/oods on each
side, thirty feet above the usual channel of the
brook, forcing down large trees, scraping the
bark from the trunks of others, and bending the

E 2

MHMBil

SUFFERERS FROM FROST.

Ill '

/' n

smaller stems to its current. I could never have
imagined, had I not seen such evidence, that
the force of a casual fresh-water current could
be so great. I do ^ot notice the numerous
tracks of otters, beavers, foxes, deer, partridges,
and hares, which I am passing every day, but I
may notice here that the son of William Chick
and another youth had lately killed fourteen
deer, and that the families of Piper's Hole had
killed forty head of deer within a fortnight.

A man. Pitcher, formerly a servant at Bay
de TArgent, had, the preceding year, walked
across to this place from Placentia Bay, and
while the Fortune Bay people were in their win-
ter tilts, at a distance from their summer resi-
dences, had robbed their summer-houses, which
were situated upon the shore. On his way
back, he had been arresteu by a storm, and was
providentially found by some deer-hunters, in a
frost-burnt state, or he must have perished.
Robert Swiers, of Hants Harbour, Trinity Bay,
who had been imprisoned in Harbour Grace
gaol. Conception Bay, for stealing a cow, met
his fate in a similar v/ay last winter (I learned
while I was in Trinity Bay), in attempting, after
his release from confinement, to get across the

,'rt-

^■tMif,,

FORTUNE BAY.

country from Conception Bay to his home in
Trinity Bay.

I was fortunate enough to come out upon the
shore in Fortune Bay, exactly where there were
houses, and a very decent young man, B. L. and
his wife, having only left their winter tilts that
morning, had cleaned up their neat summer
house, and lighted a good fire, as though for my
reception. I sent round to his neighbours to
give 'aotice of my intention to hold divine ser-
vice id his house the next morulng, and was de-
lighted to see the seriou? and intelligent manner
in which the children -vere taught to say their
grace before and after meat, and their morning
and evening prayers. My eyes, which have
been much tried by the glare of the sun upon
the snow, and by the cutting winds abroad, are
further tried within the houses by the quantity
of smoke, or " cruel steam," as the people em-
phatically and correctly designate it, with
which every tilt is filled. The structure of the
winter tilt, the chimney of which is of upright
studs, stuffed or " stogged" between with moss,
is so rude, that in most of them in which I offi-
ciated the chimney has caught fire once, if not
oftener, during the service. When a fire is

TILTS TABLING FIRE.

kept up, which is not unusual, all night long, it
is necessary that some body should sit up, with a
bucket of water at hand, to stay the progress of
these frequent fires ; am old gun-barrel is often
placed in the chimney corner, which is used as
a syringe or diminutive fire-engine, to arrest the
progress of these flames ; or masses of snow are
placed on the top of the burning studs, which, as
they melt down, extinguish the dangerous ele-
ment. The chimneys of the summer houses in For-
tune Bay are better fortified against the danger,
being lined within dl Ui way up with a coating
of tin, which is found «.> last for several years.

/^'^^^

Wednesday f 18. — So much snow and drift
during the night, and still falling, that the
walk of yesterday would have been quite im-
practicable to-day. A congregation of twelve
adults assembled to full service ; four baptisms.
At twelve started for Bay D'Este, which would
have been a distance of four miles in a punt;
this conveyance, however, being unsafe, I was
obliged to go by land, a distance of ten miles, by
Little Barrisway, and Salmonier and Shagrock
Pond, to which there is anotfecf path from the
beach, beaten like a foot-road, and a beaver-

BAY D ESTE.

house upon the pond. Some of our path was
over most difficult crags, by the land wash ; and
in one place we had to crawl upon our hands
and knees, through a hole in a hollow rock ; in
others we went under crags, from which heavy
icicles were pendent, resembling some mimic
Niagara, which had been caught and fixed by
the frost at mid-fall. It snowed and drifted,
and froze hard as at any time during the winter :
my sealskin cap, and the crape gauze veil,
which I wore for the protection of my eyes,
were stiflPened with the frost : my gloves and
handkerchief became masses of ice ; and, as it
was impossible to get off my sealskin mockasins,
which had worn out from walking over the icy
crags, which cuts frozen leather or skin like a
knife ; and consequently I could not change
them, though I was provided with a second
pair ; I was in more danger to-day than pro-
bably at any other period of my journey, of
being frost-burnt. Here I met I. W., an old
man from Sturminster, in Dorset, who reads the
church prayers to his neighbours on the Lord's
Day, and begged of me to send him a supply of
plain sermons, or, as he expressed it, " not too
high learnt." " I have often dropped tears on

.^.

U '0

GREAT FORCE OF

Sunday," said he, " to think of the church at
home, which I thought too little of when I was
there ; and often I have felt that I would have
given the heart out of my body, sir, to hear the
church prayers on the Lord's Day."

Full service. I endeavoured to remove here,
and in other places, an unfavourable impression
which some of the ignorant had conceived, and
some mischievous and interested traders had en-
couraged, respecting a supply of seed potatoes,
which, during the last year, had been sent by
the colonial government, for gratuitous distri^-
bution among the distressed inhabitants of this
and the other bays of the island. The potatoes
Scat did not suffice for the supply of all who
needed them, and those which respectable mer-
chants imported for sale, or transported from
St. John's, and sold from their own stores, were
alleged to be part of the gratuitous supply fur-
nished by Government. I saw here again some
remarkable signs of the powers of a late freshet
from the thawed snow. At Long Harbour,
however, a brook, thus swollen, forced a passage
quite through Pyramid's Island, which was
mid-stream, and on which was a house with
eight men in it ; and brought down stocks of

, .;;iti-a.iwjyc;ii;«f!.a»n.«v_.

THE FRESHETS.

trees, of forty and fifty feet in length, and
of proportionate thickness, Clumpets of ice,
three feet in thickness, swept over the house in
which the men were, who were obliged, poor
fellows! to sit astride upon the rafters, like
fowls in a roost, to escape drowning till the fury
of the freshet abated ; this force of the river by
which they were invaded, and of the two side-
streams, denying them all chance of earlier
escape from the island.

Thursday y 19. — Froze as hard as on any
night during the winter. Baptized a child and
churched the mother before leaving Bay d'Este
for Shelter Point, where I proposed holding
prayers, that an aged woman of eighty-six, a
native of Placentia Bay, who had never seen
any clergyman, might have the privilege of
joining in common prayer, which she seemed to
value much. Full service to eighteen, and one
baptism. Started in a sailing punt, at one,
P.M., passed Cape Mille on the south, and Grand
le Pier on the north, by a very remarkable cliff,
on the surface of which is a spot which exhibits
a beautiful grass-green appearance, — to the set-
tlement at the very bottom of F?'*tune Bay>

^-:.*'

JAMES MILES, AND

' I

(which resembles Tickle Harbour, in Trinity
Bay,J twelve miles. Here, a mile and a half up
the ice, I found James Miles, from Shaftsbury,
Dorset, the father of the settlement. He had
been fifty-six years in Newfoundland, and had
never before seen a clergyman. He reads on
Sundays to the surrounding families, which are
chiefly from his own stock, although to his grief,
some, having intermarried with Roman Catholics,
have declined attendance on the service of our
liturgy. I had full service here at eight, p.m.,
and baptized two of his children. Here, for the
first time, I witnessed the inconvenience and the
pain which those suffer who labour under what
is called " snow blindness ;" two of his sons,
who had been deer-hunting, having come home
affected with this painful visitation, which I was
doomed shortly afterwards to experience myself.
The thrifty people in this bay endure, perhaps,
greater hardships and privations, than any in
this trying island. They continue catching fish
till Christmas, when the fish generally failing
for a season, they avail themselves of this
respite, to do their winter's work in making
boats, &c. They begin fishing again, at the
latest, by Lady-day. It is exceedingly deep

r ■■

HIS FAMILY.

water in which they fish, by which the labour is
much increased. The fishing lines freeze as
they draw them out of the water; after the first
fish is caught, they throw them into the water
coiled, that they may thaw in the sea. I have
myself seen the fish as soon as they have been
taken out of the water, turn up from the cold
and die immediately, stiflT frozen, and could not
but pity the poor men who were subject to such
exposure in rough weather.

Friday, 20. — ^Two feet of fresh snow and
a severe gale. Walked one mile and a half to
James Miles, jun. and held full service, bap-
tizing: three children and churching the mothers
of the two youngest. Good old Miles, in the
freedom which the most devout will feel, during
the performance of a religious service in a
humble tilt, when I came to the charge which
closes the oflfice of baptism, respecting the
bringing of the children at a proper age, and on
their obtaining a proper proficiency, to be con-
firmed by the bishop, devoutly exclaimed aloud,
" Ah ! there's no possibility for that in these
parts ; — the more's the pity ! but, please God,
we'll do our best." I could not but remind

■ y T

.;■. •■;■'? ;;;

\
\

LE CONTE.

him, that our merciful God makes requirement
only according to what we have, and not ac-
cording to what we have not.

Sunday, 22. — Up by five, aijd went at eight
in a boat to English Harbour. There was a
great deal of thin slob ice, and the "barber"*
vapor was very cutting : reached the settlement
at half-past ten, held full service, and baptized
seven children. Started at a quarter- past three
in a leaky punt, and reaching Femme by five,
P.M., baptized five children for one Kippen, and
passing New Harbour, and Little Bay de I'Eau,
reached Le Conte, nine miles, where, a mile up
the woods, I got, by seven, p.m., to the winter
house of a large family. There I held full service
and baptized eight children. Here were sixteen
souls in a tilt of sixteen feet by twelve feet ten.

Monday, 23. — Another deep fall of snow in
the night, sleet driving to-day, and walking
quite impracticable. I got, with difficulty, over
a very steep and slippery hill from the tilt to the

• A vapour of icy particles, occasioned by the tempera-
ture of the water being much warmer than the air, the
caloric escaping from it forms a congealed atmosphere.

;gaai"»r»' ." ' -""" r' J u; '! ', ' . ' ■ ' ^■'^H" "". ' - ' •- U f * ""^- , 'J'V^'t^-

RENCONTRE.

Harbour Le Conte, when I took boat to go
along the shore. As the equinoctial gale was
very violent, we could not carry our foresail,
and were obliged to go under a goose wing.
Got by eleven, to Pinkey's Storehouse, at the
east head of Mai Bay, which I was very happy
to reach, as we had to steer with an oar, instet\d
of a rudder, the boat which had been recently
launched, having not yet been supplied with
one ; and we shipped many sprays, which, as
they froze immediately after falling upon our
clothes, would have chilled the ardour of the most
warm admirer of English aquatics. Held full ser-
vice here to Mr. Newman and his men-servants.

Tuesday i 24. — Wind westerly and high ; but,
as the people here are experienced and used
to keep out in boats, through the winter, and
were not afraid to go in the teeth of it a league
to Rencontre, I did not object, and reached the
family of Mr. B. C, by half-past ten, a.m.
Full service, two children baptized; sorry to
observe some levity here, as I had in some other
places, among the elder children. A company
of six men had gone, last month, into the
country from this neighbourhood, in search of

iii

\'-

BALORIN.

'./'

i li

deer, when falling in with a herd of about one
hundred and fifty, they had followed them till
they were caught in a snow-storm, and very
narrowly escaped with their lives, all six being
more or less frost-burnt.

Wednesday , 25. — Wind off the shore ; up at
five, A.M., and off" at six. It froze hard enough
to stop the leaks in a very leaky boat in which I
was conveyed by Rencontre Island, past Belle
Harbour and East Bay, above two leagues
to Noster Cove, Long Island. Here I landed
my men, to give ' *ice to the people at Corbin
of my intention to hold divine service in the
P.M., at Balorin, and I held full service here to
twenty adults, and baptized twenty-two chil-
dren ; left at one, p.m. for Balorin, a neat set-
tlement, where are one hundred and fifty souls.
I found the settlement in much confusion upon
my arrival, from the furious conduct of two
drunken men ; but order was restored, and
I held full service to more than one hundred,
and baptized eight, not closing service until
eight, P.M. The settlements in this neighbour-
hood are very populous. There are, in this
bay, at least three thousand persons, who are
warmly attached to the church of England.

, i.\

MRS. CLUATT.

Thursday f 26. — Found that the wife of John
Cluatt, my host, was an old correspondent, who
had assisted her grandfather Beck, and her
father Tulk, late readers under the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, in keeping school
at St. Lawrence, in Placentia Bay. She told
me with tears, that next to the death of her
father, she had felt it the greatest calamity in
her life, that, on her removing at marriage to
her present place of residence, she had not been
permitted, so great was the scarcity of books in
lier native settlement, to take with her her
prayer-book and some other works of the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, with which
I had supplied her some years before. The
Reverend Messrs. Harris and Evans, former
Missionaries at Placentia, had, within the
memory of the most aged inhabitants, visited
Balorin ; and, since my own residence in New-
foundland, our Missionary, the Reverend Jam s
Robertson, had visited the place, and given me
a very accurate description of it, and of its
interesting inhabitants. I held a full service
again to-day,

Friday^ 27. — And baptized four more chil-

PROVIDENTIAL ESCAPE.

dren. I was sorry to omit visiting the adjoining
settlement of St. Jacques, but I did not think it
prudent to lose what seemed a fine opportunity,
of going in a bank boat, twenty-one miles to
Harbour Briton. We started at eleven a.m.,
and did not reach Harbour Briton till two
A.M, of the next day,

: (.

Saturday, 28. — when the Swift, our boat,
which had not shown any great quantity of
water upon our passage, nearly sunk at the wharf,
and was found, on her being hauled up, to have
been stove in launching. A large hole in her
bottom, into which the hand might be thrust, and
which let in water in such quantity, that the
pump could not now keep her clear, had been
covered with a coating of ice through the
extreme severity of the weather. This coating
had, providentially, not melted or worn away
during our beat against a head-wind in Fortune
Bay the whole of the preceding day, or we must
have sunk before we could have reached the
shore. Here I was confined two or three days
with a diarrhoea, which, I find, is a very com-
mon disorder at this season among those whose
diet is confined to the venison which abounds
hereabouts. \

II !

BRUNETTE ISLAND.

Sunday, 29. — ^Two full services in the sail-
room of Messrs. Newman and Hunt, which had
been fitted up with house-flags for the occasion.
The agents of this firm, here and at Gualtois,
seemed to vie with each other, as to which should
carry the kind wishes of their principals most
into effect, by paying me the most kind
attention ; and showed every disposition, by
sending notices to the surrounding settlements
of my intention of service, to make my visit
most useful ; — baptized one child publicly, and
three at home. Preparations were made, and as
much as 70/., I believe, collected for the erection
of a church here, when the Reverend James
Robertson visited this place, and a good site
was fixed for the building.

Monday J 30. — Sailed at ten, a. m., in the Paul
Pry, a sloop of forty-seven tons, in which Mr.
Creed, agent to Messrs. Newman, had kindly
forwarded me to Gualtois. I was sorry that I
was preven ed visiting Jersey Harbour, an estab-
lishment in the neighbourhood, belonging to the
Messrs. Nicol, of Jersey. Called at Brunette
Island, twelve miles, at half-past two, p. m., and
after holding full service to eighteen persons,

GUALTOIS.

^ t

and baptizing five children, weighed anchor at
six, p. M. Here we saw the wreck of the Royal
Nigger, a fine vessel of the Messrs. Newmans,
which had run ashore at this place on her way
to St. John's, about Christmas last, and which,
I regret to say, the people, instead of protecting
as they might have done for its owners, had
been unprincipled enough to plunder and break
up. We beat against a head-wind through the
night, and got to Hermitage Cove, Hermitage
Bay, a place which I had visited five years ago.

Tuesday, 31. — -I held full service there, bap-
tized nine children in public, and one in pri-
vate, and visited a sick man. Left Hermitage
Cove for Gualtois, Long Island, the whaling
establishment of Messrs. Newman, which I
reached in a storm of rain, by half-past three.
My visits to the settlements in this neighbour-
hood were much aided by the kindness of Mr.
William Gallop, who was formerly a pupil of
the free naval school attached to Greenwich
Hospital, and now fills very ably the responsible
station of agent to this r€?spectable establishment.

April, Wednesday, 1. — It did not clear up

OLAVE S COVE.

till ten, A. M., when I started in the Paul Pry
sloop, accompanied by Mr. Gallop, and Mr.
Thomas Gaden, the sub-collector of His Majes-
ty's Customs, who had come on with me from
Harbour Briton. I passed Furby's Cove, send-
ing the inhabitants notice of my intention to
hold service there in the evening, upon my re-
turn ; and I proceeded eight miles to Olave's
Cove, which I reached before the sloop, in Mr.
Gallop's light eight-oared gig, and had assem-
bled the three resident families for service by
the time of her arrival ; — baptized five children
in full service. I was glad to find here a few
copies of ** Bishop Blomfield's Prayers," and
some other books of the Societv for Promoting
Christian Knowledge. A clergyman in the
neighbourhood of Sturminster, had sent them
out to one of the planters, who had very pro-
fitably dispersed them among the settlers around
him. How much, under God, do this and
similar societies effect towards keeping up a
knowledge of Christian doctrine, and Christian
requirements in these spiritually destitute set-
tlements ! I left this place at four, and got to
Furby's Cove by five, p. m. I held full service
to sixty persons ; baptizing fifteen children.

F 2

I i

1 1

t-H

FURBY S COVE.

The people of this neighbourhood are very
warmly attached to the church of their fathers,
and, when asked respecting their creed, say,
they belong to ** the good old English religion ;"
and I believe that, in the main, removed as they
are from all social means of edification, some
of them really adorn their good profession,
although the too general prevalence of spirit-
drinking, even among the females, is much to
be lamented. When it is considered in England,
that the original settlers of some of these places
possessed, on coming out to this country, only
the common modicum of attainments which fell
to the lot of the inhabitants of English villages,
before the institution of Sunday-schojls, it may
be conceived, what the third and fourtli gene-
ration in many such places is likely to ha.

Retuined to Gualtois in the eight-oared gig,
as Ave had dismissed the sloop on night's com-

ing on.

Thursday, 2. — Officiated to a ver^ attentive
congregation of twenty, in a loft which Mr.
William Gallop had fitted up so neatly, that I
regretted being obliged to leave the place before
Sunday. Oflfat ten, a. m., through the Passage,

l(,n

BAY DESPAIR.

between Long Island and the Main. In this
passage there are two waterfalls : one so fine,
that we rested upon our oars, for some minutes,
to look at its unceai5ing flow of water, in an
unbroken perpendicular fall of at least sixty
feet. At one part of the tickle, where the hills
were wooded close to the margin of the water,
we came to ice, at the edge of which persons
were engaged in boats, fastened to the ice by
keel-logs, catching codfish. We hauled our gig
over the ice, and again proceeded, and with
difficulty got round Bremner's Head and to
Cape St. Mark, on the opposite shore of Bay
Despair. Besides a drizzling rain, the salt
spray was thrown over us, and deposited so
much salt upon our faces and clothes, that we
were whitened like millers. We passed Same-
lin Passage, which was filled with ice, Is^e
Richards, Conne Head, and Diamond Point to
Rottie Point, twenty-three miles. There we
met with so much ice, that we drew the boat up
and left her, and Avalked ourselves upon the
ice ; this, from the rain which had fallen, was
not quite trust- worthy. We got safely, how-
ever, past the opening of Little River and Conne
River to Messrs. Newman's winter crew, ten

- #

.--ll- ■>»./!;:<

vrr-ra. *i .

PROPOSED ROUTE

men, and a skipper, who were in a tilt twenty
by fifteen, near the head of the south-east arm
of Bay Despair, thirty-two miles from Gualtois,
which I had left in the morning. After great
difficulties we reached their tilt, by ten, ?. m.
They had all retired for rest ; a fire was soon
made, however, of wich-hazel sticks, two yards
in length, and thick as our bodies, and by the
fire's red glare, the men in their red or blue
woollen shirts, as they came forward to welcome
us, and could be discovered through the smoke,
presented a very grotesque appearance.

My intention being to visit the southern and
western shore of Newfoundland, far as the Bay
of Islands, or at least, St. George's Bay, I had
thought that it would economize time, if I went
through the interior from the Bay Despair, a
journey of eight or nine days overland, and so
return by the settlements along the coast. By this
arrangement, I should, after visiting the extreme
point of my intended cruize, have been proceed-
ing nearer to St. John's, by each day's journey
along the shore, and should not have had to touch
twice at any one place. For this purpose I hired,
on the Bay Despair, Maurice Louis, a Micmac
Indian, one of Mr. Cormack's suite, when he

TO ST. JOHN S.

t twenty
east arm
jualtois,
ter great
n, ?. M.
as soon
^0 yards
I by the
or blue
k^elcome
smoke,

Jrn and
he Bay
I had
I went
5air, a
ind so
3y this
'treme
)ceed-
urney
touch
fiired,
cmac
n he

had been similarly engaged ; Jean Baptiste, Mr.
Cormack*s principal guide was, at this time, at
the back of the land, as they term that part of
the island which is about the river Exploits, in
the north. The Indians also call the river Exploits
the Spread, from the size of the stream. He
returned within a few days, having been con-
fined a week in the country from snow blindness.
The guide whom I had now added to my other
iuan, as my escort through the country, had
once walked in the depth of the winter, from the
Exploits across the island to Gualtois in four
days. Many have compared my own visitation
to the excursion of Mi. Cormack, an enterprising
individual, whom I remember having seen at
St. John's when I visited Newfoundland in
1827. It has not, I should imagine, been very
dissimilar ; and it would, indeed, be a matter of
regret, if the zeal of a Missionary could not
induce him to make as much exertion, and to
endure as much privation, as others would
brave in the pursuit of philosophical research, or
the gratification of mere curiosity.

Friday f 3. — Full service to the winter crew
at half-past seven, a. m., before they went into

WANT OF CALENDARS.

the woods for their winter work. Here, and at
other winter houses, I saw a rude calendar ; it
was a piece of board, on which was carved an
initial letter for each day of the week, thus,
S. M. T. W. T. F. S. Under these letters the
date of the month was chalked afresh at the
beginning of each week. The monotony of a
Newfoundland planter's life is remarkable. I
met on my journey with pious persons, who
had occasionally, from want of such a calendar
as I have described above, so miscalculated
the lapse of time, that they had scrupulously
abstained from work on Saturday or Monday,
supposing it to be Sunday. At two I started
with my Indian pilot ; but we got no further
than the bottom of this arm. Here were the
wigwams of two Indian families of the Banokok
tribe, or Six Nations, from Canada, and my
guide requested that he might be allowed to
stay the night, that he might repair his mocka-
sins and make other preparations for his journey.
Here I met with an interesting Indian, from
Conne River, five miles hence ; his ascetic acts,
and acts of real humanity, had acquired for
him a character of holiness, and a great influence
over his tribe. He was, at this time, under a

I ill

i\i\

ASCETIC INDIAN.

self-imposed vow, not to break silence during
the Fridays of Lent : accordingly, though the
arrival of strangers was, of course, most exciting,
and might have been expected to throw him
off his guard, he exhibited a degree of impassive-
ness and of nervous control (as he lay smoking
his short blackened pipe, with his feet towards
the central fire,) which were quite wonderful. I
really imagined that the man was dumb. His
imperturbability was the more surprising as he
had it in his power, I found afterwards, by
merely opening his mouth, to have exposed an
act of rascality which had been practised upon
him by a person present, who, had he left, as he
was expected to have done, before dawn the
next day, might have escaped detection. The
spruce boughs in these wigwams were spread,
like feathers, around the firf which was in the
centre. Towards this our feet were directed ;
the softest and cleanest deer-skin was most
courteously offered to me, and I passed the
night very comfortably. I learned from Maurice
Louis, that Zeul prestoul, in their language
signified " God save you !" and a la zeud mat,
*' let us praise God !" but that they had no
word for prayer. This instance of the poverty

^y »l^ ^m^iw*r" -

-.-■ ij ■

INDIAN MANNERS.

of their language, if, indeed, we understood
each other rightly, is the most extraordinary,
since they certainly are no strangers to prayer.
My Irish pilot, whom I shall so call, to dis-
tinguish him from Maurice Louis, my Indian
guide, informed me that, while he was four
years with Brazil, an Indian chief, this Micmac
never allowed his family to commence their
day's hunting, or to lie down upon their green
boughs at night, without prayer ; and I found,
while I was myself among them, that the Indians
were very regular in their evening and morning
devotions and attention to their rosaries, and
that, as they are Romanists, they were very
particular in carrying their children over to the
Romish priest at the French island of St. Peter's
for baptism. The females particularly had a
soft melodious hum in which they chanted with
much seeming devotion, every night before they
gave themselves to rest.

Saturday, 4. — I started at half-past six into
the interior. Two Indian squaws accompanied
us, and two other Indians, as twenty deer, some
of which they wanted to carry out, were buried
in the snow, one day's journey directly upon

SNOW-SHOES.

our track. It is a singular fact, which the In-
dians related to me, that bears and wolves have
so great a dislike to the branches of the juniper,
that if a few of them are stuck in the snow
where the venison is deposited, they effectually
preserve it from the depredations of these ani-
mals.

The Indian squaws pleased me ifiuch by their
natural courtesy. Though walking above a
hundred miles in Indian rackets or snow-shoes
has made me now somewhat expert in the use
of them, it may be imagined that I was at first,
indeed I must be still, very awkward in them, by
the side of an Indian. Being thirty-three inches
in length, and eighteen inches broad, and weigh-
ing each of them twenty ounces, even before
they are saturated with wet, they occasioned me
many falls and disasters. This was especially
the case in descending very steep hills, or going
upon the thin ice of Long Pond, which broke
in under our weight. The water which had
collected to the depth of a foot or a foot and a
half on the top of the ice of some of the large
lakes, had its own coat of ice, and although the
safety of the traveller is not endangered by the
weakness of this upper ice, his expedition is

RESTING FOR THE KIGIIT,

very much impeded. Though noisy in their
mirth at their own disasters, these Indians were
courteous' as French people could have been, in
rendering me every assistance in my difficulties.
We pitched for the night near the Bay of East-
brook. A description of the process of making
our temporary place of rest for this night may
suffice for the description of our similar arrange-
ments during the week. The snow being at
least ten feet deep, a rude shovel is first cut out
of the side of some standing tree, which is
split down with a wedge ^ade for the purpose.
Snow does not adhere to wood as it does to an
iron shovel, consequently a wooden shovel is
preferable for the purpose of shovelling out the
snow. The snow is then turned out for the
space of eight or ten feet square, according to
the number of the company which requii s ac-
commodation. When the snow is cleared away,
quite to the ground, the wood is laid on the
ground for the fire. About a foot of loose snow
is left in the cavern round the fire. On this
the spruce of fir branches, which break oflf
very easily when bent hastily downwards, are
laid all one way, featherwise, with the lower
part of the bough upwards. Thus the bed is

SNOW CAVERN3. 77

made. Some of these boughs are also stuck
upright on the snow against the wall of snow by
the side of the cavern, and a door or opening
is left in the wall of snow for the bringing in
during the night the birch-wood for burning,
which is piled up in heaps close by for the
night's supply, that any who may be awake
during the night may bring it in as it is required.
Here the traveller lies with no covering from
the weather, or other shelter than the walls of
snow on each side of his icy cavern and sur-
rounding trees may supply. Of course as the
laborious exercise during the day is sufficiently
heating, and he is unwilling unnecessarily to
increase his burden, he has no great coat or
cloak for wrtpping up at night. A yellow
fungus whici rows on the wich-hazel supplies
tinder to the li.dian, wno is never without flint
and steel, and he is remarkably expert in vi-
brating moss and dry leaves and birch bark
rapidly tiiro igh the air iti his hands, which,
soon after the application of a spark, ignite
and make a cheerful blaze. One who passes
a night in the v/oods in the winter must halt
by K r P.M., for by the time the hole in the
snow ,i dug, and a sufficient number of trees

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SNOW CAVERNS.

are felled, and cut up to serve for the sup-
ply of fuel for the night, it will have become
dark. One of these resting-places, in which
the snow was deeper than usual, reminded me
of a remarkable sight which I had witnessed
at Bermuda. There a sand, which was driven
by the wind from a neighbouring bank or shoal,
was making such rapid encroachments on the
cedar groves, upon a certain part of the main,
that several cedars were covered nearly to their
tops by the sand which was gradually accumu-
lating about them, clogging their branches, and
threatening eventually to cover them. Here,
as the fire melted our cave away, and enlarged
our chamber of ice, branches of verdant spruce,
fresh as when first covered in October and No-
vember, came forth to view several feet below
the surface of the snow, as the cedar branches
were observed to do from the sand in Bermuda.
There was no other point of similitude, however,
between this scene and that which it recalled to
my memory ; and grateful as a view of the green
landscapes of Bermuda might have been to the
eye, a few hours of its Favonian breezes would
have placed me in no very agreeable condition.
The correct and modest deportment of the

INDIAN MANNERS AND COOKERY.

squaws who were in our company here and in
the wigwams, was highly creditable to them. I
had met with dormitory arrangements in our
own planters' houses, of so promiscuous a de-
scription, that my Irish guide, who had lived
four years with Indians, expressed his surprise
at a want of delicacy which he had never seen
among the Micmacs ; but I could not have ima-
gined, had I not myself witnessed it, that this
people could have shown so much delicacy and
propriety of conduct as I observed among them,
wherever I met with them. I have the squaws
chiefly in view in this remark ; but I have never
seen any of the men otherwise than well be-
haved, except when they have been under the
influence of liquor. To the immoderate use of
this they are too generally strongly addicted.
There are gratifying -exceptions;, however. I had
been supplied, by the kindness of Mr. Gallop,
with some port wine, some of which I offered to
my Indian guide, but I found that his notions of
fasting were so correct, that they extended to
all indulgences, and during Lent he declined
tasting even wine : some of them during that
season forego smoking. The Indians dress
their venison on skewers of wood, which they

■•■' f

••^>

\\t

1 1

1 J!

i i..

NIGHT-SCENE.

Stick in the ground around the fire. They
plaited for me a basket-like mat, of small spruce
boughs, to serve as a plate. In this they served
me with the deer*s heart, as the most delicate part
of the animal. The intense cold made the trees
crack, with a report, in the silence of the night,
as though struck with an axe ; my watch also,
under the same influence, became of little use,
— a most serious inconvenience when traversing
the country in a season when the days are so
short, and a little miscalculation may occasion
the traveller's being benighted before he is pre-
pared.

Sunday, 5. — At half-past six, a.m., I took
leave of the two Indians and the young squaws,
who were now returning, and as I parted from
them, I felt that I should miss those musical
prattlers; for their soft language, though I could
not understand a word of it, had fallen very
gratefully upon the ear in the stillness of a night
in the forest. I had been induced, too, on the
preceding night to creep out a little distance
from the fire, that T might enjoy the picturesque
effect of our little group, as the stars were
twinkling in the broad arch of heaven, and the

FACE OF THE COUNTRY.

smoke was curling through the evergreen
branches which were enlivened by the ruddy
glare of our brisk five ; and, as I heard the light
laugh, and caught the good 'humoured faces of
my companions, I had felt that when they left
us, I should retain all the privations and lose all
which probably might have given some charm to
such a tour. We saw tracks of deer every
twenty yards as we passed through the country ;
so numerous were they at last, that we ceased
to take any notice of them ; herds of deer be-
came themselves objects of very frequent occur-
rence. They offered a very interesting sight.
The whole interior, with the exception of the
tops of some of the hills, from which the snow
had melted, was then white with snow. These
bare spots upon the hills are called " naps :"
though they are brown, and not green, they re-
semble island meadows in an ocean of snow.
On these the deer were grazing leisurely like
cattle. They were travelling in quest of food
from one of these naps to another. The par-
tridges, or ptarmigans, were also very numerous
upon these hills, searching for a species of cran-
berry, which is called here, the partridge-berry,
in places near water, which, after long frost,

BLINDNESS, AND

becomes exceedingly scarce in the interior, the
tracks of the deer were as thick, as of cattle in
the snow in a well stocked farm-yard. I was
obliged, in going through the country, to fasten
my terrier, which accompanied me, to my belt,
as he would follow upon scent of the deer, and
be lost to me for two and three hours at a time;
and though I had no fear but that he would
come up with us again, he would, if let loose,
have effectually prevented our coming within
shot of any deer or ptarmigan. For three days
we were favoured with very brilliant weather, and
made so much progress upon the hard snow, that
I believe we were one-third of our way across
to Bay St. George, having got within sight of the
Catt Aeau Hills. A field of white paper, varied
only by an occasional blot of the pen, with the
full glare of the bright sun upon it all day, and
the red glare of the fire all night, to say nothing
of the effect of the wind by day and of the wood
smoke, or *' cruel steam" by night, may give
some idea of the constant trial to which our eyes
were subjected.

Monday i 6. — By night we felt our eyes very

weak.

OTHER DISTRESSES.

Tuesday,!. — The whole three of us were
affected with a gritty, gravelly sensation in the
eye, and were, at length, completely deprived
of the power of sight. Our provisions, too,
over which the Indian who was cook, had, with
the usual improvidence of his race, not been
sufficiently economical, were just out. In a
country which abounds with game, and in which
it is so difficult to travel even without any bur-
den, none think of carrying provisions for more
than a day or two into the interior with them ;
but neither the pilots nor I could now see suf-
ficiently to use a gun, or bear indeed to look
upwards. The Indian did try, but he came
back without success, although he met with
many fresh tracks of deer, and heard many par-
tridges, and in the course of the night, deer had
evidently passed within twenty yards of our re-
treat. It became so thick, moreover, that, had
we been ever so little affected with snow-blind-
ness, we could not have seen more than a fevv
yards, and could not consequently have made
any way in an unknown country. Our Indian
guide, while he was in search of deer, nearly
lost all track of us, when, our allowance of food
being exceedingly scanty, our situation seemed

SUFFERINGS FROM

^^^

II?'

• //

likely to be very deplorable. All Tuesday we
rested in our icy chamber. What an oratory
was it for the prayers of two or three, who were
surely agreed touching what they would ask of
their Father in heaven. The ejaculations, ** give
us this day our daily bread," and " lighten our
darkness," commanded a ready response. Such
place might be a Bethel, and there may be sea-
sons in the lives of those who travel, and scenes
such as these, of which they may afterwards say,
that the Lord was by them in the wilderness,
and that it has been good for them to have been
there. Some natural tears may have mingled
with the water which the acrid vapour from the
smoke of the damp wood (for it now rained)
forced from my eyes, as T thought of the pro-
bable anxiety of my dear wife, and of the like-
lihood that ail my dreams of future useful
labours in the church might be thus fatally dis-
sipated. It was at length hinted by the Indian,
that my dog might make a meal ; and it is as
much that they may serve in such a season of
extremity, as for any fondness which they have
for the animal, or use they generally make of
them, that Indians are usually attended by
dogs of a mongrel breed. Had my Indian pilot

WANT OF PROVISIONS.

known the coast, we might have got to some
Indian wigwams in White Bear Bay, but he did
not like to attempt reaching that bay. The
straggling locations of these Indians along our
coast, reminded me much of the separation be-
tween Abraham and Lot. The reasons, in the
case of Indians, who separate son from father,
and brother from brother, that they may have
uninterrupted space for their hunting and fur-
ring excursions, are similar to those which led
the patriarchs to live apart, that they might have
ample space for their pastoral pursuits. A
large lake, inside of the Bay East, which J
passed, gave me the idea, with its precipitous
wooded cliffs, of an inland sea: the size of some
of the lakes or ponds of Newfoundland is im-
mense; a lake within the Bay of Islands, in
which are numerous seals the whole summer,
has an island of foTty miles extent in the midst
of it.

Wednesday, 8. — ^This morning, on finding the
weather still thick, I divided the bread-dust and
crumbs, all which now remained of our pro-
visions, not amounting altogether to more than
two biscuits, into three parts, and gave a part

> ^

FORCED TO RETURN.

\> (^:

to each of my guides, reserving a like share for
myself; and, as I had not the patent apparatus
with me for extracting bread from saw-dust,
though I saw the danger which must attend our
moving in such thick weather, and blind as we
all were, I perceived that we n^ust either make
an effort to return, or must starve where we
were. I proposed, therefore, to the Indian
pilot, that we should try to return to the spot
where we had left so much venison buried. At
first he hesitated ; but at length he agreed that
we should attempt it. A black gauze veil,
which I had kept over my eyes when the sun
was at its height, and the resolution to which
I had adhered of not rubbing my eyes, had
preserved me, perhaps, from suffering so much
from sun-blindness as my companions. Mau-
rice Louis, the Indian, would open his eyes
now and then to look at my compass ; — we
could not see for fog more than a hundred
yards ; he would fix on some object as far as the
eye could reach, and then shut his eyes again,
when I would lead him up to it. On reaching
it he would open his eyes again, and we would,
in the same manner, take a fresh departure. It
was literally a case in which the blind was

GREAT DISTRESS.

leader to the blind. The fog made our travel-
ling dangerous ; it did indeed occasion our
going astray ; but it was providentially favour-
able to us upon the whole ; for, had the sky
been clear, and the sun bright as when we set
out, we must have been incapacitated by our
sun-blindness from moving for a week at least,
and must have suffered much, if not fatally,
from want of food. By forced marches, — the
snow now being soft, and nearly the entire
distance to be travelled in rackets, in conse-
quence of which we could not make the same
expedition which we did as we came along, —
we were providentially enabled to reach by
seven or eight, p. m., the same places at which
we had halted at four each day on our outward
march. Thus a degree of labour, that of digging
and clearing, to which we were now quite
unequal, was spared us on our way back. The
small quantity of biscuit to which we were now
reduced, led me to advise my companions not
to eat any quantity at a time, but to take a
piece of the size of a nutmeg when hunger was
most craving. We did, indeed, gather each
day on our return, about as many partridge
berries as would fill a wine glass a-piece. These

WANT OF WATER.

we found very refreshing and nutritive. Having
been ripened in the fall of last year, and been
sh^iltered under the snow ail the winter, they
were, now that the snow melted away from
them, like preserved fruit in flavour, and re-
sembled a rich clarety grape. At night the
want of water is a great privation in this winter
travelling. At this season, if a lake or rivulet
chance to be near your resting place, it is, in all
probability, protected from invasion by so thick
a coat of ice that it would require some hours'
labour with a hatchet to get at it. A draught
of water, obtained at such a price of labour, to
guides already overwearied with carrying his
burden and hewing his wood, a humane man
would relish as little as Sir Philip Sydney
would have relished a selfish draught at'J^tphen, X ^ t
or David from the well of Bethlehem. (2 Sam.
xxiii. 15-17.) I contented myself, therefore,
with water supplied by snow, melted by the
smoky fire. This water, together with the wind,
had the effect of parching and cracking my
swollen lips to such a degree, that, when on
getting out of the country on the 10th, I again
saw my face, after an interval of eight days, in
a piece of broken glass, I had some difficulty

t*n,a*^

WOODPECKERS, ETC.

in recognizing my own features. The most
scorching heat in summer does not tan and
swell the face more than does the travelling in
the snow at this season. Under the combined
influence of the wind and sun, the skin peeled
off from my nose and ears, and the exposed parts
of the neck, as in summer.

Thursday J 9. — Still dismally thick weather ;
but we proceeded on our way in the same
manner as yesterday. The noise of the wood-
peckers upon the bark of the trees truly por-
tended rain, of which we were much afraid ; we
saw quantities of deer and ptarmigan, but,
though the fog favoured our weak sight much,
we could neither of us take a sight with the
lifted gun. At one place, we came upon the
recent tracks of wolves ; they had consumed or
dragged away all remains of a deer, except a
little hair from the skin, and some blood, by
■which the snow was stained. By night, through
God's most merciful protection, we reached
the place where the Indians had left so much
venison buried since Christmas. Much snow
having fallen to-day, our feet were chafed with

RED INDIANS.

the rackets on which we had to walk the whole
uay, heavy as they were from being clogged
with the newly fallen snow. My late trip into
the interior has strengthened the conviction,
which, from former journeys of the same kind, I
had formed, that the Boeothic, or Red Indians,
the aborigines of the island, must be extinct, I
have met with several of the Micraac Indians,
who are constantly traversing the interior ; none
of them have seen these aborigines of late years ;
and, from the nature of the interior, which does
not abound with wood, it is impossible that, if
they existed in the island, they could so long
have escaped observation. In the interior of the
island, the wood is so scarce, that I was more
than once obliged, when the time of putting up
for the night arrived, to look around for a suffi-
cient quantity of wood to give a shelter for the
night. Large expanses of country may be com-
manded at one view, and the fire of a company
of Boeothics would betray itself to the watchful
Micmac by its smoke, at the distance of several
miles. It may give some idea of the extent of
view which is commanded in certain situations,
if I mention, that from Webber's Hill, near

'.■f,-

REGAIN NEWMAN S TILT.

Little River, no fewer than one hundred and
eighty lakes may be seen with the naked eye at
one time.

Friday, 10. — Rackets again necessary to-day.
On coming out to the south-east brook of Bay
Despair, we found that the last few days of soft
weather had broker up the ice on which we had
walked at the end of last week, and made it
treacherous. It was now difficult and danger-
ous to get to the place where the wigwams of
the Banokok Indians had been left. I perse-
vered, however, and, on reaching them, walked
on to the winter crew's tilt, mentioned on the
3d. There throwing myself into a dark linny,
or ** lean-to," I sought some repose for my
eyes, and availed myself of opodeldoc for my
excoriated face, — a salutary, but very painful
application, which happened to be the only one
which was accessible. So heavy a rain now
came on, that I was truly thankful I was not in
one of those miserable unroofed snow-caves,
which had, of late, been my only places of
retreat during all weathers at night.

Saturday, 11. — Kept my bed all day. When

WILD GEESE.

.//

we had gone into the interior, an old Indian
had told us that the wild geese might be ex-
pected with the first southerly wind. A southerly
wind had since come, and with it thousands of
these birds. They had been attracted to this
arm by the quantity of goose-grass, and made a
noise which resembled the harsh sound of a saw
under the file, reminding me of Homer's descrip-
tion of the sound of an army of cranes : —

As when inclement winters vex the plain.
With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly, '
With noise and order through the midway sky.

Iliad, B. iii.

I found that these birds of passage are led
hither by an unfailing instinct at this season
each year, till, the snow being melted from the
marshes, they seek the interior, where they stay,
till they emigrate again in the fall of the year,
late or early, according as the season may be
mild, or otherwise : last year they staid till
December 6.

Sunday, 12. — Morning prayers to the winter
crew before their breakfast this morning, and

LITTLE RIVER.

full service twice in the day. At the p. m.
service, two men attended from Swanger'sCove,
on the opposite side of the same arm, where tie
house of Nicol, of Jersey Harbour, has a similar
winter's crew at work in the woods.

Jean Michael, the ascetic Indian mentioned
above, this day assembled the Indians for thei*
worship, of which singing formed a very con-
siderable part. He and the rest were collecting
wild geese for an Indian feast on Easter Sunday,
to which they congregate from all parts, and it
was with difficulty that I could purchase one, on
the morning of

Monday, 13, — to take on with me to my
hospitable friend, Mr. Gallop, of Gualtois.
Started over the rotten ice, which le^me through
once, as I leaped from pen to pen. Went to
Conne Head, across "Conne River, where the
water was nearly knee-deep, upon the ice to
Jean Michael's wigwam, and waited there for
low tide that we might walk on the beach. At
Brand's Point we crossed the nick through the
woods, and over barrens to Little River, which
we had to ford, high as our waists, and reached

c«*»

GUALTOIS.

the winter house of a man who in the summer
lived at Grand Jervis. There I slept.

Tuesday y 14. — Up at three, a. m. I had a
very bad walk of ten miles down Little River,
partly hopping from one pen of ice to another,
and partly wading through the deep water
round the points. To escape one or two of
these points, I rafted myself upon pieces of
floating ice down the stream. At length, on
reaching a place where the river was clear from
ice, we found a flat which belonged to the
Indians. In this, I was conveyed through "The
Passage," (mentioned April 2,) to Gualtois. A
vessel had recently arrived here from Torquay,
in nineteen days, but, to my disappointment the
captain, being no politician, had brought no
papers, or accounts by which I might be in-
formed of the movements in the political world
at home.

Wednesday^ 15. — Snowed all this and the
next day, so I resolved to stay here to hold ser-
vice on Good Friday and Easter Sunday ; I
could, at this central point, collect larger con-

WHALERS.

gregalions than in any of the neighbouring
settlements. Went to look at a neatly enclosed
burial ground, for the consecration of which
the people expressed a laudable anxiety. The
Reverend James Robertson, having visited this
place at a season of great mortality, had in-
terred three persons in it at one time. I looked
to-day over the whaling establishment of Messrs.
Hunt and Newman. The machine with which
the fat of the whale is cut into small pieces for
the boiler, reminded me of a similar machine
which I have seen used by sausage-makers in
England. The refuse pieces of the whale, which
are left in the boiler, after the oil is extracted,
furnished, I am informed, all the fuel which is
required for heating the coppers. This recalls
to my recollection the fact, that the early settlers
on this island used to make fires with piles of
the carcasses of fat p'enguins, a bird which used
then to be very common, but is now extinct, or
has left the island. They were most cruelly
treated while they abounded in the island, being
often plucked for their feathers and then turned
loose to perish, or burnt in piles as above de-
scribed. The whalers were just commencing
their work for the season.

LARGE CONGREGATIONS.

Good Friday, 17. — A good congregation of
one hundred and fifty persons.

Saturday i 18. — Snowed all day.

Sunday f 19. — Easter Sunday. Two fine con-
gregations of one hundred and fifty. Seven
children baptized.

Monday, 20. — Still snowing, and wind foul
for me, but started in Mr. Gallop's gig, and
passed Picar to Round Harbour, where I held a
full service to eighteen, and baptized a child,
and wrote three family letters for my host.

TT^o^^^i til i'r(
Tuesday, 21. — Rpturnod by foul wind. On

seeking to make acquaintance, as in such cases

of detention I am accustomed to do, with the

librarie-: of the people, I was happy to find here

many books of an higher intellectual stamp than

I should have expected in such a place. Among

others, I was gratified to see the excellent " New

Manual of Devotions," which is published by

the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

I found, too, more habits of reading in this

house than in any other, perhaps, without ex-

LONG ISLAND HARBOUR.

ception, which I had visited. I held a second
service here.

Wednesday y 22. — Off at five, a.m., in a very
heavy swell; the wind contrary and bitterly
piercing. I reached W. Strickland's, however,
at Long Island Harbour, by half- past seven,
A.M. There was much ** swish ice" in the har-
bour which we left, and we found much of the
same here also. The people, being upon their
Bshing-ground outside, had seen us go into their
harbour, so they returned, on so unusual an
event as the entrance of a strange boat to their
harbour, and assembled for full service. I had
one baptism, and was much pleased with their sim-
ple manner of singing. Sir Thomas J. Cochrane,
the late excellent governor of Newfoundland,
having put into Deer Island, White Bear Bay,
while this Strickland and his brother John lived
there, found them engaged, as is their custom,
in reading prayers to their own and the neigh-
bours* families on the Lord's Day ; and his Excel-
lency presented him with a fine octavo prayer
book, with the stamp of the Prayer Book and
Homily Society. Strickland is very proud of
this treasure. When he showed it to me, he
begged with much humility, that I would point

'■■</

THE STR1CKLAND8.

out to him those parts of the public service which
a lay reader might use in a congregation. ** We
never saw a church," said he, " or where a
church was, or got any schooling, for reading is
hard to be got in these parts; but we taught
ourselves, and go through the prayers alternate,'
(he and his brother, he meant) " morning and
evening, each Sunday." I promised to comply
with a request which he, and scores similarly
situated, made of me, that I would, soon after
my return, send round some suitable sermons for
his public reading, and I reminded him of the
gracious promise of our Lord, that where two or
three are gathered together in His name, there
He will be, in the midst of them. The younger
branches of the families of these good men
could all read. A reference to the report of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, for
the year 1830, will introduce the reader to a
patriarch of the same name. I found him em-
ployed in the same useful way at the Borgeo
Islands. His seed, it will be seen, from this
present description of two of the younger branches
of the same stock, are likely to be blessed. At
Little Bay, close to this place, so plentiful is the
fish all the year round, that the women and

•

GRAND JERVIS.

children cut holes in the salt-water ice, and
catch great quantities of cod-fish all through the
winter. Left Long Island after service. Three
hours' cold rowing against nearly a head-wind,
attended with sno.v squalls, brought me to Push-
through, Grand Jervis, upon the main. There 1
assembled a large congregation in the house
of Charles King and his wife, whom I had
visited in 1830. Nothing could exceed the joy
with which this good pair welcomed this my
second appearance among them. The increase
of the population in settlements of this descrip-
tion, is most rapid. I baptized twenty-two
children here, all of whom had been born since
my last visit, and there were some young chil-
dren besides, who, from the absence of their
parents or sponsors, or other reasons, were not
now presented for this sacrament. How needful
are scriptural schooJs in these rapidly increasing
settlements I A " New Manual," which, with
some other good books, was in possession of my
venerable hostess, was much and deservedly
prized by the old lady. There had not been a
single instance of mortality in this settlement
since my last visit. Engaged a young man of
superior education, whom I found here lately,

H 2

100

MUSQUITO.

from Jersey, to read to the people on Sundays,
and promised to supply him with proper books
for the purpose.

Thursday, 23. — Although I could not retire
to bed until one, a.m. I was up by half-past
five, A.M., and off by eight, for Bonne Bay,
four miles, which I reached by ten. My host
here had been thirty-three years in Newfound-
land, and had never in that time seen any
minister of religion. Full service in the evening,
and eighteen baptisms. There was, I regret to
state, a case in this settlement of habitual
intemperance in a female.

Friday^ 24. — Off at six, a.m. in a very
'* crank" punt, for Musquito, about two miles
round the head. Most of the men were out on
the fishing-ground : I suffered a little from dis-
turbed bile, and from being exposed in open
boats to cold winds and heavy swells. Full
service, and ten children baptized. Having
tried in vain to get to Muddy Hole in the
teeth of the wind, we put back. I then held
a second service, when two young married
women and another adult, who expressed a wish

i,^...

FACHIEU BAY.

101

to be baptized, and two more children, were
christened. One of the married women was
very much affected at her own baptism. I made
acquaintance here with a volume, much soiled
and mutilated, which contained many very ex-
cellent prayers and pious meditations^ : the title
of the book was gone, but it seemed, from a
subsequent page, to have been entitled, ** The
New Year's Gift," and exhibited evident signs
of having been much used in the family of the
parents of my respectable hostess.

Saturday^ 25. — The wind still detained me.
I assembled the people at Beaufit's house, for
another full service.

Sunday, 26. — ^The wind having abated in the
night, J. Beaufit and his neighbours were up at
four, A.M., and rowed me through " the young
ice," which, from the frost at night, was, in
some places, very thick, to Fachieu Harbour,
Fachieu Bay. Here lives a respectable widower,
with a little family of children, whom he is
endeavouring to bring up religiously. Another
man, with his wife and family, are also living
here in idleness and disregard of all religious

102

MUDDY HOLE.

n3s

duties. He declared, at once, a disinclination
on the part of himself and family to profit by
my services ; the widower, therefore, engaged
to follow me to Muddy Hole, the next settlement
in ray line of visits, considerately suggesting
that I might make more expedition, and fulfil
my objects better by availing myself of the
present mild day, than by staying to hold ser-
vice in his single family. On this we proceeded
to Muddy Hole, three miles. A few hundred
yards from the mouth of the harbour, we met
J. W. the principal planter. He was on his way
to Fachieu Bay for " stuff," or wood, with three
daughters and a son, in a punt. He was
informed of the arrival of a clergyman of his
own church ; but I grieve to say, that though he
was the father of ten unbaptized children, he
declined giving up the secular work by which he
was profaning the Lord's Day, and did not even
make the offer of his house for prayers during
his absence. On reaching Muddy Hole, which
is a singular little gut behind a rock, and makes
no show from the sea, we tried to get admittance
for service in the house of another professed
member of the church, J. F. He, however,
though the sun was now high, \y3s still in bed.

DRUNKENNESS.

103

and the other inmates of his house were only
dressing themselves. This heathenish man, on
being told the object of my visit, refused to get
up; he "did not think prayers of any use!"
Thus repulsed, I proceeded. On arriving at
Richard's Harbour, about a league farther on, I
found that one of those scourges of this coast, a
floating grog-shop, under the name of a
** trading-vessel," had been sojourning in Muddy
Hole, last week, and had kept *' all hands,"
during the tiiTie of its stay, in a state of intoxi-
cation : and it was likely, now, that they had
not a stick to burn, or a fish for the kettle ; and,
as this floating nuisance had only left the place
the day before, it was not unlikely that the
fumes of the intoxicating poisons thus supplied,
had not yet evaporated.

Having spent the whole preceding week in
idleness, and dissipi>tion, and excess, they
grudged the Almighty this His own day of rest.
The singular indifference of these sad people
was now explained. If vQod should ever give
them the privilege of another visit from a Mis-
sionary, I pray they may be better disposed
to hear meekly God's woiv*, and to receive it with
pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the

V- •; '•

104

HEATHENISM.

Spirit. This instance of heathenism stands
almost alone in lay experience. I cannot say,
quite alone ; for I record with pain, that in
another part of Fortune Bay, on the other sid6
of Harbour Boston, a youth, whose uncle was
urging him to kneel, during the public prayers,
alrr. .st disturbed the ser'ice by the loud strain
in which he gave utterance to the ri^de and
godless remark, that he was not disposed to
wear out his knees by praying ! Surely, the next
generation is likely to suffer much deterioration
in settlements such as these, unless the mission-
ary shall shortly be supplied to them, who may go
am,ong them with affectionate anxiety, and warn
them of the peril of their present carelessness.
How different were the manners of the people
of Richard's Harbour, at which we now arrived,
and where we obtained some refreshment, of
which my kind crew, after their long row, were
much in need. John Hardy, a former parishioner
of Reverend — Jolliffe, of Poole, had lived
forty years in Newfoundland, during the greater
part of which time, he had been regularly
employed himself, on Sunday, in reading pray-
ers and a sermon to the families around him.
For this occupation he was preparing at the

RICHARDS HARBOU.t.

105

moment of ray arrival. He gladly ceded his
olBSce to the commissioned minister, and we had
two full services, and eight baptisms. Among
many other good books in this house, were
" Bishop Wilson's Introduction to the Lord's
Supper," and "Stanhope's Meditations for the
Sick," with the stamp of the Christian Know-
ledge Socitv/. Among the children baptized
were three belonging to a widow who would
soon become the mother of a fourth. I had
observed, that some reflections in my morning
discourse on the occasional suddenn'^ss of death,
seriously affected her, and I found, that her
husband had, only in February last, died in
a manner awfully afflicting. On his return from
deer-hunting, he had fallen down one of the
cliffs, which were then within sight of our win-
dow ; these are stupendously high upon this
part of the coast : he had fallen two hundred
feet at least, without any break to his fall,
and had breathed his last within a few hours.
One family only at Richard's Harbour was
missing from the services; and I found, on
inquiry, that J. A., the careless man of Fachieu,
above-mentioned, had come up in a punt with
his wife, to spend the day in visiting, (a Sunday

106

KELIOIOUS APATHY.

[

practice too common in Newfoundland!) and,
although they arrived before the commencement
of the morning prayers, and did not depart until
after the evening service was over, they did not
seek to hear the message of the minister of
God. And the false delicacy of the family
which they were visiting, — I wish that such false
delicacy were never found in less simple classes,
in better informed persons! — the family, thus
visited, suffered a false feeling of delicacy to
deter them from the performance of their own
known duty, and to deprive them too, of a most
rare privilege which may never again be afforded
them. Should these remarks ever meet the eye
of any of the unhappy parties to whom allusion
is made, I would beg them to believe, that this
partial publication of the events of that day,
which made me sorry, is not made in a temper of
anger, or a spirit of rebuking, or m any un-
seemly uncharitableness, which rejoices in the
recollection of ill ; it is made in a spirit of
meekness, and charity, and love; my prayer
and heart's desire for those who have thus caused
me grief is, that if I go again among them,
I may not have heaviness and sorrow for them

of whom I should wish to rejoice.

REV. T. M. WOOD.

107

In the evening, John Hardy made me up a
crew. They took me first under a most steep
coast, in which are two not inconsiderable over-
falls of water. We passed Hare Bay, and
reached the Eastern Cul de Sac. This place
reminded me somewhat of Petty Harbour, near
St. John's, the present interesting station of the
Reverend Thomas Martin Wood, whom I hope,
with the concurrence of the Bishop and of the So-
ciety, to locate in Fortune Bay, where a Mis-
sionary is so much required. The father of the
settlement here, was a French Protestant. In
his house I assembled the neighbours for full
service, and baptized twenty-three in all, some
mothers, — interesting sight ! — offering them-
selves, at the same time with their infants in their
arms, for this sacrament. The places hereabouts
retain their old French names ; but the people
corrupt them sadly. My Chart on^^ ^ives the
English names: but, had it given the French, I
might have been as much at fault to recognize
Bay de Lievre, in Bay Deliver ; Bay le Diable,
or Devil's Bay, in Jabbouls ; Bay de Vieux, or
Old Man's Bay, in Bay the View ; Bay d'Aviron,
or Oar Bay, in Aberoon, and the same of many
other places.

108

RENCONTRE.

I I

Monday, 27. — Up at four, a.m. Snowing
and bitterly cold. Went in a punt five miles by
the straight high steeps of Devil's Bay, and
Little Bay, and the perpendicular cliffs of Iron's
Cove, and St. Alban's, to Rencontre. Here the
father of the settlement was a respectable
Jersey-man ; I wrote a letter for him to a married
daughter, whom I was likely to meet with, in
my visitation further along the shore. I held
full service in his house, and had twenty-nine
baptisms. His wife delighted me by the piety
of her discourse, and her example seemed to
have been blessed to her numerous children.

Tuesday, 28. — Walked at six, a.m., accom-
panied by my hostess and another person from
Rencontre, upon the hard snow, by some very
mountainous hills, to Bay Chaleur, four miles.
The French islands of St. Peters, and Miquelon
could be seen from the hills. At Bay Chaleur
was the residence of Reuben and Sarah Samms,
a poor but worthy couple. The barque *' Wil-
liam Ashton," of Newcastle, had struck on the
rocks at Lance Cove, on her way from Dublin
to Quebec, with sixty-three souls on board, at
two, A.M., of August 9, 1830. Reuben and

BAY CHALEUR.

109

Sarah entertained fifteen of the crew and passen-
gers in their present little dwelling, and each
day supplied the remaining forty-eight persons
with provisions in the tilt, which they built for
shelter at Lance Cove, the scene of the wreck,
three miles from Bay Chaleur. A captain John
Stoyte, of the 24th regiment, with his wife and
her child and nurse were among those who were
inmates of Reuben's house ; and, from letters
since received, they retain, it is clear, a most
lively sense of gratitude to their humble honest
entertainers. They supplied the unfortunate
lady with such necessaries of clothing as they
could afford, she having landed from the wreck
barefoot upon the pointed rocks. This wreck,
like too many of those which are common on
this shore, is said to have been occasioned by
intemperance. Among the articles saved from
the wreck, were some excellent tracts and re-
ligious works, which belonged to Captain Stoyte.
These, he kindly presented to the people when
he left their hospitable home for the Messrs.
Newmans' hospitable establishment at Harbour
Briton, whence he soon proceeded to join his
regiment in Quebec. Some of these books
which were printed in Dublin, particularly

BOOKS FROM A WRECK.

some remarks suitable to excite serious reflections
before joining in the s(?ryice of the church, were
new to me, and seemedJikely to do good, if they
could be more extensively known and copies
of them multiplied, that I begged I might
be allowed to take them away with me, with an
intention, which I have since fulfilled, of pre-
senting them to the notice of the Protestant
Episcopal Press, in the United States of Ame-
rica ; to be reprinted by them, if the trustees of
the Protestant Episcopal Tract Society, or the
conductors of any of their church periodicals,
think them likely to be of service to the members
of their communion. I found the contents of
this box of books scattered about, but most
carefully preserved, in the planters* houses in
many of the surrounding settlements ; they are
most highly prized by them, and they are likely,
under God's blessing, to do so much service to a
people, who are in a sad state of spiritual
destitution, that, hereafter, I doubt not, if not
noWf the benevolent donors will be abundantly
reconciled to the inconvenience and the losses
attending their disaster, when they shall behold
the rich fruits which shall have arisen from the
good seed, which the accident then opened to

1^-

•

BOOKS MUCH PRIZED.

Ill

them the opportunity of sowing. Some, indeed,
of the poor people into whose hands the books
have fallen, are unable themselves to read, but
then they bring out the precious bundle of
highly valued tracts from the sanctuary of their
house chest, and, unrolling the piece of cotton
or cloth in which they are carefully wrapped,
they beg any temporary sojourner, or travelling
bird of passage, who is a scholar, to read them
to their assembled household. They availed
themselves thus of my services between the
hours of our public devotions; and, as I have
frequently been on other occasions, I was pleased
to see that they had much feeling. At Chaleur
Bay, I had an audience, who gathered their
chairs nearer to me, and nearer, as their interest
in a beautiful religious narrative, which I was
reading, heightened, "until one and another lifted
the hand, and the corner of the rough apron in
silence, to wipe the tear from their sunburnt
cheeks ; and one woman, at the close of the
tale, took up the chord for the rest, and re-
marked with a striking simplicity ; — ** It is very
feeling, sir!" The conduct of Reuben Samms,
contrasts well with the less creditable conduct of
many upon this shore, as regards wrecks. Before

112

REUBEN SAMMS.

I'hj.

Pf'

the wreck of the ** William Ashton," he had
been instrumental with his brother, in saving
persons at different times from five other wrecks.
On one occasion, he had observed signs of a
wreck and discovered footmarks upon the rugged
shore, and tracked them several miles into the
interior, where he found seven men from the
** Mary," which belonged to Mr. Broom, the
present senior magistrate of St. John's. The
poor fellows had been three days and nights
without food, and, but for his exertions in pur-
suing their tracks must have perished. The
simple description which he gave me of the joy
which was depicted upon the haggard coun-
tenances of these starving and lost seamen, when
they first caught sight of him in the interior,
was most affecting, and reminded me of the
experience of the lost sinner, when he first
makes discovery of a Saviour! When I had
performed full service at Bay Chaleur, and bap-
tized his four children, his wife humbly offered
herself also for baptism, as did also his mother-
in-law, who was sixty-two years of age, but had
never before had an opportunity, though well
read and instructed, and of pious conversation —
of thus solemnly dedicating herself in this

SNOOK S COVE.

113

scriptural metliod to the service of Christ. The
greater part of these two families returned with
me to Rencontre. We somewhat shortened the
distance which we had to walk, by going in a
boat to Snook's Cove. But in stepping out of
the boat, I did not make sufficient allowance
for the run, or rise of the water, in which there
was a very heavy swell, and slipped in up to ray
waist. On my return had a full service again,
and two more baptisms.

r
11

Wednesday, 29. — Much wind, and very cold.
Yet the elder Mrs. Samms, and Mrs. G. Ball,
and several of the family, volunteered at the
risk, nay, the certainty, of getting very wet
with the seas and sprays, to accompany me
with a boat's crew to New Harbour, which I
reached by nine a.m. Here I held full service
twice, and baptized thirteen. Among these was
a serious woman of fifty-two, the relict of two
husbands. She came forward in the face of the
congregation, and requested that she might be
permitted to avail herself of this, the first op-
portunity which had occurred, for her baptism,
although she had often anxiously hoped for such.
Here I met with a young man, a native of the

114

A PIOUS FRAUD

village of Aylesford, in Nova Scotia, in which
the bishop of the diocese has his country seat.
He was engaged in a mercantile tour along this
shore, and, as he was proceeding hence in the
same direction in which I was going, he kindly
offered me accommodation in his hired boat, of
which I very gladly availed myself. I may
mention here a pious fraud which I detected in
this neighbourhood. There is, among the poor,
in many parts of this island, a superstitious re-
spect paid to a piece of printed paper, which is
called the " Letter of Jesus Christ." This, in
addition to Lentulus's well-known epistle to the
Senate of Rome, contains many absurd super-
stitions, such as the promise of safe delivery in
child-bed, and freedom from bodily hurt to
those who may possess a copy of it. A humble
person on this shore, who had long possessed
one of these papers, wished to supply some of
her relatives and neighbours with copies, and
sent home a commission for several. Instead of
the lying imposition which she had sent for,
several hand-bill placards, or sheets came out
to her, in which admirable texts were appended
to "the above-named letter of Lentulus, and a
promise of eternal life was held put to those who,

UPON SUPERSTITION.

115

possessing, — not that paper ! but a copy of the
sacred scriptures, should read and believe them,
and live according to them. The woman had
felt disappointed, and detailed her disappoint-
ment to me. On examining the case, of course
I could not sympathize with her, and endea-
voured, I trust successfully, to explain the un-
scriptural character of the first papers, and to
recommend that, in all future importations, she
should take care to order those which came
from the same press; -—Davis, of Paternoster
Row.

" You think, then, they will have as much
goodness in them as the old ones, sir ?"

'* As much, certainly ; and I should imagine
more, my good woman, if you would only be
guided by the good advice which is given in
that paper."

Went twelve miles to Cape La Hune Har-
bour; where was a perpendicular cliff, with
deep water so close along-side of it, that it re-
sembled a stone dock, or wharf. Found some
of the people here very uncouth and rude in
their manners, and some of the females particu-
larly coarse in their language. Held full ser-
vice, and baptized twelve. I was glad to find

116

REMARKS ON VANITY

that the children were accustomed to put up a
short thanksgiving before and after meat, and to
observe morning and evening prayers, although
from the manner in which some of the poor crea-
tures went through the several services, and
the blunders which they made, it seemed they
had little of understanding in their devotion. I
remember that, in a family which I visited, the
eldest daughter was the domestic chaplain ; I
was not willing to interfere with her functions,
when she was called forth by her mother with
a sort of pride to officiate, before the family
meal. But the poor girl made and repeated
the mistake, when alluding to God's bounty, by
saying ** bounteous liberty," instead of " boun-
teous liberality," which the sense obviously
required, and which the original grace which
had been handed down by tradition in the
family, must evidently have contained. On this
I was emboldened to lead the family in the use
of a form which was better calculated to express
their simple gratitude, I know that a certain
pride in the religious attainments of their chil-
dren is a weakness frequently to be deplored in
religious parents. They pride themselves on the
manner in which their dear little ones lisp their

J"'-i

IN RELIGIOUS PROFESSION.

117

prayers, and infant praises, and they encourajije
vanity in their dear little innocents, who should
bring to such exercises no desire to display, no
feeling; but of humble child-like dependence on
the GodVhom they are addressing or describing.
I shall not, I hope, be suspected, in what I feel
it my duty to say, of smiling at the peculiarities
of the poor, or of levity in the remark, as it
applies to any parents; for I have often la-
mented, as I have seen much of the same objec-
tionable vanity in the drawing-rooms and nur-
series of those of the higher classes, who are
endeavouring to bring up their children reli-
giously; nay, I may confess that I have, in former
years, felt a degree of the same vanity myself :
— what parent has not ? — but I think I have
learned a lesson, from ihe exhibition of this
general dispositioli of the human mind in many
a fisherman's cabin, which will go far towards
putting me upon the guard against this error in
myself, and I shall truly rejoice if my remarks
may be the means of calling the attention of
other parents to the same. It will be seen that
it was strictly within my province to make
certain inquiries respecting the domestic habits
of the families which I visited. The attention

118

RELIGIOUS DISPLAY.

■

paid to the daily reading of the scriptures was a
subject of inquiry, — the observance of morning
and of evening prayer, — the employment of the
Lord's day, — it will be seen, were questions cal-
culated to draw forth the love of the display of
the religious acquirements of their children, in
persons of v?in minds. Accordingly, the obser-
vation was made, behind my back, to one and
auother who might accompany me, for some
distance, on my trip, — ** Surely, the archdeacon
must think us heathens, to ask such questions
as these ; we must show him that we learn our
children their prayers ; — mind, my dears, that
you do not be content with the parson's prayers
to-night, biit let him hear you all saying your
prayers, after you get to bed." Accordingly, it
has more than once occurred, that, through the
thin partition which separated my sleeping
cabin from that of a nest of children, I have
heard, for an hour or two after I have retired to
bed, the little voices of the youager branches of
the family, strained to an unnatural pitch, re-
peating the ten commandments, the duty to
God and our neighbour, the belief, and other
portions of the catechism, and perhaps a hymn
or two of Dr. Watts, (all, in fact, which could

I*' ^

CUL DE SAC.

119

be brought from tbeir scantily stored memory,)
as P'.ayers. Thus the performance of what
should be a solemn, serious, and secret trans-
action between the humble worshipper and his
God, has given occasion to the fostering of an
unheaveniy temper, and even in these quiet
retreats the seeds have been sown of that re-
ligious aisplay, that " talking religion," as I
have heard it designated by a pious quaker-lady,
which is doing so much harm, and bringing so
much discredit upon the cause of real piety and
godliness, in the larger family of man, of which
each humble fishing station, each village and
rural cottage, is an epitome or miniature. But,
to return to my journal.

May 1, Friday. — After a night of snow, the
weather was yet unsettled. I was put across
La Hune Bay in a boat, and walked about two
miles, across some mountainous ridges, in the
" gulshes," between which the hardened snow
was still thirty or forty feet high, to Western
Cul de Sac. Here I held full service, and hav-
ing baptized two children, and one of the
mothers, I walked back, to hold full service
again in the evening, at La Hune Harbour.

120

BURNT ISLANDS.

Saturday 1 2. — Off before seven, a. m., and, to
my great regret, passed the Borgeo Islands, with
the respectable inhabitants of which place I had
kept up a correspondence, and supplied them
with books, since my visit to Ihera in 1830. We
anchored at eight p. m. at Duck Island, Cut-
teau Bay, fourteen leagues. There, by the
blaze of a cheerful fire, made from the wreck
wood, so common on this coast, I held full ser-
vice in a neat planter's cabin, and baptized six
children.

Sunday f 3. — Off at half past five, a. m. ;
struck, for an instant, upon a rock in working
out with our deck-boat. Got, by one p. m., to
Burnt Islands. We passed La Poile. This part
of the shore is so fatal to European vessels
which are outward bound to Quebec in the
spring, that it is much to be regretted that the
legislatures, or Chambers of Commerce of Nova
Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas, do
not unite with the government and merchants
©r Newfoundland, for the erection of light-
houses here and at Port-aux-Basque, and at
Cape Ray. Many vessels and many lives might,
each year, be saved from destruction by such

DANGEROUS COAST.

121

a measure. Mr. Anthonie, indeed, a humane
Jersey merchant, resident at La Poile, has
erected, upon a rock off La Poile Bay, a small
observatory. This is of some service to a few
who know its situation ; but the shore in this
neighbourhood ir so very low, and the ledges of
rock extend so far out to sea, that a vessel may
be in danger before the little beacon is disco-
vered. At the cabin in which I staid at Burnt
Islands, the playthings of the children were
bunches of small patent desk and cabinet keys,
which had been picked up from wrecks. Beau-
tiful old China plates, and pieces of a more
modern elegant breakfast set of dragon china,
which had been washed ashore in the same
way, were ranged upon the shelves alongside of
the most common ware ; and a fine hucka-
bac towel, neatly marked with the initial let-
ters, L. C. D., was handed me on my express-
ing a desire to wash my hands. This had
been supplied from the wreck of a vessel in
which were several ladies. To some hearts those
letters, doubtless, would renew a sad period of
anxiety, which preceded the intelligence of the
melancholy certainty of a sad bereavement. I
c^uld not look at this relic of a toilet, now no

n«^r«>ww*r.»

122

AWFUL WRECKS, AND

|! (■

I
\
i .

more required, without emotions of deep in-
terest, although I had no clue by which I could
attach recollections of brilliant prospects early
blighted, or pious faith exemplified in death to
these three letters. Indeed, the scenes and
circumstances, the very people by whom I was
surrounded, roused within me a train of deeply
melancholy sensations. My host may have been
a /' rrane man; his conduct to me was that of
gen ; hospitality ; but it had been his fre-
quent employment at intervals, from his youth
till now, to bury wrecked corpses, in all stages
of decomposition. There had been washed on
shore here, as many as three hundred, and an
hundred and fifty on two occasions, and num-
bers at different times. This sad employment
appeared to have somewhat blunted his feelings.
I would not do him injustice, — the bare recital
of such revolting narratives, ** quorum pars
magna fuit," unvarnished as such tales would
naturally be, in the simpler expression of a
fisherman, might give an appearance of want
of a feeling, which nature may not have denied
to him, and of which the scenes and occupa-
tions of his life may not have wholly divested
him. I remember well my expressing my re-

y- .

THEIR REMAINS.

123

luctance to allow him to disinter a delicate
female foot, the last human relic, which the
waves, or the wild cats, or the fo:i, or his own
domestic dog, had deposited in the neighbour-
hood of his cabin. He had recently picked it
up close to his door, and had buried it in his
garden, and was very anxious to be allowed to
shovel away the lingering snow, that he might
indulge me with a sight of it. I suppose my
countenance may have betrayed some feeling
of abhorrence, when he said, " Dear me, sir,
do let me ; it would not give me any concern at
all : I have had so much to do with dead bodies,
that I think no more of handling them, than
I do of handling so many codfish!" I have
said, that I believe him humane ; yet wrecks
must form his chief inducement to settle in a
place so barren and bleak, and to live through
the winter out upon the shore as he does, con-
trary to the usual habit of the people, which is
to retire into the woods until late in the spring.
But humanity might prompt a man to live
where his services may occasionally be exerted
usefully for the preservation of human life.
Yet, did I wrong him in the judgment of charity,
when I saw his quick eye kindle with the gale,

124

SUPERSTITIONS.

as he watched the stormy horizon ? Was I
wrong when, as he went in the early dawn and
dusk each evening, while I was there, to a hill
a little higher than the rest, with his spy-glass,
1 thought his feelings and my own, — on discern-
ing that a vessel had, during the night, struck
some of the numerous rocks which abound
hereabouts, or was on her way to do so, — might
be of a very different character ? This man is
only a sample of many whom I saw on this part
of the coast.

Monday t 4. — A very severe gale, and 1 could
not stir from my quarters. I have already re-
marked upon the superstition of the people
upon this part of the coast. A man had died
in this neighbourhood lately, (I believe by a
watery grave.) I found that a story of the
appearance of his spirit, which was circulated
by an illiterate drunken scoundrel, with the
obviously interested motive, clumsily concealed,
of influencing the distribution of the poor fel-
low's little effects, was very generally believed.
More incredulity was expressed at my assurance
that the distribution of a south-wester, a fox-
trap, or a pair of mockasins, was not a '^ dignus

«, -■-;,

SEALS COVE.

125

Deo vindice nodus," a matter for Divine inter-
ference, than had been excited by the whole
story itself. On seeing a young woman here-
abouts deliberately making a cross upon her
shoe with spittle, I inquired what this meant,
when I found that this was to drive away the
cramp, or a sleepiness which she had felt in
that part of her foot. A young woman who
had, a few years before, practised with her
father upon the ignorance and credulity of her
neighbours and strangers at Gualtois, by affect-
ing to receive divine comi ^nications, and to
prophecy, was now living in lewd adultery in
this neighbourhood with the husband of another
woman.

■v>

Tuesday y 5. — Went up three miles to Seal's
Cove, Dead Islands. There I held full service,
and baptized two children ; the elder children
of the same family I had baptized when here in
1830. Then, it will be remembered, that I
had (as related in Report of Society for Pro-
pagating the Gospel for 1836), the pleasure of
presenting to the daughter of George Harvie,
my present host, a gold medal, which his
Majesty's Government had given him for his

126

REWARDS FOR HUMANITY.

own and his daughter's humane exertions in
saving one hundred and eighty passengers from
the brig '* Dispatch," which was wrecked on
this shore, on her passage from Londonderry
to Quebec, in 1828. He had, also, received for
the same benevolent exertions, 100/. from the
subscribers at Lloyd's. The best effects may be
anticipated from these generous rewards being
given to persons who properly exert themselves
in saving life or property upon this dangerous
shore. I could much wish that some such
acknowledgment could be given to Reuben
Samms, whom I have mentioned (April 28), and
to a worthy man, Miessau, whom I shall men-
tion at May 7, whose laudable exertions in the
cause of humanity richly entitle them to some
reward, while their circumstances are such as
would render any gratuity acceptable.

Such acknowledgments attach the dwellers
upon this desolate coast to their mother-country;
they are of service, as they rouse in them a
degree of pride that they belong to a country
which is liberal in its rewards, and parental in
its oversight over its most distant colonists ; and
they stimulate to the exercise of humane exer-
tion, when a selfish apathy might secure a prize

i \

DEAD ISLANDS.

127

in the cargo of some vessel exposed to danger.
In my way, this morning, I saw the topmast of
a large vessel of three hundred tons, which had
been wrecked here last fall ; and, on going in
the afternoon to another of the Dead Islands, a
mile and a half, I saw a new vessel of seventy
or eighty tons, which some Basque people, from
the French island of St. Peter's, had, contrary
to treaty, built last winter on Codroy River.
She had gone on shore here the very night after
she was launched, and was, with difficulty,
made tight to proceed to St. Peter's. Held
full service, and baptized six children, and pro-
ceeded to Port au Basque, or the Channel, in
the same evening. Had I been here on the Sun-
day previous, I might have had a congregation
of two hundred, — there were so many boats and
vessels belonging to Fortune Bay, which were
bound to the western fishery at anchor here.
I assembled fifty persons, and baptized ten
children. Death had been at work here as well
as at Isle k Mort, since my last visit. Michael
Guillam and Thomas Harvie having both lost
their wives.

Wednesday, 6. — Went three miles to Gale's

-',1

128

FRENCH CANADIAN.

Harbour, where were two families, and two
children to baptize. The parents having friends
at Cape Ray, or Cape South, as the people
term it, fell in with my suggestion, that they
should take the children on with me, nine miles,
to that settlement for sponsors. When there, I
held full service, and baptized fifteen children.

I' ■

M-

Thursday, 7. — The gale so strong that I
could not proceed ; held full service and bap-
tized four more children. I staid here at the
house of a French Canadian, whose simple
recital of the efficacy of his prayers, in a cer-
tain season of imminent peril at sea, and inti-
mate acquaintance with the Scriptures, which
he knew just sufficient of English to read in
our tongue, pleased me very much. Within a
few days of my leaving his house, the courage
and humanity of this man of faith were called
into exercise by the appearance in his neigh-
bourhood of a boat, with a portion of the ex-
hausted crews from a wrecked vessel in her.
The breakers made it impossible that the people
in the boat should effect a landing ; he leaped
into the sea at the peril of his life, to give them
a rope : a favourite dog, which I had admired

NEWFOUNDLAND DOGS.

129

while there, was with him ; and on the boat's
swamping, when Miessau swam with one man
in his protection, his faithful dog seized another
to draw him to the shore. The south-wester
haty however, which the drowning seaman wore,
on which the dog had seized his hold, came off
in the water, and the dog not observing the
diminution in the weight of his burden, was
proceeding to the shore with the cap alone,
when the sailor seized the tail of the dog, and
so was towed to shore. The master of the
wrecked vessel, who was one of ♦he boat's crew,
was taken in a state of insensibility into Mies-
sau's house, and some hours elapsed before he
became conscious of any thing which was pass-
ing around him. This late instance, which I
have quoted above, of the sagacity of the dog
of Newfoundland, may be classed with many of
the same kind, which I have heard well authen-
ticated, and indeed have witnessed many since
my residence in the island. An old dog is now
living at Jersey Harbour, near Harbour Briton,
in Fortune Bay, which has exhibited, in many
instances, a degree of sagacity which will hardly
be credited. He has been known to assist in
carrying on shore some light spars, which the

130

nSLIOIOUS IGNORANCE.

captain of a vessel in the harbour desired him
to carry to the land-wash, that a boat's crew
might be spared the trouble of carrying them.
Another dog belonging to the same wharf has,
as a volunteer, or upon invitation, assisted him
in this work for a time ; but has left his work in
the middle of his second turn, swimming to
shore without his spar : when the first dog has
quietly swam to shore with his own turn, and
then sought the runaway dog, and given him a
sound threshing, and used to him other argu-
ments of a character so significant and con-
vincing, that the runaway has returned to hir
work, and quietly persevered in it, till the spa
which had been thrown overboard were rafted
to the shore by the sagacious animals.

Friday t 8. — Full service again, heard of
some mothers of families in this neighbourhood
who were deplorably ignorant, not being ac-
quainted with the Lord's Prayer. The interests
of their children led them now, though late, to
seek instruction in matters about which they
had hitherto cared too little themselves.

Saturday f 9. — Wind still so high, that boat-

,1^

FRENCH ENCROACHMENTS.

131

ing was impracticable : started to walk nine
miles to Little Codroy River. A difficult
walk ; the shore, all along, was strewed with
wreck- wood, and balk or timber from cast-
away vessels, or from vessels which, in time of
danger, had been eased of their deck loads.
Held full service, baptized fourteen children,
and churched a woman.

From Cape Ray the French have a concurrent
right given them to fish along our shores, as
far as Cape John, upon the northern shore
of the island. I say a concurrent right, for
although I found that the French claim an ex-
clusive right, and occasionally interfere with
our fishermen, I can never imagine that the
English Government can have been impolitic
enough to have intended to convey more to the
French than a concurrent right of fishery ; and
indeed, as I read the treaties, no more was ever
conveyed to them. None would dispute the
right of the English nation to grant to any other
nation the same right of fishery along these
shores to-morrow, which we have granted to the
French ; and it is extremely absurd to imagine,
that while we may grant to this or that nation a
privilege of fishing along our shore, the English

K 2

132

REMARKS ON THE

fisherman — the English plant'>r should be ex-
cluded ! The English Government, ever allow-
ing the supposition of its having merely granted
a concurrent right to the French, has gone to
an impolitic length. It has thus given to a
rival nation, as it has > the case of the Ameri-
cans also, the means wu.jh the want of colo-
nies has denied to the one, and a want of
sufficient extent of coast, has denied the other,
of rearing an effective mercantile marine. The
importance of such a marine to any nation may
be estimated, when it is considered what it has
heit>ed to make of the little island of Great
Britain, — and v/hen it is remembered that it was
the meanc of the late resuscitation of Greece
and of her emancipation from the Turkish yoke.
With the policy of this measure, in a political
point of view, the Missionary has no concern ;
but it is impossible for him to travel in Pla-
centia and Fortune Bays, oi on the Western
coast, without his observing much sad incon-
venience, which may be traced to this impolitic
indnlgence on the part of the parent govern-
ment. Perpetual collision between the people
of the rival nations, who are tnus brought into
competition upon the same field of labour, is

FRENCH TRADERS.

133

promoted, and this is detrimental to that peace
"which he would wish to see existing between
persons of various nations, who are engaged in
common commercial enterprises. But this is
not all. The illicit dealings which, on such a
coast as this, it is impossible to prevent between
our people and these foreigners whom we have
encouraged around ns, — particularly with the
French, resident in the islands of Miquelon und
St. Peters — confound the moral sense of the
people. The temptation of the bounty which is
given by the French government, for fish taken
hence by the French to the West India market,
induces many of the French to cheat their own
government, and to tempt cur poor fishermen
by secretly giving the English, among whom
they are promiscuously fishing in open boats at
sea, a good price for their fish, — while the mer-
chant who has supplied the English fisherman
with his provisions for the winter, and his neces-
sary outfit for the fishery, is defrauded. All
dealing with the French is an injury to the
colonial revenue. Ii; may be • xpensive, but it is
a most necessary act of policy, under existing
circumstances, to station sub-collectors of his
Majesty's customs, who might prevent illicit

liiaiMtiii .■Ttite!iigai'':jj>a.'j!Aaaifa:.zs.':^

134

LORD S-DAY PROFANATION

dealing, at least as far as Port aux Basque, if
not as far as the important settlement of St.
George's Bay. It must give a Missionary pain
to observe in every house which he enters, for
leagues along the coast, evidences in the pro-
visions which are set before him, in the dress of
the inhabitants, and in the decoration of the
houses, that illicit dealing is carried on to an
extent which must injure materially, if it do not
ruin and drive from the shore, every English
mercantile speculator, while it accustoms the
people to an illegal traffic, and is so far detri-
mental to their moral principle. The bad ex-
ample, too, of the profanation of the Lord's-day
by the French, in and off our harbours, exer-
cises a sad influence upon the morals of our
people : it may be imagined, that it is a trying
sight for a poor fisherman who has been toiling
a whole week, and has caught nothing, to see
the bait on which his whole catch of fish — his
harvest — depends, caught in seine nets, and the
batteaux put over the sides of the French
schooner, and the fish caught and split before
his face upon the Sunday !

Sunday f 10. — Snow. Went up six miles to

I ;

AT CODROY ISLAND.

135

Great Codroy River : full service, and baptized
eight children. A cold row to Codroy Island.
Here I regretted to find one of the principal
inhabitants too much intoxicated to derive any
advantage from my visit, although he intruded
himself into the house in which we held prayers,
and exposed himself sadly, at the close of my
sermon, by proposing to me a very senseless
and indehcate question in the face of the whole
congregation. He was in the same senseless
state of intoxication the next day, although we
then succeeded in keeping him in ignorance of
our service, and so proceeded without any in-
terruption. On my reaching the place, the
beach exhibited the appearance of a common
working-day. There were several fires on the
shore, by which the Fr ^h were brimming or
caulking their boats, and tiieir crew were fishing
in the offing, as upon a week-day.

Monday f 11. — Full service again, and bap-
tized fourteen. From Cape Ray, to this place,
the soil is so much improved, that it is quite
capable of being brought into cultivation ; cattle
are ^ery numerous here already. Between C ^je
Ray, indeed, and the Bay of Islands, there is

136

PERILOUS PROGRESS

lii

decidedly more land capable of being brought,
with very little trouble, into cultivation, than in
all the parts of Newfoundland with which several
pretty extensive tours had made me previously
acquainted. There is another advantage too,
peculiar to this part of the coast ; there is so
little fog and dampness of atmosphere, that fish
may be laid out to dry here with much less risk
than elsewhere of its becoming tainted.

I was fortunate enough to meet here with
Leandre Philippo, an inhabitant of St. Peter's,
who, with the usual courtesy of the French,
politely favoured me with a passage in his fish-
ing schooner, far as Port-au-Port, beyond St.
George's Bay, whither he was going for bait.
On looking at the chart, it will be seen, that the
walk from the Middle Point, which separates
West Bay and East Bay in this Port-au-Port, to
the Isthmus, or " Gravel," as it is termed,
which is at the bottom of St. George's Bay,
is no great distanco. It is a most laborious
walk, however, and in some parts actually
perilous. I was put down at Middle Point, at
nine, A. m., of

Wednesday f 13 — And proceeded down the

ALONG THE COAST.

137

eastern shore. In several places I was up to
my arms in the salt water in getting round
points of rock, which it was impossible to climb.
In some places I had to leap from rock to rock,
over such chasms as alarmed my dog, from my
frequent falls, — now upon the icy crag, and at
another time upon the slimy beach rock, on
which my seal-skin boots, saturated with wet,
gave me a most insecure tread. I was for seve-
ral days afterwards unable to rest my elbow
upon a table, and was, in other respects, very
stiff; and, what was a greater inconvenience
than all, as it only admits of reparation in
England, I ruined my watch from getting it
wet in the salt water, which immediately rusted
it. I had kept it, too, in a side-pocket of my
coat above my waist. The snow was so deep
in the wood, and the tangled brush of the forest
so harassing, where I did succeed in climbing
the cliffs, to avoid the deep water round any of
the projecting points of rock, that I was fre-
quently near fainting from fatigue. At length,
however, I thank God, 1 reached a house at
the isthmus. I was quite as glad to see it, I
am convinced, as the crew of a vessel wrecked
last year, near Red Island, to the westward.

138

MR. AUDUBON,

off the mouth of St. George's Bay, could have
been when they reached it. It was a walk in-
deed, in which it would have been a tempting of
God to have engaged knowingly. The humane
attentions of a worthy Englishman, Charles
Vincent, and his excellent wife, a native, soon
restored me. I had a fine view of a patch fox
in my walk, saw several seals, and some of those
rery beautiful birds, called by the people of
Newfoundland " lords and ladies." Since my
last visit to St. George's Bay, it had been visited
by the celebrated ornithologist, Audubon, with
some young American gentlemen, pupils, who
were fortunate enough to have the advantage
of prosecuting his delightful researches with
this man of taste, and to have seen, as some
here did, the original draughts of the valuable
work, the leaves of which I have had so much
pleasure in turning over. I fear Mr. Audubon
met with little in Newfoundland to reward his
exertions. I believe he visited the Magdalen
Islands, when he left St. George's Bay. I was
aware, at the time of his visiting the Labradore,
that it was his intention to have touched in at
some parts of this island, and I should have
esteemed it a high privilege to have met him.

I:!

II /it'

THE ORNITHOLOGIST.

139

Those who have seen the birds of the country,
as I have had frequent opportunities of seeing
them, in their own spheres — the eagle perched
upon his crag, — '* the towering seat, for ages, of
his empire," — or upon some rugged trunk of a
tree which overhangs the rock, whence he has
looked down with impassive unconcern from his
giddy height, upon those who have vainly dis-
charged at him their rifles, — can enter into the
feelings of one who is an enthusiast in such a
pursuit ; and they kindle with sympathy as they
read the notes of one who, like themselves, has
been led by observation of the instincts and
habits of the feathered tribe, while he marvels
at their beautiful varieties, to acknowledge that
God is the maker^^ the preserver, the inspirer of
them all !

Friday y 5. — Went five leagues in a punt to
Sandy Point, St. George's Harbour. There I
found the population much increased since my
last visit, though two respectable elderly per-
sons whom I remembered, had, with many others
of the inhabitants, paid the debt of nature in
the interval. I visited before Sunday all the
inhabitants. One person presented me with a

■I

140

BEAVER HOUSES.

piece of thick birch-tree, which had been cut
through by the beaver near a beaver house, which
was in the neighbourhood. The long teeth of
these animals are sharp as chisels, and some-
what curved at the end : through this formation
they are enabled to scoop the wood away at
each incision, and trees, thick as the body of a
stout man, are cut down by them in an incredi-
bly short period, if they are in the way of their
beaver path. They have the instinct too, so to
cut them, as that they may fall in any direction
they wish, and not lie across their path. The
tree, of which this is a part, having fallen incon-
veniently, had been cut through a second time.
It is a good specimen, therefore, of their ingenuity,
as it shows the marks of their labour at each end.
Near the same beaver house, from which this
was taken, a tree which the beaver had cut
through, had so fallen that it rested against a
neighbouring tree. On visiting the beaver house
a few days after the first falling of the tree, my
informant found that the supporting tree had, in
the meantime, paid dearly for the protection it
had afforded to the condemned one. It had
been itself cut through, so that it offered now
no obstacle to their plans of improvement

LETTERS FROM MY WIFE.

141

Sunday f 17. — Held three full services, at
which, in two other houses besides, I baptized
fifteen. The lady of whom I made mention (see
Report of S. P. G. F. P. 1830) when I last vi-
sited this place, as having kindly engaged to
keep a Sunday-school, had charitably taught
some children daily ; the effects of these kind
exertions, and of this sacrifice of personal com-
fort in Mrs. Forrest, were very discernible in the
manner in which the children made their re-
sponses in the church service. To this they had
been regularly assembled by her husband, while
he lived, and by her son since. Married a
Canadian Kamaraska to one of the inhabitants
of St. George's Bay.

Wednesday, 20. — ^The " Hope," a brig be-
longing to Messrs. Bird of Sturrainster, having
put in to Harbour Briton, on her outward pas-
sage from England, brought me a pacquet of
letters from my dear wife, which had been for-
warded to Harbour Briton from St. John's, for
the chance of falling into my hands. This
welcome pacquet was the first I had receied
from her since my departure in February ! Se-
veral parcels of letters which had been for-

142

BAY OF ISLANDS.

\earded in search of me, reached my hands after
my return home, having been sent back to St.
John's, after they had been kept some time for
me in different out-ha.rbour settlements. I sailed
in her for the Bay c'f Islands, a little to the
south of Cape St. Gregorie, which I did not
reach through adverse winds until

//•■

Saturdayi23. — I found that this bay had
been visited by the Reverend William Bullock,
in company with his Excellency Sir Thomas
Cochrane, in 1829. He was the first clergyman,
in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, who
had visited the place. The river Humber, which
discharges itself here, like the river Exploits, in
the north of the island, is an immense body of
fresh water. From the great quantity of snow
which was now melting fast in the interior and
swelling the current, it was not easy to stem it
within Guernsey and Governor's islands. There
are some other islands near the mouth of the
Bay ; from these the Bay obtains its name.

H lii

Ifi

Sunday f 24. — Held two full services, and bap-
tized fourteen children. I was frequently, during
my journey, struck with surprise, but nowhere

VARIETIES Of SETTLERS.

143

more than here, at the very marked difference
which might be observed between the inhabitants
of places only separated by a few leagues from
each other. One who shall take the tour which
I have recently taken, might say, on reviewing
the manners and customs of the people, through
whose settlements he had passed, that he had
seen no one people-
Mores multoruiu iiominum vidit, et artes.

The difference of extraction has occasioned, as
may be supposed, a marked dissimilarity be-
tween the descendants of Jersey-men, Frenchmen,
Irish, Scotch, and English people. The people,
too, with whom the first settlers and their im-
mediate descendants may have had contact, or
intercourse, have Sittributed much to the forma-
tionofthe dialect, character, and habits of the
present settlers. The inhabitants of Conception
Bay, although a neck of land of only a few
miles extent separates them from Trinity Bay,
differ from the inhabitants of the latter, as much
as if they were of a distant nation ; the same
may be said of the difference between those who
live in Placentia and those who live in Fortune
Bay. But a single league may often carry the

• 4

144

DEPRAVITY.

traveller upon the same shore, from a people
whose habits are extremely coarse and revolting,
to a population which has suffered nothing —
perhaps has gained — from its being far removed
from the seat of advanced civilization and re-
finement. Much of the character of a settle-
ment must, of course, depend, for several genes-
rations, -on the character of its original settlers.
The descendants of some profane, run-away
man-of'war's man, or of some other character as
regardless or ignorant of decorum and delicacy,
are likely to shew to a third and fourth genera-
tion a general licentiousness of conversation and
conduct, which betray the foul origin of their
stock , Between the people of the Bay of Islands,
and those of Bay St. George, there was a differ-
ence as wide, as between the untutored Indian
and the more favoured child of refinement.
There were acts of profligacy practised, indeed,
in this bay, at which the Micmac Indians ex-
pressed to me their horror and disgust. The
arrival of a trading schooner among the people,
affords an invariable occasion for all parties
(with only one or two exceptions, and those, I
regret to say, not among the females!) to get
into a helpless state of intoxication. Wom^n,

SHOCKING DEPRAVITY OF FEMALES. 145

and among them p^^sitively girls of fourteen,
may be seen, under the plea of its helping them
in their work, habitually taking their ** morning"
of raw spirits before breakfast. I have seen this
dram repeated a second time before a seven
o'clock breakfast. The same, the girls among
the rest, are also smoking tobacco in short pipes,
blackened with constant use, like what the Irish
here call " dudees," all day long. The instant
they drop into a neighbour's house and are
seated by the fire, there is a shuffling of the
clothes, and the pipe, already partly filled, is
drawn from the side pocket, and applied to the
ashes for lighting.

One woman was pointed out to me here, who,
in her haste to attack a quantity of rum, which
she had brought on shore with her from a trading
vessel, and under the influence, at the same
time, of a certain quantity which she had drank
on bourd, left an infant of six months old upon
the landwash and forgot this her sucking child,
till the body of it was discovered the next morn-
ing, drowned by the returning tide ! The father,
immediately after the discovery of the awful dis-
aster, went on board, unwarned, and apparently
unaffected, for another gallon of the poison for

146 SHOCKIIiTG DEPRAVITY OY FEMALES.

the wake, or wicked drinking revel, which the
custom of the island has too commonly made an
appendage to a funeral. The same person, for
I can scarcely call the monster Woman, had
overlaid another child of two years old, when
she had retired to bed once in 1822, in a state
of intoxication. She is now shamelessly coha-
biting with her own nephew; and there are
other instances in this bay of adulterous and
incestuous connection with which I am unwil-
ling to pollute my journal — " for it is a shame
even to speak of those things which are done of
them" — unblushingly — it can scarcely be said
— " in secret."

The habitual conversation of the people is of
the most disgusting character; profanity is the
dialect, decency and deHcacy are the rare ex-
ceptions ; children swear at their parents, and
frequently strike them * *

,fi -•^■

There is not a probability, but, unless Mis-
sionaries and Schools be multiplied in the island,
the state of the next generation must be worse,
if possible, in places of this description than it
even nov/ is. I may be asked why I give even a
partial publicity to such disgusting details of

r \

SCOPE FOR MISSIONARY LABOURS.

147

1.18-

ind,
rse,
In it
m a
of

crime? I have been silent as regards much
which came to my knowledge : the interests of
morality may not, indeed, I know, be directly
served by the exposure of any of these details
of immorality ; but may not the attention of the
humane legislature — of the true patriot, of the
Christian philanthropist be roused by the know-
ledge of the existence of such horrible enormities,
to devise some plan for the emancipation of
our rapidly increasing population from their
present godless ignorance, — from a slavery
worse than that of the boay ? — and may not the
next generation, if not the present settlers, be
benefited by the glare of strong light which
is thus thrown upon deeds of darkness, which,
else, could never be suspected or conceived ? —
If the contrast befween the state of some of
these populous settlements and that of the in-
habitants of the most thinly populated village
in England, where the poor have the gospel
preached to them, lead any to see, and to
acknowledge, the value of an established religion
which supplies a churcl and a spiritual pastor,
and a spiritual provision to the poorest, without
money and without price, — I shall not have
raised a blush for depraved human nature, by

L 2

■ti'^^jaaJJ^iAWife- '..

148

WANT OF MISSIONARIES

exposing these her natural fruits, in vain ! I
met with more feminine delicacy, however, I
must own, in the wigwams of the Micmac and
Canokok Indians than in the tilts of many of
our own people. Except some sympathy be
excited for the improvement of our people in this
and like places, they may fast merge into a
state similar to that in which the first mission-
aries found the inhabitants of the islands in the
South Seas ; unless, inJaed, which seems not
improbable, nature viiiicates herself, and the
vices and excesses, by which their natural vigor
and constitutional energies do seem already im-
paired, shall, in a generation or two, exterminate
them as completely as drunkenness has some of
the tribes of Indians.

Wednesday y 27. — I was happy in being able
to stay on board the brig while she remained
here. My object, of course, was the improve-
ment of the people ; but none, who have not
been similarly situated, can imagine the diffi-
culty of awakening, or of fixing, the thoughts
of persons thus utterly unused to any sacred
appeals or sanctions. Schools in such places
must, at least, accompany, if they do not pre-

> /

AND SCHOOLS.

149

cede, the missionary ; unless, indeed, which is
the case with some of the Protestant Episcopal
missionaries, in the service of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, the same person
be fitted to undertake the joint duties of the
schoolmaster, and of the authorized ordained
spiritual guide. But, in this case, he could
only be a fixed pastor, which the means of no
existing society could afford wherever such was
needed ; for, it is obvious, that in proportion as
he was zealous in itinerating as a missionary, all
schemes for the improvement of the young, by
a school in the centre of his station, must suffer
frequent suspension and interruption. When
the brig left, I did not proceed in her to Forteau,
in the Straits of Belle Isle. The settlements
were so thinly scattered, and so thinly peopled
beyond this point, that I did not think that any
proportionate degree of good could be effected
to repay me for the consumption of time, which
would be occasioned by my passing through the
Straits, and returning to St. John's, by the
northern side of the island ; thus making my
visit a complete tour of circumnavigation. I had
not leisure, either, :'> go to the Labradore again,
and to remove my former disappointment, when

' -«^*,».-4..

150

LITTLE HARBOUR.

I was obliged to return without reaching either
of the Moravian Missionary stations.

I was glad, therefore, to return to St. George's
Bay, trusting that some opportunity might unex-
pectedly occur for my getting out of that bay
towards St. John's, if not directly to it. As no
more eligible opportunity offered of leaving Bay
of Islands, I started at six a.m., in a drenching
rain in an open boat, with Michael James, a
temporary resident in this bay, who was kind
enough to assist in rowing me in an American
marble-head whaling boat. He tookmetwenty-
fcur miles to Little Harbour, where, as well as
at Batteau Cove, I was very kindly treated by
the French, who were fishing there. Here they
had six French brigs moored, one a vessel
of 350 tons. The masters of these French
schooners and brigs have many of them been
lieutenants in the French navy ; and all their
masters of merchant vessels are obliged to serve
a certain time iti men-of-war, — they are men,
therefore, of a far superior class to the generality
of the English, who are employed in the same
way. I slept on the floor at Little Harbour, at
the house of a sister of Michael James, and
proceeded at five, A.M., of

AWFUL PUNISHMENT.

151

Thursday^ 28. — The hills white with snow,
by which the rain had been followed. The cliffs
here are exceedingly high. One was pointed out
to me from which a Frenchman, who had killed
his brother, was condemned to leap into the sea,
a height of more than three hundred feet, quite
perpendicular ! It was offered to him to choose
this alternative, or to be shot. Such was the
decision of the captain, who, (as was wont to be
the case with the English, in our early settlement
of Newfoundland,) having arrived the first in
the spring at the neighbouring harbour, ad-
ministered summary justice for the season of
the fishing, under the name of the "fishing
admiral."

By eleven, p. m., after calling in for an hour's
rest at Coal River, where I was kindly treated
by some of the French, and picked up a
specimen of gold " marcasit," — we reached an
empty salmon-house in Port-au-Port. Of this
we took possession for the night, and slept very
soundly upon the floor.

Friday y 29. — ^The next morning oarly I parted
with my worthy friend, M. J., who was obliged
to return, as he was in hourly expectation of

152

M. J. AH INTELLIGENT

, (

j
I

the arrival of a brig in the Bay of Islands, direct
from Jersey, in which the owners, who were his
employers, wished him to proceed to the Labra-
dore fishery. The superior demeanour of this
person, compared with that of the people by
whom he is surrounded, and his superior re-
ligious intelligence, were most gratifying. It
may stimulate the exertions of those engaged in
Sunday-schools, to know, that he attributes it
himself to the attention which he received when
a cabin boy, from a worthy clergyman in Eng-
land. He was a native of Newfoundland, and
received as fair an education as his highly re-
spectable parents could themselves give him in
a little out-harbour. He went home, however,
when young, and while waiting for the sailing
of his vessel, he was seen at church regularly
on Sundays, and weekly prayer days, in his
sailor's clothes in the pew of some English
relatives in the port : the clergyman on observ-
ing this, noticed him, and took pains to give
him instruction in his Sunday-school, and on
other occasions. He is now able to assemble a
congregation, or to read by a sick-bed, and has
taught several of his nephews and nieces, and
other neighbours to read, and he has told me.

:l| ''

AND PIOUS SETTLER.

153

that he knew he could never forget the kind-
ness of that clergyman, — he trusted he never
should forget the advice which he had given
him.

How many grateful testimonies of this nature
has it been my happiness to have had mentioned
to me at different times in the last nine years,
by the settlers in these distant colonies 1 The
parish boy, or the giddy girl, the impression, or
improvement of whose heart, the village pastor
has thought hopeless, as he presented the case
in his private addresses to the throne of grace,
has returned in a foreign land some portion of
the obligation under which the kindness of the
pastor of their youth has laid them to the
church, by entertaining and introducing into
their neighbourhood one of that missionary
church's missionary clergy ; and, as after the
dismissal of the settlement from his more public
ministrations, confidence has been encouraged,
and reserve has been removed ; tales have been
told of the village school and of the catechizing
in the aisle of the church, and of the pastor's
affectionate stroke upon the head of my host, —
rugged and weather-beaten now, — but then a
sleek curly-headed youth, and the reward-book

154

MISSIONARY CONTEMPLATIONS

Iffi

with the pastor's valued autograph, has been
brought forth, and the clasped bible and the
torn prayer-book, which he would not by any
means part with, but would wish for another, —
till — O ! the missionary and the man of rugged
features, have both become children ! and on
the thought of home, and of the church-yard
stile, and the village spire, and the intervening
sea ! and the present sad, sad wilderness in
which they are wandering, or wearing away life,
far from the privileges of which such fondly
recollected scenes remind them, they are both
in tears, and both upon their knees praying for
a blessing upon the dear church of their fathers,
that God would keep it with His perpetual
mercy, cleanse it and defend it with His con-
tinual pity, and, because it cannot continue in
safety without His succour, preserve it ever,
evermore by His help and goodness, through
Jesus Christ our Lord !

The thought that each scholar in the Sunday-
school may be the parent of a family, has
stimulated to exertion ; but how much greater
is the motive to such exertion, when it is con-
sidered that in the changes and chances of life,
some of the scholars present may become emi-

AND ENCOURAGEMENTS.

155

grant settlers upon this barren coast, or in our
cleared lands in the adjoining provinces and
islands ; that they may be the means of keeping
up a knowledge of Christ, in the new world,
where they may become founders of settlements,
and set the mould of the manners of generations
to come. M. J. mentioned with gratitude a
present which a neighbour had received of one
hundred and fifty American tracts, from a cler-
gyman of Boston. They had been dispersed
along this shore of Newfoundland, and some of
them despatched quite across through the in-
terior to the settlers upon the northern shore,
where, it is hoped, they may be fulfilling the
benevolent intentions of their excellent donor.
We call people here who live seventy or eighty
miles apart, along the same coast, neighbours,
and such they do indeed seem. Some, however,
are not very social. A case has been known on
the American continent of a man's moving
farther back into the uncleared land, because
he found himself getting crowded when a family
settled near enough to him for his next neigh-
bour to come to his house and return on the
same day. I have often felt surprised at con-
trasting the feeling with which a person, ac-

156

COMPARATIVE IDEAS OP

' I

customed to travel in England, goes over thirty,
forty, or fifty miles in that country of continued
interest and variety, and that with which he
travels the same distance through the woods of
North America. It might be imagined that the
variety of the views, the scattered farms, the
numerous churches of which he would get a
view as he passed along, and the neat cottages,
and the substantial yeoman's residences, and
the occasional seats, would so interest the sight,
that the distance wouM appear as nothing, and
the transportation on .ose easy roads, compa-
ratively a light work, as it were of a moment.
I have felt, however, that this is not the case.
No one can enter more fully than myself into
the beauty of the English landscape. No one
can enjoy analysing its various attractions, and
admiring them each in detail, more than I do;
and the whole ride would seem to me a de-
licious saunter through a paradise ; yet is a ride
of ten or twenty miles in a young country (if a
horse can be got along), or a walk, when the
road forbids the luxury of such an escort, less
of a journey, except in the matter of fatigue,
than one of the same distance is in England, or
any other thickly peopled country. The slight

DISTANCE IN TRAVELLING.

157

variety of object or of incident, in the journey
here, seems not to aflfect the eye with any
tedium, but rather to have the effect of annihi-
lating the idea of distance. Even the intermin-
able forest, however, has its varieties, and for
some eyes its beauties ; and perhaps, were my
theory to be fairly tested, it should be tried
upon some dead level or English flat (if such
could be found !) The barest part of Salisbury
Plain, the rudest district of Cornwall, the heaths
of Cambridgeshire, no place in England which
I have ever seen, could be such, however, in
my estimation, which presented no object of
interest whatever for the eye ; but then, these
ever green forests, and these rugged crags,
from which the birch and other trees spring, as
they do from thcrocks in the neighbourhood of
Tonbridge Wells, — these have an interest in my
eye, which would make me prefer my ride or
walk often miles here, to a ride or walk of the
same distance there, in a district, could it be
found, such as I have been supposing.

I cannot account for it perhaps correctly, but
such is certainly the fact, that I have difficulty
in imagining my ride of ten miles, which I take
when at St. John's every Sunday to Portugal

158

PORT-AU-PORT.

' ;/

Cove, is a greater distance than from Oxford to
Woodstock, or as great as from Inworth, my
first curacy in England, to Colchester, or from
Lowestoft to Yarmouth, or to Beccles, two other
rides of ten miles or under, which will often
recur to my recollections. — When M. J. left
me, I walked down the western shore of Port-
au-Port, to "the Isthmus" or " the Gravel,"
the walk was somewhat better than that upon
the other shore of Port-au-Port, which is re-
corded at May 13. It was not unattended,
however, with much difficulty and danger.
My nerves had become so shattered by my
late exertions, that, on the sight of dizzy pre-
cipices in my way, I would sometimes burst
into most involuntary tears, and experience all
the premonitory symptoms of fainting. On one
of these occasions, when hanging by my fingers
and knees on the edge of a steep cliff, from
which a fall, which seemed inevitable, must
have been fatal, these sensations came on, and
I felt as though I was just fainting! I closed
my eyes to the danger, and in the kneeling pos-
ture in which of necessity I was at the time, I
put up an ejaculatory prayer, and I felt the
blood revisit my heart; my nerves were instantly

1 \

ST. GEORGE S HARBOUR.

]59

revigorated, and, supported by an invisible arm,
I was enabled to reach the bottom in safety.
Before night I reached my kind friends the
Vincents, little less fatigued than when I drop-
ped in upon them before.

Friday t 29. — Storm in the morning, but was
able in the afternoon to get to Sandy Point, St.
George's Harbour, and administered consolation
this day and the next to an elderly inhabitant
who had been taken seriously ill in my absence.

'•,\,

Sunday f 31. — ^Three full services and two
baptisms ; was struck by a verse in one of the
American hymns, sung by Mrs. Forrest and the
congregation. It seemed peculiarly appropriate
to religious services, like those in which I was
engaged, which, of necessity, are celebrated in
private houses : —

Thou wilt not, gracious God ! despise
The humble dwelling where we meet ;

Accept our grateful sacrifice,
And make our meditation sweet.

June, Monday, 1. — Started at three, a.m., in
a fishing schooner for the Barrisways, three
settlements about twenty-three miles from this

160

ELIGIBILITY OF

harbour, and half-way down the bay. A violent
gale of wind prevented our getting in until

Tuesday y 2 — seven in the morning of the
next day. At the third Barrisway, or Crabs, I
found three families, who, like those of the
other settlements, were most industrious, moral,
cleanly people. They are of Jersey extraction,
principally mixed with emigrants from agri-
cultural districts in the west of England. They
would not suffer in comparison with any settlers
on the island, and it is much to be lamented
that so fine a nest of settlements should not be
acknowledged and recognised by the Govern-
ment. They have some of the best land in the
island, along the shore and in their rear ; yet,
through the discouragement which the English
Government gives to settlers to the west of
Cape Ray, and an over delicate dread of en-
couraging eny extensive settlements which might
dissatisfy the French, — this, which is certainly
the best portion of the island, is entirely lost to
us as regards revenue. The people are most
anxious themselves, to be taken under the
paternal care of the English Government, and
would gladly furniph their proportion to the

CAPE RAY.

161

revenue in return for security in possession of
the land which they clear, and which here, as
can be said of it in no other part of Newfound-
land, and cannot be said of some parts of Cape
Breton, and Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick,
which I have seen, would amply reward the
labour and expense of culture. They live here,
indeed, entirely on the produce of the soil, and
of the cattle which they keep, and they live
well. They are so far independent of the mer-
chant, that they never apply to him for butter,
pork, or beef. Indeed, if they could only find
a market for their produce, they could rear
more cattle and vegetables, and could cure
more meat, than their families require. There
is no other part of Newfoundland like it. All
the people of tlys bay prosecute the salmon
fishery ; this is generally very lucrative, as col-
lecting furs also is in the winter. The number
of the French who catch fish upon the coast,
and within the bay, prevents their looking for
more codfish than they require for immediate
family use ; and although they do now prose-
cute, in some degree, the herring fishery, which
struck in while I was at Sandy Point, the French
injure this brancli of the fishery so much by the

1.1

162

SALMON FISHERY.

use of their seines, that it is not unlikely that
the herring catch will be soon abandoned by
our people. I held full service this evening,
and baptized ten.

«i

■I

!
1^

Wednesday y 3. — There is a flower here re-
sembling the English auricula, but smaller ; it
is the precursor of the salmon, and is, in con-
sequence, called the salmon-flower : it was
observed to be just coming into bloom. Accord-
ingly, in the course of my visit to this place, the
salmon struck in, not, however, so abundantly
as usual. Full service in the p. m., and five
adults baptized, after an explanation to ^hem of
the nature of their baptismal obligation. The
extent of the religious intelligence of the pecple
here surprised me : the first settlers, both those
from Jersey, and those from Devon and Dorset,
were of a superior class, and their descendants
do not degenerate. I met here with a man in
humble life, who pleased me. He had been
brought up at the free-school of Lady Caroliiie
Damer, at Abbey Milton, near Blandford, Dor-
set, and seemed to have profited much by this
training in his early years. It has enabled him
t^, instruct those less favoured among whom he

'yv: • *■ v^ ;.■; .1 -y. it} --i^tit^, #=-- ■;

"V. :v

BEARS AND WOLVES.

163

is settled. He shewed me with grateful pride
a prayer-book, in which her ladyship had put
her autograph inscription, when she presented
him the treasure upon his leaving her school.

Thursday, 4. — Proceeded to the Middle Bar-
risway, where was a most respectable man,
with a family of eleven children. The people
gathered together from each of the other Bar-
risways for service, at which we had thirty
present; three children baptized.

Friday, 5. — Full service, and baptized four
more children. James Huelen, and his brother
John Huelen of Crabs, once came suddenly,
when hunting, upon two bears and t' ree wolves,
which were devouring the carcase of a deer.
When they reached within thirty yards of them,
they fired one of their guns, and brought down
a bear, taking care, for the chance of an attack
from the exasperated or alarmed animals, to
keep the other gun, till they could reload the
one discharged. They then fired and killed the
other bear ; the wolves still kept their ground,
and the men, in this way, brought down two of
the wolves. The remaining wolf then walked

M 2

164

NATURAL HISTORY,

fil

' 1 1

away, but so leisurely was his retreat, that they
might, if they had been disposed to coinplete the
slaughter, have followed and shot him too.
The same man has, also, come suddenly upon a
bear, which has been in the upper branches of a
dog-berry or mountain ash, deliberately bending
and breaking the boughs, that he might eat the
berries. I purchased here the skin of a very
fine bear, which had been shot in the winter
within sight of the house ; he had attempted to
force the door of one of the outhouses, and, a
watch being placed for him on the following
night, he was caught. I got here, also, the
tusk of a walroos, or morse. These marine
animals used to be very common on the coast of
Newfoundland, but they are now supposed to
be extinct here. Here, too, I picked some
specimens of a coarse coal from the cliff close to
the sea. There is, however, a little distance up
the river, a bed of coal, the vein of which may
be seen in the bank, and under the bed of the
river in clear shallow water. The inhabitants
have recourse to it when they require a fierce
fire for hardening their axes and iron tools, and
they occasionally take small portions of it into
the country with them for their fires, when they

AND MFNERALS.

165

sleep in the interior, on their deer-hunting
expeditions. I collected specimens of gypsum,
also, in this bay, and of a white friable stone
resembling talc or Labradore spar, in the man-
ner in which it breaks off into plates ; but
peculiar, as the laminae are not so elastic as
those of the blue talc, and the whole stone is of
a cransparent whiteness. I also tasted here a
strong chalybeate water, and there is in the
neighbourhood a salt spring also.

Saturday y 6. — Wallted to the First Barris-
way, where three families live, and the widow,
Anne Huelen, a native, the mother of the settle-
ments. The recollection of thi> cheerful old
lady is unimpaired, and carries her back to the
history of the island for the greater part of a
century, and this a most interesting portion of
the history of Newfoundland, — as it takes in
the troubled periods in which the French and
American privateers inflicted such incalculable
hardships on the simple inhabitants of this
coast. In 1814, soon after the loss of her hus-
band, she was proceeding with one of her
daughters, and her catch of cured salmon, to

M^V -" \- - \ |- lit l' .

v!li^ . J^- vuLlnkJ>^^^^^J(U

166

ANNE HUELEN.

St. John's, for the arrangement of her affairs,
when she was captured by an American priva-
teer, and carried to New York. Her cargo was
sold there by a writ of " venditioni exponas."
She showed me her pass-papers, which were
signed by James Monroe, then secretary to the
President of the United States* She speaks
with lively gratitude of the very humane atten-
tions which were uniformly paid her while she
was detained in New York, especially by a
Mrs. Sophia Doty, after whom and Mr. Doty,
she had two of her grandchildren, Sophia and
Elihu, named, after her return to Newfoundland.
She was allowed, too, very kindly, to buy in
her own schooner at the nominal price of one
dollar, which a benevolent American put into
the poor creature's hand at the moment, for the
purpose of effecting the formal purchase.

The want of Bibles in this and similar places
is much felt by the people, who attach great
value to the rare possession. A seaman, who
was wrecked in the barque Fanny, on her home-
ward-bound passage from Quebec to Greenock,
was most hospitably entertained here during the
winter of 1833-4, from October, 1833, to June,

A USEFUL BIBLE.

167

1834. He had a Bible which he prized much,
and read in it daily aloud as well as by himself.
It bore this inscription : —

" To George Green, from a very sincere
friend, who, with all his heart, beseeches George
to take this book as his chart and compass ;
and, as sure as God has said it, he will reach
at last the shores of Heaven. — October, 1833."

It now bears the following additional in-
scription : —

** George Green, having been wrecked in
October, 1833, off Red Island, near Port-au-
Port, Newfoundland, on his passage from Que-
bec to Greenock, in the barque Fanny, was
hospitably entertained by the inhabitants of the
First Barrisway, St. George's Bay. During the
winter, this bible" was daily used by him, and
frequently read aloud to the other inhabitants,
who had no bibles. When he left, in June,
1834, after much persuasion, he was induced to
present this highly prized volume to Clemence
Morris. May God bless this book to him, and
the other inhabitants of the settlement, that so
it may abundantly fulfil the pious purposes of
its donor ! — June, 1835."

168

REV. MR. DESBRISAY ;

I had full service to-day, and baptized five
children.

' Sunday 7, (Whitsunday.) — Full service three
times, and baptized nine persons. I met at
Sandy Point, and afterwards at this settlement,
a Halifax trader, G. B. He was an old pa-
rishioner of my deceased friend the Reverend
Mather Byles Desbrisay, of Dartmouth, Nova
Scotia. He had been indebted to Mr. D. for
indefatigable attention to him, when he was
supposed to be upon a dying bed, and was un-
ceasingly visited by him, although he resided
at an out-harbour, several miles from his pas-
tor's residence : but it had pleased God to raise
him, and suddenly to cut down the exemplary
pastor in the midst of his career of usefulness.
G. B. had been much attached to the ministry
of my departed friend. He had been dead
more than a twelvemonth, yet the poor fellow
could not speak of his late beloved pastor with-
out tears ; and the memory of my sainted
brother in the ministry, with whom I had so
often joined in missionary excursions, and taken
sweet counsel in Nova Scotia^ was so dear to

OBITUARY OF HIM.

169

myself, that I mingled my own tears with those
of this rough trader. It was gratifying to see
such a tribute of veneration paid to the memory
of this departed servant of the Lord, and it was
no less so to hear the high testimony which he
gave to the worth of the Reverend Addington
Davenport Parker, his successor in the Dart-
mouth mission, whose acquaintance, with many
others which I value much, I had also the
opportunity of making, while I resided in the
capital of Nova Scotia, or travelled in the
capacity of chaplain with the excellent bishop.
Obituary notices, in which attempts were made
to do justice to the character of Desbrisay,
appeared, at the time of his decease, in the
various Halifax prints. I regret that they are
not now accessible to me, but, — '* Quis deside-
rio sit pudor !" — there is one which I may here
introduce, as it appeared in the London "Chris-
tian Remembrancer," for May, 1834 : —

" CLFRGYMAN DECEASED.

The diocese of Nova Scotia has recently
sustained a very serious loss, in the sudden
decease of the Reverend Mather Byles Des-
brisay, M.A., of King's College, Nova Scotia,

170

OBITUARY OF THE

and Missionary in the service of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
for the district of Dartmouth, in the harbour of
Halifax. Like the right-minded, and zealous
Bishop HoBART, of New York, this sound
churchman and exemplary Christian, was de-
scended from an ancestry (the Mathers of
Boston, New England), who would have looked
forward with a degree of superstitious horror to
the chance that any of their posterity might
admit what they would have termed the abomi-
nation of episcopacy, and embrace the un-
evangelical doctrines of the Protestant episcopal
communion. His second name of Byles, he
derived from the Protestant episcopal missiona-
ries of that name in North America, a record
of whose labours, in the early state o the
Protestant episcopal church of North America,
may be found in the reports and correspondence
of the Society for the Propagation of tlie Gospel.
Being the son of an officer in the British army,
he was brought up in his earlier years under
the discipline of the College of Cadets in Eng-
land, and was destined by his family fcr that
service. A decided preference, however, for the
pastoral office, led him, in maturer years, to

REV. M. B. DESBRISAY.

171

seek a degree in the University of Windsor ; an
institution which has been eminently useful in
furnishing the colonial church in North America
with many most exemplary missionaries ; the
support of which, however, has been so de-
plorably curtailed, through the late withdrawal
of the Parliamentary grant to the S. P. G. F. P.,
that it is feared it may no longer be a nursery,
as it has been wont to be, for the education of
the children, and for the training of the future
ministers of the church.

** The amiable manners of Mather Byles
Desbrisay, his scrupulous morality, his diligent
attention to every collegiate, above all, to every
religious obligation, while he was in statu pupil-
lari, commanded the esteem and regard of all,
of every ag« connected with the college : and
his sound e\ mgelica; piety, and love for the
apostolic church, gave early promise of the
great exertions which he afterwards put forth,
and of the success and uniform acceptance
which wouki attend his future ministry.

" The estimation which he has left behind
him of his labours and his character, is indeed
?kli.;;htful : his admiring flock, and his brother
(Tilei ivy, feel, alike, that they have lost an exam*

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172

OBITUARY OF THE

pie, which it was a privilege to have before them.
An extensive round of churches, and a circle of
congregations more numerous than the churches,
under his charge, among some of whom he had
first planted the standard, and, with persuasive
eloquence, proclaimed periodically among them
all ihe doctrines of the church, will long feel
their bereavement of this zealous missionary.
That he might do all in the power of man, — aye,
and he has been known to exert himself even
beyond that power, although of extreme delicacy
of constitution, that, — in a country so inade-
quately provided with pastors, he might do all
he could for the edification of the scattered
members of the church, — he has been for seve-
ral years in the habit of holding service on
week-days, in different and distant parts of his
extensive mission, besides the performance of
three services on the Lord's day ; when he took,
together with the centre church of Dartmouth,
the churches at the eastern passage, at Lawrence
Town, and at Porter's Lake, in rotation ; sel-
dom retiring to his bed, on Sunday night, with-
out having travelled from twenty to five-and-
twenty miles, often considerably more. He
met his death at the early age of thirty-one or

( \

REV. M. B. DESBRISAY.

173

thirty-two, as nearly as the writer can ascertain ;
and it was occasioned by a brain-fever, the effect
of a fall from his horse, which occurred, it is
believed, while he was in the execution of some
one or other of his arduous duties. The writer
has frequently heard him express, with grati-
tude, (and more than once, when, in moments
of fatigue, he has drawn from his waistcoat
pocket a portable folding cup, for drinking of
the pure stream of the forest, in his missionary
wanderings,) that he was much indebted to his
early discipline for the military life, for the
buoyancy with which he could now go through
his missionary toils, with no other refreshment
than the pure brook, and the biscuit which he
carried with him, would afford. A memoir of
this indefatigable and pious missionary, would,
in the opinion of those who knew him, be read
with deep interest and profit, and would not suf-
fer from comparison with the recent memoirs of
Pastors Oberlin and NefF. He died eaily in
February, and was buried, where he had often
expressed the wish that his remains should lie,
beneath the altar of the church at Dartmouth,
from the pulpit over which altar he had so often
affectionately called on his flock to watch, * for

(

(; i

!■■ \

i i

174

LABOURS OF THE

they knew not the hour when the Son of Man
would come ;' and had dealt so frequently from
its rails the blessed sacrament of Christ's body
and blood, for the comfort and refreshing of
their souls. May God, (as, in the course of
conversation, while in perfect health, a few days
previous to his sudden decease, he was heard to
remark, he doubted not, God could, and would,
in the event of his being called away from his
scene of duty,) raise up a faithful successor, and
many, many such labourers, in the room of him
who has gone to rest, and his reward !"

Such, — nine years* acquaintance with the
diocese of Nova Scotia enables me to say, —
might be the record of the ordinary labours of
nine out of ten of the missionaries of the dio-
cese. In seeking, for the journal of six months
of my own late visitation, a degree of publicity
greater than could be given to a letter to the
secretary of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which might be
appended to that society's report, I must dis-
claim any wish to establish a character for zeal
or activity, beyond that which belongs to the
rest of my colonial brethren in the ministry.
There are, I solemnly believe, few of my mis-

;.!

CHURCH MISSIONARIES.

175

sionary brethren whose journals for *he same
period might not supply records of equal, and
superior exertions in the cause of our Heavenly
Master. If my late excursion has been of a
greater extent than others have undertaken, I
would have it attributed to the absence of any
immediately pressing parochial calls at the place
of my residence, which must have constrained
any of my brethren, though most unwillingly,
to have broken off any such projected visitation
in the midst, and to have hastened back to the
constantly recurring calls of the centre of his
mission station ; which, necessary as it is at
times to leave it, can never, we all know and
most anxiously must feel, be left for any length
of time together, without serious detriment to
our communion ; and, if it seem to any that I
have alluded too much (for if I know myself I
have not dwelt upon them) to the privations, and
difficulties and escapes of my voyage, I would
say, that gratitude to God, my preserver, would
not permit me to pass over, without a mention,
mercies which must ever dwell in a grateful me-
mory, and particularly the blessing of a constitu-
tional energy and an elasticity of spirit for which
I would take no merit to myself, but desire to

)

176

VINDICATION OF

! /'

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I
t !

dedicate them to the service of Christ's church,
and so to sanctify them while they are merci-
fully preserved to me.

And here, 1 would remark, in reference to a
report which has been most undeservedly circu-
lated respecting the Protestaat Episcopal clergy
in Newfoundland, that " they are idle, and
worldly, and unevangelical," — I would remark,
or rather simply insert in this place, a circular
from the Bishop of Nova Scotia to his clergy,
the appearance of which drew forth the tribute
to the zeal of the colonial clergy, which I also
annex, and which I copy from an excellent re-
ligious periodical, published in New York, enti-
tled The Churchman.

CIRCULAR OF THE BISHOP OF NOVA SCOTIA.

Halifax, March 6, 1834.
Reverend and Dear Sir. — You will learn with
equal surprise and regret, that, while the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel are endeavouring to procure
all possible assistance for the support of the Church in
these colonies, at this time of its distress, they are im-
peded in their work by malevolent reports, industri-
ously circulated against their missionaries, representing
them as inefficient, worldly, idle, and unevangelical —

iJU

THE CLERGY.

177

(epithets which are unsparingly applied, in these
days of rebuke, both to the English and the Colonial
Clergy) — ^and, also, stating them to be fully, if not over
paid for all the'r services.

Undeserving as we may feel of such misrepresenta-
tion, I trust we are all ready to regard it as a call to the
exercise of our humility and patience and charity, and
as a stimulus to increased zeal and fervour in our la-
bours and prayers, with full faith and confidence in the
protection of the Most High.

But it does not appear inconsistent with the most
lowly opinion we can entertain of our best exertions,
as they must appear in the sight of a holy and perfect
God, to use all proper means for protecting our cha-
racter and our labours from the unjust aspersions of
misguided men.

The Society would not be without means for dis-
proving any specific charge, if such were made, and
would be quite ready to employ these means, but such
general and vague calumnies as I have mentioned, can
only be triumphantly repelled by plain and particular
statements of all that is donoand doing, in their missions.

Being anxious to supply such statements as speedily
as possible, I naturally turn to my brethren in the
ministry for their assistance. In affording their help,
I assure myself they will feel the importance of being
scrupulously correct in their detail. Whenever there
shall be any doubt in their mind, from want of memo-
randa, or clear recollection, they will require no cau-

178

VINDICATION OF

tion from me to guard them from any thing like over-
statement, and they will be desirous of being much
within the truth, in preference to the least risk of exceed-
ing these limits. I, therefore, beg to be early favoured
with explicit answers to the following questions : —

1. How many Sundays were you present in your
mission during the year 1833?

2. How many services did you perform in the same
year, and how often did you preach ?

3. How many miles did you travel in the same pe-
riod, in every way, by land and by water, in the per-
formance of your missionary duties ? k

4. How many missionary visits did you make to
separate settlements, and how many pastoral visits to
individual families ?

5. To how many sick or afflicted persons did you
administer the consolations of religion ?

6 Have any remarkable occurrences in your mission
in the last year required your special attention ? — If
anv, detail them.

7. Have any remarkable cases required your spiritual
care and consolation ? — If any, state their circum-
stances, your treatment of them, and whether you had
reason to hope, in all Christian humility, that your mi-
nistry in these cases has been blessed to the patients, or
to those around them.

8. How many Sunday schools have been established
under your direction ? How many persons of all ages at-
tend them, and how much of your time is devoted to them ?

9. What is the whole amount, or value, of the in-

J 'v-U

THE CLERGY.

179

come you have derived, in the last year, from glebe,
surplice-fees, contributions from your congregation,
pew-rents, or from any and every source within your
mission, and what are the average prices of the chief
necessaries of life ?

10. What are the nature and extent of the inconveni-
ence and hardship and distress which have already
overtaken, or must speedily fall upon yourself, your
family and dependents, in consequence of the late un-
happy reduction of your salary? — State the number of
family, and any circumstances 'which may elucidate and
support the facts you detail.

I shall hope to receive the information now required
without any loss of time : and, as similar reports will
be necessary every year, I must beg you to forward
them to me, hereafter, in the first week of every Janu-
ary. That you may furnish them with complete accu-
racy, I particularly recommend your immediate coui-
mencement of a regular pastoral and parochial journal.
You will be so good as to add your regular notitia of
baptisms, marriages, burials, the whole number of
communicants within your mission, population, and
the number of schools and scholars.

Earnestly recommending yourself and your flock to
the continual care and guidance of the heavenly
Shepherd, under every prosperous and every adverse
circumstance, I am.

Reverend and Dear Sir,

Your affectionate brother,

John, Nova-Scotia.

N 2

f»;«??f,TSS|7!f4:

/ w

180 VINDICATION OF

CLERGY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES.

In another column is inserted the circular of the
Bishop of Nova Scotia to his clergy, propounding cer-
tain questions designed to draw from them a statement
of the duties performed by them as missionaries. The
occasion of the circular boing issued is the alleged pre-
valence of reports prejudicial to the character and
interests of the clergy, the refutation of which, it is
thought, will be most effectually accomplished by the
statistical documents that will be given in answer to
the queries which the circular contains. We doubt,
not that the measure will be productive of good results,
and will eventually raise the reputation of the mission-
aries by furnishing the Society, and through it the
public at large, with the data for forming a just esti-
mate of their labours. But we .annot restrain the ex-
pression of surprise and grief that the measure should
have been rendered necessary : that a body of men,
such as the missionaries of the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Gospel, should be compelled to appear
before the public in the attitude of defendants — not to
specific charges which might be met and repelled — but
to vague rumours, which, as nobody will particularize,
so nobody can refute. Such reports are among the
sorest evils with which the clergy have to contend.
They harmonize with men's natural disinclination for
pure religion — a disinclination which in the minds of

THE CLERGY.

181

/ many is harboured until it ripens into malevolence, —

and are thus sure to obtain an easy credence and ex-
tensive propagation. But if wc had been asked to
specify a band of clergy who more than any other might
expect an exemption from such calumnies, we should
have pointed to the missionaries of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel. Such an event, if we mis-
1 take not, is a novel occurrence in the history of the
Society. We, in this country, know something of this
Society, and have good reason to cherish, as we do, the
memory of its missionaries. We wish to say nothing
to the disparagement of the clergy of the church of Eng-
• land : but let their character for cheerful and manly
piety, for effective but unostentatious usefulness, be
rated as highly as the warmest friends of the Church
are disposed to rate it, we will say it forms too low a
standard by which to estimate the worth of the Society's
missionaries. Many causes combined to give distinc-
tiveness to their character. In the very threshold of
the entrance into the ministry was an obstacle, the
encountering of which was a test of their earnestness
and pledge of their future fidelity. And after their
return from a perilous voyage, the difficulties to which
they were exposed were such as to keep their weapons
in order for constant use. They had to grapple with
sectaries of every kind, and of very different mettle
from any that were to be met with in Britain, and who
had only left the old country because they excelled the
main body of the Dissenters in the courageous temper

»■.«

182

VINDICATION OF

of their minds, and uncompromising opposition to the
Church. Thus the Society's missionaries were obliged
to move, armed cap-a-pie, in the panoply of polemical
warfare ; nor is it surprising that we are enabled — as
we justly are — to extend to many of them the tribute
which, in a late British Critic, was paid to one of their
number, that their learning was " worthy" (what nobler
eulogy could be pronounced ?) " of the best days of
English theology." But their piety and self-denial,
were better disciplined than their learning. Their
labours were of the most arduous kind. Large dis-
tricts were assigned to them, severally at a time,
when the country was little better than a wilderness.
Many among us remember their privations and labours,
and many more experience their fruits in the blessings
of the knowledge of Cheist and his Church, which
they have been the means of transmitting to us. The
patient, self-denying labours which they were com-
pelled to encounter, infused an energy into their piety
which approximated it more nearly than any milder
discipline could have done, to the true standard of a
missionary of Jesus Christ. To this discipline, in its
most important features, the missionaries in the Ca-
nadas and Nova Scotia have been, and still continue to
be, subjected, as well as those who were in our coun-
try ; while the Society itself is guided in the appoint-
ment of its agents on the same principles, and we
might therefore expect to find in both the same common
traits of character. But we are not left to conjecture.

ira.

THE CLERGY.

183

We judge of them not by what we should think that
they would be, but from what we have heard that they
are. And much have we been deceived if an equal
number of clergy can be found of more sterling piety
and more effective usefulness, than the missionaries of
the venerable Society in the British colonies. We have
not long since published in our columns an account of
the labours of one among the colonial clergy, wliich
would have shone in the annals of the primitive Church.
It is therefore not without surprise, as well as indigna-
tion, that we learn that the voice of calumny has assailed
them, and cheerfully adopt the words of the editor of
the St. John's Times, as expressive of our own sense
of the injustice and futility of the charge.

" The best, and most triumphant refutation of such
calumnies will, indeed, be found, as is hinted by their
diocesan, in the simple transcription from their differ-
ent note-books, of their diaries and journals ; and it is
confidently hoped that the Society which employs them
will do them the justice of printing their replies entire.
Such a representation of the exertions of these men
during any one year, would furnish, we feel con-
vinced, the most complete specimens of a Missionary
Annual which could be produced by an equal number
of devoted servants of the cross; it would gain to
the Society, which is now in so great need of sup-
port from the Christian public, a host of new contri-
butors ; and it would stand forth, to posterity, a most
imperishable monument of the zeal of the colonial

•?,

184

SERVICES AT

clergy of the present generation, and of the acrimony,
falsehood, and malevolence which could assail a body
of men who, in the main, deserve, as, indeed, they, in
the main, receive, the admiration and respect of all of
every creed who are within the circle of their exer-

tions

Sunday J 14, {Trinity Sunday.) — Full service
three times, three baptisms.

Sunday, 2\. — Had returned to Sandy Point.
Renewed a notice which I had previously given
of my intention shortly to administer the Holy
Communion, and invited inquirers to come to
me for information and instruction. Preached
familiarly upon the subject at each of my three
services, and gave notice of a full service on

&P'\'

Wednesday, 24. — St. John Baptist's Day.

Sunday 2B» — Three full services. Baptized
three children in public service, and another at
home, and churched a woman who had become
a mother while I was there ; administered the
Lord's Supper. I find that by a strange omis-
sion I have neglected to record the number of

SANDY POINT.

185

communicants in my short notes. I can remem-
ber distinctly, however, the names and peraons
of five seemingly devout well-informed commu-
nicants.

? !

Monday J 29. — St. Peter's Day, gave me an
opportunity of holding a full service on the next
day.

Sunday i S^July, — ^Three full services at Sandy
Point, so well attended, that I regret exceed-
ingly there should be no missionary stationed
amongst this very teachable quiet people. This
harbour and the Barrisways, with an occasional
visit to the Bay of Islands, and the settlements
at Codroy Rivers and Island, would constitute
a pleasant and no idle charge; and a school, as
I found on an enumeration of the children with
one of the inhabitants, might, in Sandy Point
alone, congregate seventy children, if it could
be opened to-morrow.

i A

Monday y 6. — Went, this week, to visit the
salmon fisheries, which are upon the main gut.
Three or four families reside there. One night,
as some of the people and an Indian boy were

(

"■f

186

TROUT-SPEARING.

going out just at the rise of high tide, five
canoes in all, to spear trout and eels, I joined
them in the excursion. It employed us till an
hour or two after midnight. The scene was an
animating one. A brilliant moon hung over the
hills, which were finely wooded, to the very
cliffs and sand at the edge of the water.
Bunches of birch bark were packed together, a
dozen in each packet ; these were stuck one at
a time, as required, into a stick which was cleft
at the top to let in this rude flambeau, to which
a light was applied. The stick with the ignited
birch bark vas then put upright at the bow of
the canoe ; there, also, the man stood up, most
insecurely balanced, as would seem, with his
nighok, or eel-spear, a pole cleft at the bottom
with a spike inserted. This, on his striking a
fish of any size, would open and admit it till the
spike perforated it, and then closing upon it,
would press it and prevent its escape. The
sandy or stony bottom of the river in the shal-
lows, — for in deeper water this sport cannot be
pursued, was seen as clearly as in the day, and
every fish in it. The fish seemed at least bewil-
dered, if not attracted by the light; and the

>\\

TROUT-SPEARING.

187

quickness of the eye, and adroitness of the man
who used the nighok, impelling, as he did the
canoe with the thick end, and every now and
then reversing it to strike, were surprising. He
struck successfully eight out of ten of the
fish at which he aimed, and shook them off
into the boat with a sudden turn of his arm,
which left him at liberty to strike at two fish
within a second or two. He kept his balance,
also, with great niceness, when he seemed to
have poised himself so far over the side of the
light canoe, that he must, it seemed to me,
have gone overboard, or capsized our crank
bark. The light of the flambeaux in the other
canoes, as they came round the projecting
points of leafy green ; and the shade, as we again
lost view of them behind the trees or rocks in
the distance, was most imposing. Four hun-
dred trout were thus speared in the canoe in
which I was ; some of them were of such a size,
that they would have been taken, as they fre-
quently are, in the salmon nets. In the five
canoes, above one thousand were taken in little
more than two hours. I had the curiosity to
weigh six of them, which together weighed

5 A

i» i

188

ST. GEORGES S HARBOUR.

twenty-two pounds, and had a barrel of this
night's catch salted that I might take them with
me to St. John's.

Sunday i 12. — ^Three full services at Sandy
Point ; but, hearing that old Mrs. Huelen of the
Barrisways was dangerously ill, I walked up
thither in the following week to see her. A son at
the farther Barrisway, who ivas also an invalid,
was gratified by my visiting him in his sick-room.

Sunday y 19. — Three full services at the
Barrisways.

Friday, 24. — A new scnooner belonging to
my kind friends, Mr. Horatio Forrest, and
Joseph Pennall, for the launching of which I had
been anxiously waiting, being now rigged and
loaded and ready for sea, I took leave of the' worthy
inhabitants of St. George's Harbour, (of whose
kindness I shall ever entertain an affectionate
recollection,) in an evening service which was
very crowded, and

Saturday, 25. — Sailed from Sandy Point at
five, A.M.

W^R&CKS*

189

Sunday f 26. — Put into Port aux Basque, and
held full service at the house of Michael
Guillam, where I slept. I baptized a grand-
child which had been added to his family since I
passed and officiated here in May. Near this
place, I saw on Shagrock the hull of the ship
James. She had been wrecked here since I
passed, and had been sold for twenty shillings.
The hull of the *' Nathanael Graham," which
had been wrecked within an hour of her, was
also visible. Forty passengers had lost their
lives. It was on this occasion that Joseph
Miessau distinguished himself as mentioned un<
der the date of May 7. While I was in St,
George's Bay many articles, such as beds,
blankets, and tools, which had been washed
from these wrecks, had been driven ashore
there; and, among other things a trunk with
female apparel, and some letters directed to
persons in Canada in the United States. These
I enclosed and forwarded, with an account of
the sad fate, which it was too likely had arrested
the person to whose charge they had been
confided.

i m

Monday^ 27. — A difficulty which prevented

9^>Mrt*4|i|iliHtM«aH

wmkmmJmi

MiiM

iV:

190

MET WITH FRIENDS.

our getting up our anchor for some hours this
morning, I lamented at the time, but was after-
wards thankful for it. Through the delay thus
occasioned; I met, off La Poile Bay, a cutter,
which I should else have missed, that my dear
wife and friends in St. John's had hired and
fitted up, and despatched for meat the beginning
of July. They had been much alarmed for my
safety, as no accounts of me whatever had reached
tliem for three months, till a letter was received
by my wife, which I had sent from St. George's
Bay vid Sydney, Cape Breton Island, and
another vid Quebec. As we hove in sight, the
cutter hoisted a flag, which I have had made
for occasions of this kind, bearing the arms
of the see of Nova Scotia. 1 did not expect
any thing of the kind, however, and did not
consequently recognize it, taking it for some
merchant's private signal. We only spoke to
them, for the chance of her having come from
St. John's, and having letters on board for me,
or papers, for which, it may be imagined, I was
most anxious, as I had only heard once from my
wife during my long absence. I soon recog-
nized the person of my friend Mr. James Stokes
on her deck, who had kindly engaged to assist

■■<:.. (

« I

ANXIETY FOR ME.

191

' I

in the search for me. He had to"ched at several
places upon his way, and, although he had
occasionally collected some slight information
of my movements during the winter, the intelli-
gence which he could collect was, on the whole,
so little satisfactory that he had positively given
me up. I now shifted my quarters at sea,
which many would not have been sorry to do,
as the new schooner had a considerable leak,
which could not be discovered, and made very
frequent pumping absolutely necessary. I would
readily, now that I had the disposal of a nice
cutter and crew, have called on the interesting
inhabitants of the Borgeo Islands whom I had
been so sorry to pass as I went along on the
2nd of May. I directed that we should bear
away for them immediately on getting on board ;
it was night, however, when we got abreast
of them : the coast was a dangerous one for our
attempting to keep standing off and on for the
night ; the wind, moreover, was fair, so we filled
the sheet, and by the morning were near St.
Peter's. Off this island we were becalmed, and
the weather became very thick. We went to the
roads, therefore, and called in at St. Peter's,
where I had pleasure in renewing my acquaint-

<■ n

! *
' i

«.^

192

ST. PETERS,

l-^A

E ,, . !

ance with the French commandant, Captain
Bru6, and partook of kind hospitalities of several
of his people during the two days of our deten-
tion. I had had many opportunities of hearing,
and, indeed, of witnessing instances of the slight
estimation in which the French, who were
fishing on this coast from St. Maloes and Gran-
ville, hold their clergy. When the cutter had
put in, on its way, at St. Peter's, among other
places, to make inquiry for me, considerable
surprise was excited among the French people
at the fact of any anxiety's being shown in St.
John's for the safety of a padr^, and they
declared that if a whole ship's load of their
padres were to go to the bottom, they would
none of them break their slumbers on that score!
It is to be feared that the levity of this remark
may have not far exceeded the bounds of truth ;
and the melancholy view which it gives of the
slight esteem in which the French hold their
ministers of religion, is too faithfully descriptive
of the people. When the wind allowed of our
departure we weighed anchor, and, — except
that we were mercifully preserved from running
ashore on Goose Island, near Capliu Bay, when
the wind was on shore, and the weather so thick

FACTION AT ST. JOHN S.

193

that we could see no land, nor the very breakers
which discovered the land to us more than
the cutter's length a-head of us ! there was
nothing in the remainder of my passage worthy
of record,

Tuesday f August 4. — After a vain attempt to
get into the Narrows of St. John's Harbour, the
cutter put back, at my suggestion, into Petty
Harbour. Thence I walked to town after dark
with Mr. James Stokes, by the new line of
road through the woods to St. John's, on which
the road commissioners have lately expended
52/. I was exceedingly grieved, on my return
to St. John's, to find that a factious party under
the influence, to which allusion is made at the
date of March 4, had, in my absence, occa-
sioned much apprehension to the more orderly
inhabitants of St. John's, and the island at
large. They had openly declared from the altar,
that the sword of the church was unsheathed.
Mr. Henry Winton, the editor of one of the
public newspap.ers, who had rendered himself
obnoxious to the Right Reverend Bishop Fleming
and his seditious political colleagues in the
priesthood, by his simple remonstrance against

194

HON. H. J. BOULTON.

their interference with the political rights of the
people ; who never, moreover, had written a
syllable in the way of reflection, except re-
spectfully, upon their religion, had (besides other
attacks on his person,) been savagely assaulted
in open day, and his ears mutilated, to the
danger of his life; those who subscribed to his
paper, or dealt with him, and other protestants
who were named, were denounced from the altar,
and if Romanists, were excommunicated ; under
which sentence I found some of the most re-
spectable of that communion on my return, and
know that the same sentence is on them at the
moment of my writing. Persons had been
directed from the altar of the Romish chapel in
this town, which is a temple of sedition, to affix
their names to a petition which the same factious
party had got up against the Honourable Henry
John Boulton, our excellent Chief Justice, whose
only crime is an unflinching, impartial adminis-
tration of law, which that priesthood are con-
stantly affirming from the altar, is unnecessary
in Newfoundland, as they have a power far
superior to that of the law in this island. The
sense of His Majesty's government on this peti-
tion has reached us, while I am writing, and it is

ST. BARTHOLOMEW S CHURCH.

195

a matter of sincere rejoicing to all who love good
order here, that the good Chief Justice has been
supported by His Majesty's government, in the
entire legality of all the acts on which the
factious promoters and writers of this petition
had founded their vindictive and false allegations,
and that he will return to preside over our legal
tribunals.

Sunday Sf 9, 16, and 23. — I was happy to
renew my connection with the interesting con-
gregation of St. Bartholomew's church, Portugal
Cove, to which place, through the exertions
of the late excellent governor, Sir Thomas
John Cochrane, there is a very good road from
St. John's, far different from that by which I
travelled on my first visit to this island in 1827.
Here I held two full services on each Sunday,
baptized six children, and administered the
Lord's Supper to twenty-two, the usual number
of communicants at that settlement.

Sunday f 30. — Appointed two sermons at tlie
church of St. John's, for a collection in aid of
the district committee of the Society for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge, with a special

196

SERMONS IN AID

view to the supply of bibles, prayer books, and
tracts, to the settlements on the southern and
western shores which I had lately visited. I
took the pulpit on one part of the day myself,
and the cause was ably advocated on the other
part of the day, by the Rev. Thomas Martin
Wood. Our appeals were responded to very libe-
rally by the people, and above 301. were collected
for the object, which is a greater sum than any two
sermons ever procured at St. John's in one day
before ; but liberal as the aid thus afforded me
was, shall I be thought unreasonable if I exclaim,
•* What were they among so many ?" Books to
the whole amount have been forwarded, or are
packed up, waiting opportunities of being for-
warded, from the merchants' houses, to the
anxious expectants, many of whom will, I fear,
have already been tempted, — in their impatience
for the sacred volume which I promised them,
and which, above all, has been prized, — to
exclaim, " Ah ! the Deacon," — for in this man-
ner they designate the archdeacon, — "has for-
gotten his promise !" But I have not forgotten
my promise ; and one grand object of my sub-
mitting these pages of my journal to other eyes
than to those of the Committee of the Society

'i\y

j.««v.-

OF SUPPLY OF BOOKS.

197

whose servant in the church I am, is, that the
sympathy of a christian public may be enlisted
in the behalf of the people of Newfounland.
And, Christian reader ! I am convinced, that I
have not over-rated your generous sympathy,
when I have promised myself, that in this matter
it would give you pleasure to help the societies,
which have so often helped myself and my
brother missionaries. The wants which I have
discovered — of hooks alone — have, I grieve to
say, been very, very far beyond what my means
— far beyond what the means our district com-
mittee could place at my disposal, would enable
me to supply. I sincerely hope that my nar-
rative may stimulate the charitable at home to a
more liberal aid of the societies;* that the
missionary may never lack the Bible and other
good books, to send into some lone district,
where they may supply to the people, in some

* The Editor would take this opportunity, as the Arch-
deacon may have no other public means of thanking the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Bible
Society, the Prayer Book and Homily Society, the Reli-
gious Tract Society, the Sunday School Society, and
the American Bible and Tract Society, for their liberal
grants of books foi the Island of Newfoundland, in 1835.

r-^^#l»*». *••>■■*»•.

"S^^^

198

APPEAL TO TEE

degree^ the hallo\'ed associations which their
sacred si. .ctures supply to the inhabitants of
Great Britain, and what their zealous and justly
beloved spiritual pastors are to them.

Shall I be thought tedious, if, before I close
this journal, I subjoin a letter which bears
relerence to an appeal which I am now making
to the British public for funds for the erection of
a second church in the town of St. John's, the
capital of this island, — a convenience which
was pronounced to be most requisite both by ray
predecessor in this archdeaconry, the venerable
George Coster, and by the late governor, Sir
Thomas John Cochrane, and which was so
strongly recommended to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, that, before my
arrival in the island, its committee thus expressed
itself in the Society's Report for 1827. ** The
population of St. John's has far outgrown the
accommodation which the present church affords
for public worship, and strong representations
have been made to government for the erection
of a second church, and the appointment of the
archdeacon as the officiating minister. It would
be a gratifying circumstance to record the com-
mencement of such a laudable undertaking, but

BRITISH PUBLIC

199

as yet the impediments have been found insuper-
able," p. 38.

Again the committee of the above Society, in
its Report for 1830, the year in which I com
menced residence in St. John's, observes, at
p. 33 : " The archdeacon in conformity with the
wishes of the Society, has removed from Bona-
vista to Zt. John's, a station affording a more
ready communication with the clergy, and better
adapted for the performance of his own duties.
At St. John's the prchdeacon officiates at a third
service in the church, which, insufficient as
it is for the accommodation of the increased
population, still remains the only building appro-
priated to the members of the Church of Eng-
land, in a place where th^ Protestants amount
to more than five thousand."

This inconvenience arising from want of
church-room, which had been lamented previous
to 1827, has, it may be imagined, increased
since : it was so much felt by a very worthy lay-
member of the Protestant Episcopal Communion
in 1833, that he addressed me upon the subject
as follows : —

4__

200

APPEAL TO THE

*' St. John's, Newfoundland t
Sept. 22, 1833.
" To the Venerable Archdeacon Wix.

" My Dear Sir,
" As late as ten o'clock last evening, I was
made acquainted with the fact that the Roman
Catholic Bishop, Dr. Fleming, when in Ireland,
had raised a very large subscription for the
purpose of erecting a new chapel in this town,
which, I am informed, is to be one of the finest
buildings in any of the provinces. Having so
frequently heard you lament the want of church-
room in the present church, for the professors
of the Protestant Episcopal creed, as well as
their inability, from various causes, to raise
sufficient funds for a suitable building to be
dedicated tv, the worship of God, where the
poor Protestant Episcopalian may V.^ allowed
to partake of the same blessing of hearing the
Gospel preached to him, that is now almost
exclusively enjoyed by his richer neighbours,
and, being strongly impressed with a belief, —
indeed, I may say, thoroughly convinced that
your labours would be attended with success, I
cannot resist the strong impulse which I feel of

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201

calling on you to proceed to England, and there
advocate that cause to which you have already
dedicated your best energies here.

" Neither have you any reason to be dis-
couiaged. With the example of Mr. Codner's
success, in establishing throughout our island
those schools, which will ever rank among its
greatest blessings, with the example of an hum-
ble individual conferring a benefit on a colony
to such an extent that, but to have predicted
at the commencement of his labours, would
have rendered the prophecy a cause of ridicule,
even to the most credulous, and excited the
incredulity of the most sanguine. Having, also,
the success of a Roman Catholic Bishop, in so
poor a country as Ireland, what reason can
there be for doubting the liberality, the charity,
or the Christian spirit of her more wealthy
neighbour, or for supposing that her exertions in
the cause of religion would be less luan we have
already proved them to be in that of education ?

" What country than England has done more
for the cause of Christ, and to what part of
the habitable world has she not extended His
Gospel ? Shall that country that cares for the
salvation of the Hottentot, the Esquimaux, and

202

APPEAL TO THE

fe I

the poor degraded Sudra, — shall she suffer her
own children to lack the means of grace in one
of her oldest and nearest colonies, where
poverty at home has compelled them to seek
the means of subsistence ? Will her aristocracy,
whose land has been, in a great measure, re-
lieved by us of the burden of maintaining a
superabundant population at home, withhold
from us its hand in assisting us to provide the
means of worshipping our God after the manner
of our fathers ? Will her merchants and manu-
facturers, into whose coffers the largest part of
the profits of our joint labours imperceptibly
flows, refuse to contribute their portion to a
purpose where their offering will be thrice
blessed ; blessed in the giving, blessed in the
receiving, and once again blessed hereafter ?
Will even her poor withhold from us their mite
for the purpose of extending to their distressed
brethren that privilege of worshipping their
Maker which they themselves so abundantly
enjoy at home ?

** Once more, then, I call on you (and let the
occasion be my apology,) to plead the wants of
the poor, to advocate the cause of our Re-
deemer. You, to whom the pulpits of our

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203

church will at all times be open; who, from
your rank among her clergy, possess advantages
which no layman can obtain, appear, under God,
to be likely to procure the means of enabling
her to keep pace with her powerful competitors
in this island. We have, already, two dissenting
chapels, while the Roman Catholic establish-
ment is about to be doubled ; with but one
place of worship, and that too small to contain
those of her creed who can afford to pay for
accommodation, what choice have the poor
among the Episcopalians between apostacy and
infidelity ?

** May I entertain the hope that, at no very
distant period, I shall see you embark on this
hallowed pilgrimage, and have the pleasure
of saying, * God speed you !'

*• Very faithfully yours,"

« ¥ » «■

Although the writer of this letter did but
represent the wishes of several most estimable
members of the church here, who were equally
interested with himself in the measure proposed,
I did not feel at liberty to desert my charge on
such a mission. Ill health, however, made it
absolutely necessary, at the close of that year,

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APPEAL TO THE

that I should seek the rest of a sea voyage, and
temporary repose in England. On my arrival
in England, I fondly entertained the hope that I
might be permitted to devote such strength as
I possessed to pleading the cause of the church
in Newfoundland ; and many clergy, -o whom I
offer my thanks in the name of the poor pro-
testant Episcopalians of the town of St. John's,
most kindly offered me their churches that I
might make appeals to their several congre-
gations on behalf of the Newfoundland emigrant
churchmen. The Committee of the *' Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts," to which this island is altogether in-
debted for its church institutions, its clergy, and
till recently has been indebted also for all its
schools, discountenanced my making any appeal
to the public at that period, however, on the
supposition that any appeal to the public for a
particular specific object might operate preju-
dicially against the success of some grand
appeal which that Society at that time meditated
making for its general objects. Of course it was
my duty to comply with this decision of a com-
mittee of the Society in the service of which
I am engaged, and, after I had, through God's

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205

blessing on my native air, sufficiently recruited
my strength, I returned with a very heavy
heart to this scene of spiritual destitution, with-
out having been able to accomplish any thing
for its improvement. The evil which I had
hoped to remedy had increased and is still
increasing, to such a degree, that some effort
must immediately be made, if our communion
is to be protected from serious loss.

Under these circumstances, I have felt it to
be my imperative duty to set about the erection
of a second protestant episcopal church in St.
John's. The good wishes which were every-
where expressed towards this measure, while I
was in England, and the many offers of aid
which my correspondents in the parent country
have kindly made me, in the event of any public
appeal being yet made for the object in England,
embolden me to hope that I shall not now be
left alone in this very serious undertaking. Two
thousand pounds are needed for the accomplish-
ment of the object which is at present con-
templated, viz., the building by contract of a
church sixty-two feet by thirty-six, with galle-
ries, capable of holding seven hundred persons
at least, one-half of whom will, in the event of

206

APPEAL TO THE

the measure being properly aided, be accommo-
dated with free sittings, and the remainder with
seats, at a much lower rate of payment than is
now required for sucft accommodation. The
publishers of this journal are authorized to re-
ceive subscriptions for this object ; and most
anxiously will the writer look for the next arri-
vals from Europe, which may announce to him
the degree of success which has attended his
present appeal.

His primary object is, indeed, that of exciting
the liberality of those who have the means of
helping him in his attempt to afford this neces-
sary church accommodation to the members of
tlie protestant episcopal communion in St.
John's. But he would wish, also, to excite a
feeling of Christian sympathy for the entire
population of the island, which is upwards of
seventy thousand. He has recently visited
several portions of it which had never before
been visited by any minister of any name. The
same cannot be said of several other portions
which he lately visited, only because, five years
since, he had himself paid them, before, the
first visit which they had ever received. Those
who desire the spread of the Redeemer's king-

( :

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207

dom, and are anxious to hear the state of their
less favoured brethren abroad, will, doubtless,
have been interested in the report which he has
submitted to their notice, of the religious state
of a portion of the Christian family with which
they were not previously acquainted, or but
imperfectly acquainted.

The analogy between the case of Christian
missionaries, and that of the spies who were
sent into Canaan (Numbers xiii.), will not hold
in one particular. They went out from the
wilderness ; and they went into Canaan, the
land of promise, to the very name of which we
are accustomed to attach ideas of joy and
peace, and tranquil rest, and calm delight in
God's presence and favour. But, ah ! your
missionaries go forth out of more favoured dis-
tricts into those less privileged ! We leave the
seats, in which are the comforts of religious
society, and the treasures of religious privilege,
and the parts which we traverse are the desert
and the wilderness. Do not expect, then,
favoured members of the church I that, if we be
faithful in our testimony, we can bring you,
like Caleb and Joshua, a thoroughly favourable
report of the goodness of the land into which

i
111''

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APPEAL TO THE

*;<

i \:

i...

we are sent. "With Caleb and Joshua, we
would say to the Christian, who is properly
zealous for the spread of Christ's kingdom,
" Go up, and possess it. The Lord will give it
into your hand." But we are compelled to say
also, with the greater number of those who had
viewed the land of Canaan, that there are for-
midable obstacles against your extending in it
immediately the triumphs of the cross ; ** The
children of Anak," giavts in wickedness, may
occasionally be found.

And who can be surprised that such should
be the fact? Readers, which of you, who know
the first principles of our faith, can wonder
that man, left to nature, should break out into
acts of wickedness ? You have been religiously and
virtuously brought up, — you have lived beneath
the light of christian privileges, — you have
had opportunities of improvement by religious
intercourse, — your Sabbaths have been passed
within sound of the bell which has called you
regularly to the house of prayer : but have you,
with all these rich advantages, been able to
root out all propensity to evil ? Are you living
to the Spirit ? Can you be surprised, then,
that men, removed from the restraints which a

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209

Christian society imposes upon you, — removed
from all opportunities of obtaining religious in-
formation from their cradle to their grave, should,
some of them, live without God in the world?
and that the more serious of them, who have
had some little education, should bring to the
inquiry, " what shall we do to be saved ?" an
ignorance of a sadly fearful character ?

The word of God might teach us, before
experience, what would be the state of persons
so situated : an acquaintance with their actual
condition strengthens our belief in the testimony
of the sacred volume. Could you see it, you
would be led, by the sad contrast, to value the
more highly the religious privileges which you
enjoy yourselves ; you would be led to inquire
of yourselves, " What are we doing for the in-
crease of religious knowledge among persons
thus circumstanced ?" And when an oppor-
tunity such as this is afforded, of pouring some
rays of light upon the path of those who are
wandering in darkness and error, you would be
led in your love for souls, and your desire to
promote God's honour, to ask, not how little —
but " how much can I give unto the Lord ?"

Place yourselves in the lonely cabins, some

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.\PPEAL TO THE

of which I have endeavoured to describe to you.
In the absence of all o her teaching, will you
deny them the word of God, which may be
their guide in life — their comfort in death ? I
need not tell you, who believe, that the salva-
tion — the eternal salvation of those for whom
I plead, may hang upon this thread. When a
drunkard has been rebuked, will you not enable
your missionary to follow his warning by the
gift of a silent preacher, which, five hundred
miles from where I now am writing, — above
two thousand from where you are reading, —
may remind him of the sin and danger of his
habit ? When parents have shown a desire to
lead forward their little ones to godliness and
prayer, will you deny your missionary the means
to supply them with the book of instruction,
which may help them in their christian efforts ?
When any, who have shown a desire to learn
the way to heaven, are ignorant of the first
principles of ou) faith, shall not your missionary
be enabled to supply them the instruction,
which may direct them to Christ and teach
them the need of the Holy Spirit ? Follow the
donation of books which your bounty has sup-
plied to the missionary : follow it with your

I \

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211

prayers ; but follow it, too, in imagination. I
speak not of the delight with which he is himself
penetrated, when he receives the welcome testi-
mony of your sympathy in his labours, and puts
his confidence for a blessing on their use in that
God, whose blessing he believes you have in-
voked on them before you sent them forth ; but
follow them, I beg you — follow them in imagi-
nation upon their further voyage, when they
are sent forth by your missionary to gladden
the eye of many a christian mother, to encou-
rage the emulation of many a lisping child, to
bring tears of penitence to the cheek of man or
woman, who is living in iniquity, to soothe the
bed of sickness, and to smooth the bed of death.
It may increase your desire to send to these
destitute people of Newfoundland the means of
spiritual improvement, if I relate to you the
constant temptations to which, even the most
remote settlements are exposed through the
introduction among them in trading vessels, of
the means of intoxication at a very cheap rate.
The effect of the visits of these vessels in many
places, as I have already remarked, has been
to make the visits of the missionary perfectly
useless in situations, where no Christian minister

p 2

-Ui-J—-— .■— '

l i

219

APPEAL TO THE

) f

has ever been before, and where none may,
during the lives of some of the present inhabit-
ants, be ever seen again ; and I have found in
nlaces where the inhabitants were most addicted
to the use of these liquors, ^uch enormous
depravity practised as I cfinnot name, such as
would have roused execration in the most licen-
tious days of heathen Rome.

Again shall ! mention in vain that I have
been in a settlement where the simple people
were desirous of seeking God, — where seventy
children might be collected iu any school which
migh: be opened, so anxious are their parents
for their religious instruction. There an infidel,
of better education than those around him, has
been settled (since my first visit to the place in
1830,) from the States of the American Union.
For the last four years, I found that it had been
his deHght to ridicule what he esteems the pre-
judices of the Christian believer ! To spread
among such of his neighioours as can read, che
licentious tracts of the Fresth inker, and to en-
courage in the young, p.n early assertion of theii
independence upon the parents under whose
roof they were thanklessly lodging, and whose
bread they were idly eating ! If I could only

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send into ea'^h settlement of the island, printed
Gospel Truth, in the same quantity which this
[jesti'ent American settler had ready to dissemi-
nate of publications of a contrary character, I
should be happy.

Christian reader ! Can you read with in-
difference that, in a place where scriptural know-
ledge is necessarily very low, publications should
be propagated of so mischievously and offen-
sively infidel a character, that their editors have
been prosecuted, and sentenced, for thair blas-
phemy, even in the American state of Boston,
where infidel opinions must be irreligious in-
deed, to provoke a successful prosecution ? Can
vou learn with unconcern, that I saw several
hundred copies of another publication, the aim
of which was the overthrow of man's belief in
an eternal punishment for sin, and which con-
veyed notions th'^ most confined, and confused,
and unsatisfactory, respecting our divine atone-
ment ? And, lastly, can you learn, without
horror, that I saw many copies of works which
were written for the express purpose of persuad-
ing men to look to their own worth and their own
works for salvation, and to think of Jesus only
as a mere man like ourselves ? Language,

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APPEAL TO THE

moreover, was, in one of these publications, —
a Boston weekly periodical, which, I regret to
write, has its two thousand subscribers, and an
agent in Halifax, the capital of the diocese of
Nova Scotia, and another at Quebec, — language
was, in this, used respecting that Jesus, at
whose name we bow, of such awfully blas-
phemous character, that the most profane about
the wharfs of this very profane place in which I
am now writing, would, I trust, shudder at t*?
repetition !

These books were in the hands, too, of one
who travels much about the island ; who has
opportunities of visiting distant settlements,
conversing with the people, and influencing their
minds, which the missionary might envy. And
these books are his companions ! These fright-
ful tenets are the topics of his conversation !
These are his sentiments on revealed religion,
and these he takes delight in spreading ! But,
Christian reader of this appeal ! shall these books
and these opinions, — shall any unscriptural
tracts, by whomsoever propagated, be permitted
to poison the minds of the growing generation,
and will you not be ready to help to draw out
the poison ? Will you not lift up your hands in

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prayer, as you look upon the country, from
your own holy mountain ; while you send forth
the weapons of the Spirit, pointed from the
armoury of God, to fight such foes ? What,
though the children of Anak be mighty, in such
a trial they must faint, and fali, and fall ! Their
defence will depart from them. We may be as-
sured, that the Lord will be with us, and we need
not fear them ! I have been grieved to see such
works in such a quarter ; — I have grieved as I have
viewed the mournful destitution of the members
of our church along these rugged shores. I am
deeply, deeply grieved, when I think of the
thousands in this town alone, who are now as
sheep having no shepherd. Yet I trust that the
fact of the existence of these evils may be over-
ruled by a kind God for good! It will be so, — if
you, who read this, will only give me the means
of sending through the island the pure word of
God, and proclaiming here, and propagating
elsewhere, the plain exposition of the doctrines
of man's salvation by grace, and his need of
spiritual holiness. The youngest child may then
supply his slings from the fountain of God's
%vord, and the giant must fall. The truth must

It!
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APPEAL TO THE

"l '

prevail ! the land must be ours for the Lord
Christ.

I have dwelt, it will be thought, long enough
on the more sad portions of the report which
may be made of those parts of the island which
I have lately visited. I think I hear my readers
ask, What! are there none of the pomegranates
>d figs which were found in Canaan ? none of
th'. 'ters of the first ripe grapes? Has our
missiouary found there no milk and honey, no
fruits to tell him of what the land might produce
under spiritual culture and nourishment ! O,
yes ! blessed be God ! he has met much to com-
fort, much to encourage him ! It has not been
all cloud ; there have been rays of cheering
light in the wilderness through which he has
been led ! Some of the fields are even now ripe
for the harvest. He has, indeed, met with some
sad, very sad testimonies to the ungodliness of
the natural man. Yet, too, he has met, in so
many instances, with proofs of the blessing of
the Holy Spirit on very small advantages of
religious information, that he docs not distrust
the pleasing assurance that the land may yet be
ours. He places great hope on the divine bles-

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sing upon the effort which you will make in
answer to this earnest appeal, and upon the
alms which you are already eager to throw into
this treasury of the Lord.

Before the general introduction of Sunday
schools into England, our humble fishermen, I
have already reminded you, brought with them,
it may be imagined, a very scanty degree of
spiritual knowledge to this country of their
adoption. Yet many who thus came out as
boys, have, through the blessing of God upon
the use of the Bible and Book of Common
Prayer, kept up a religious feeling in their set-
tlements ; and their children, and their children's
children, are now inheriting the blessing. But
these very rays of encouragement should affect
you as strongly as the darker shades of the
picture : they should interest you as deeply in
behalf of the people ; they should stimulate your
liberality as much. You will not be sending the
missionary, the school, the Bible, the treasures
which you value so much yourselves, to people
who do not Know their value : they may have no
silver or gold to offer for them, but they esteem
them not the less. You will not be casting
pearls before swine.

218

APPEAL TO THE

Iff

I have informed you of the worthy man who
lamented to me with deep feeling, that, when he
and his neighbours were *' sick and sore, there
was none to visit them, none who cared for their
souls !" Will you not enable me to supply him
and the many who feel like him, with the vo-
lume which may teach him to sanctify any suf-
fering, and to look out of this wilderness into
the bounds of the land of promise ? I have in-
formed you of another, (and may there not be
many such ?) who . often drops a tear on the
Lord's day, when he thinks how different it is
where you are and where he once was, where
the sweet Sabbath bell may be heard through-
out the day ; did I think too well of you when I
thought you would enable me to keep my pro-
mise to him that he should have a volume of
good sermons, such as he had heard in the
church of his youth, which he might make use-
ful to his neighbours by reading them aloud?
And when another has said to me, and not with-
out tears at the time of uttering it, that it often
made him weep, in the wild place of his present
abode, to think of the fine opportunities he
had wasted while a boy, declaring that he
should think more, were he again at home, Oi"

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church-going now than he did then, shall I not
be enabled by you to send him what may lead
him, even at the eleventh hour, to redeem the
time? And was I wrong when that young
housekeeper told mp with an air of artlessness
which forbade the suspicion that she was exag-
gerating, that next to the death of her dear
parent, she had never felt a calamity greater
than leaving behind her, on her marriage, some
books which I gave her, five years ago, and
which were so prized in her native settlement,
that the surviving parent «.nd her friends would
not permit them to be removed ? Was I wrong
in thinking that you would have pleasure in
joining with me to prepare for her the grateful
surprise of receiving a like present ?

" Give me a Bible ; for years I have been
craving for a bible. My eyes are getting bad,
and my bible is broken, and dark from smoke,
and, were it not for that Testament, the print of
which is larger, I could not read at all : but
what I have read, has taught me to pray, and
in several instances I have had prayers an-
swered in a most remarkable way," said another
to me. He had been often in perils, and most
signally preserved. Between the time of my

220

APPEAL TO THE

seeing him, and the present, he has fearlessly
exposed his own life in his endeavour to save
some fellow- creatures who were almost in an
exhausted state, from one of the sad wrecks
which are so common on this coast; eight or
nine of which came under my knowledge this
spring. " I'd sooner perish myself than see a
fellow-creature drowning!" was his noble cry;
and, relying on his God, he dashed into the
surf, and happily succeeded in drawing them
through the breakers ! Shall I not be enabled
to send this child of prayer, this intrepid child
of storms, a copy of the Scriptures, by which
his own faith in Christ may be confirmed, and
he may be led to see farther the duty which
is upon him to strengthen his brethren ?

Christian readers ! you are yourselves looking
forward with the humble confidence of one day
being admitted to the glories of an heavenly
Canaan, through the merits of your divine Re-
deemer Jesus Christ. You have received, I
trust, first fruits of the Spirit, some earnest of
the rich inheritance of the saints in light. From
these pledges you know, as well as from God's
word, that Emanuel's land is an exceeding good
land, a land which flows with milk and honey.

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You do not doubt of reaching this land ; though
there are obstacles and trials in your way, you
rely on One who is mightier than any one who
can be against you ; who has promised to be
with you even in your passage over the sepa-
rating sea of death. In common with the rest
of your fellow-creatures, you are called to endure
trials. Do the hopes which you entertain of
reaching this good land, give you comfort to
support you under them? Would you barter
away this hope for any of the treasures, any of
the pleasures of this world ? No, Never ! !

Then help me to extend the knowledge of
this land to those here who are in ignorance of
its excellence and beauty. Shall any perish in
this wilderness, whom you, reader! might fur-
nish the means to direct in the path which leads
to a better country, and a happy heavenly home?
Oh ! I feel convinced that you will aid me by
your alms to instruct the babes of the fold of
Christ who are looking to you to be fed ! to
enlighten the ignorant who are seeking to be
informed in the way of salvation! to comfoii
the sick who have no pastor to breathe by their
beds the prayer of assurance in their dying
hour! You will, at least, contribute your mite

rill

222

APPEAL TO THE BRITISH PUBLIC.

If /

towards the erection of a second church in the
capital of this island, where, taking his stand
upon the world to come, the Christian mission-
ary may effect a moral, a spiritual movement,
in the mass of ignorance, superstition, idolatry,
and various wickedness by which he is sur-
rounded. You will, — you will entitle yourselves
to the thanks, the ; rayers, and the blessings of
those who are fainting and ready to perish;
who, through your means, shall drink of the
fountain of living water, and be refreshed and
satisfied, and saved through Jesus Christ !

METEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

January, 1835.

THE

BABOMETEH.I

•

Th.

29.19

29.20

Fri.

29.64

29.78

Sa.

29.81

29.98

Su.

29.76

29.92

30.13

30.15

Tu.

30.12

30.20

30.06

29.76

Th.

29.44

29.39

Fri.

29.26

29.34

Sa.

29.64

29.82

Su.

30.03

30.00

29.88

29.82

Tu.

29.76

29.72

29.83

29.89

Th.

29.94

29.98

Fri.

30.06

30.03

Sa.

29.67

29.42

Su.

29.40

29.48

29.66

29.74

Tu.

29.52

28.96

28.70

29.42

Th.

29.71

29.18

Fri.

29.23

29.52

Sa.

29.18

29.37

Su.

29.53

29.84

29.99

29.80

Tu.

29.51

29.43

29.78

29.91

Th.

29.69

29.38

Fri.

29.66

29.96

Sa.

30.01

29.86

WKATHEH.

Thick fog and rain, wind n.w. evening

Wind N.W., cloudy

Light winds, p.m. same, w.n.e.

Fresh breeze, n.e., snow drift

Fine wind n.w., p.m. cloudy

Cloudy W.S., P.M. snow

Strong breeze n.f... snow drift

Silver thaw, strong gale n.e.

Ditto

Strong gale n.e., snow drift

Fine, wind n.w.

Cloudy, wind w.s.w., pm. fine

Ditto

Light winds e., hazy

Ditto

Fresh breeze s.e., rain p.m. wind s.w.

Wind w., cloudy, p.m. squalls

Cloudy, wind w.n.w.

Strong breeze n.n.e., snow drift

Ditto, P.M. strong gale, wind n.n.w.

B'ine, wind w.n.w., snow drift in evening

Fine breeze w.

Cloudy, wind n.w., p.m. snow squalls

Wind N.W., snow squalls, p. m. cloudy

Fine, wind w.n.w., p.m. cloudy, snow even.

Fresh gale n.e. snow and drift

Fine, wind n.

Foggy, wind e., p.m. snow

Wind N. cloudy

Wind N.E., cloudy, p.m. snow, rain in even.

Mean temperature of January, 24° 3-31. — Highest 44°. — Lowest 5".

. :

224

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

MBTEOROLOOICAL TABLE.

FEBRUARY, 1835.

THER.

BAROMETER.

•

•
•

29.50

29.34

29.39

29.60

29.65

29.84

30.18

29.47

28.78

29.57

29.84

30.19

30.32

29.98

29.74

29.44

29.53

30.01

30.09

30.25

30.18

29.84

29.18

29.60

29.51

29.96

30.10

29.87

30.32

30.44

30.23

30.14

30.22

30.03

29.75

29.63

29.40

29.76

29.77

29.80

29.89

29.30

29.70

29.65

29.24

29.50

30.02

30.24

30.18

30.16

30.00

29.56

29.84

29.91

29.25

29.50

WEATHER.

Rain, wind s.w., p.m. wind w.

Snow, wind n.e., wind n.n.e.

Wind It. & vble., p.m. gale nw. & s.n. dft.

Light winds, n.e., p.m. strg. gale & sn. dft.

Rn. at 8, wind w.n.w., stg. gale & sn. sqls.

Fine fresh breeze westerly

Cloudy, P.M. wind s.e., snow

Wind sw., fresh breeze, p.m. rain '

Strong breeze w., p.m. moderate

Wind «v^., cloudy, p.m. fine

Cloudy, wind s.

Fresh breeze s.w., fog and rain, p.m. »

Wind S.W., cloudy, p.m. wind w.

Ditto, rain in the evening

Fine, wind w.n.w.

Cloudy, wind light and variable

Ditto, midnight, snow

Light winds and foggy

Strong breeze n.e., and snow drift

Snow, wind e.

Fine, wind n.

Wind s.w. cloudy

Ditto fog., strong gale from w.n.w. in evn.

Strong breeze n.w., cloudy, p.m. fine

Fine, light winds w., p.m. n.e.

Wind E.S.E., cloudy, p.m. snow

Wind W.N.W., cloudy, snow in evening

Rain, wind s.s.w., midnight w.n.w.

Mean temperature of Febiuary, 25^°.— Highest 47°. — Lowest 0.

\'i I

METEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

MARCH 183.5.

225

i.n. dft.
m. dft.
,n. sqls.

\ evn.

THER.

BA ROM F.TEH.

•

1?,

Su.

29.90

30.16

30.33

30.24

Tu.

30.31

29.95

29.76

29.98

Th.

?,9.87

30.24

In.

30.30

30.18

Sa.

30.13

30.38

Su.

30.49

29.94

29.60

29.98

Tu.

29.97

29.86

29.59

29.20

Th.

29.24

29.62

Fri.

29.69

29.68

Sa.

29.08

28.98

Su.

29.60

29.63

29.66

29.50

Tu.

29.03

29.30

28.62

29.40

Th.

29.87

29.92

Fri.

28.96

29.02

Sa.

29.35

29.52

Su.

29.70

29.97

29.70

29.48

Tu.

29,67

29.88

30.09

30.30

Th.

30.15

30.04

Fri.

29.92

29.83

Sa.

29.65

29.61

Su.

29.70

29.87

29.91

29.87

Tu.

29.79

29.56

WEATHKR.

Cldy. wind w.n.w., p.m. snow, evn. fine

Light and changeable winds and cloudy

Fine, wnd. n.k. stg. biz. & sn'". drft. in evn.

Wind N.w. fresh breeze, cloudy r. M.fine

Wind N. snow drift, p.m. fine

Fine, wind w.

Fine, wind n.

Fresh breeze n.k., p.m. snow drift

Wind Nii., fresh breeze and snow drift

Overcast sky, wind n.e.

Fresh breeze n.e., .m. snow drift

Strong breeze n. bnow drift, p.m. fine

Calm and fine p.m. fresh breeze w.s.w.

Gale S.8.E. snow drift p.m., wind s.w.

Fresh breeze w.n.w.

Wind S.W., cloudy

Rain, wind sw. evening, wind n.e.

Gale S.E., snw. dft. p.m., gale n.w. sn. dft.

Fine, wind w.n.w.

Gale N.E. snw. drft.. p.m, strong brz. n.w.

Wind N.W., strong breeze and cloudy

Fine, wind n.w., p.m. cloudy

w.E. strong breeze & snow drift, p.m. rain

Fresh breeze w. and cloudy

Wind s. with snow., p.m. fine

Cloudy, wind w.n.w., p.m. wind n..\.e

Wind N.w., cloudy, p.m. snow squalls

Wind N.E., cloudy

Light winds and thick weather

Light winds from the n.

Light gale e.s.e. and rain in the evening

Mean temperature of March, 22° 41-62.— Highest 47^^Lowest 2

' i

MZIEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

APRIL 1835.

WEATHER.

29.35

29.52

29.80

29.91

30.17

29.80

29.50

29.40

29.52

29.55

29.49

29 23

29.23

29.38

29.43

29.35

29.80

29.65

29.30

30.03

29.90

29.40

29.98

30.15

29 55

30.00

29.68

29.46

Wind N.. drizzling rain

Ditto, snow in the evening

Wind N.E. thick weather

Fresh breeze n.e. cloudy

Fine, wind n.

Fine, light wiad s., i-.m. cloudy

Wind SoW., rain, p.m. cloudy '

Calm thick weather, p.m. cloudy

Light and variable winds and cloudy

Wind E. thick fog, p.m. snow

Wind, N.N.E., snow

Wind N.E., fog, P.M. fsh. br., drizzl. rain

Fresh breeze n.e., drizzling rain

Fresh breeze n.e. and fog

Thick fog, light winds w.

Frost, wind w. snow squalls

Snow, wind n.e.

Wind E., snow

Wind N., cloudy

Overcast cky, wind w.s.w., p.m. snow

Strong gales s.w. with rain

Fresh breeze w.j. w., p.m. fine

Wind S.E., cloudy, p.m. fresh bree7«»

Fre&ft breeze s s.w,, heavy rain

Wind S.W., cloudy

Wind N.ji. tine

Fresh l»;°eze s.r., p.m. snow

Wind N.N.\v., mow squalls, p.m. fine

Wind N.N.^., cloudy

Wind s. cioud:

Mean temperature of April, 33° 47-60.— -Highest 51*'. -Lowest 19? .

Fri.
Sa.
Su.
M.
Tu.
W.
Th.
Fn.
Sa.
Su.
M.
Tu.
W.
♦Th.
Fri.
Sa.
Su.

IVu

Tu.
W.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

M. !

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

\'\

tmmmu

mmmmn'

^^^mmmmmmmmmmm

METEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

227

MAY 1835.

rain

9P.

THER.

BAROMETER.

WEATHER.

•

•
•

•

Fri.

29.34

29.30

Wind s.w. cloudy, snow

Sa.

29.23

29.17

Wind N., snow squalls

Su.

29.09

29.15

Fog & rain, wind n.e., snow, p.m. clear

29.24

29.37

Wind N., snow, p.m. rain, wind n.e.

Tu.

29.39

29.53

Sncw, wind n.v.e.

29.62

29.78

Fresh breeze n.e.

Th.

29.76

29.58

Fine, wind Hght and variable, p.m. snow

Fn.

29.30

29.31

Fresh breeze, snow, p.m. wind n.e.

Sa.

29.34

29.30

Wind w.N.w. cloudy

Su.

29.48

29.56

Ditto

29.61

29.72

Light and variable winds and cloudy

Tu.

29.90

30.16

Fine, wind s.w., p.m. wind variable '

30.28

30.30

Fine, wind light & vble. p.m. fsh. brz. s.s.e.

.Th.

29.93

29.68

Heavy rain, wind s.s.e., p.m. foggy

Fri.

29.51

29.74

Light winds and foggy, p.m. clear

Sa.

29.90

29.92

Wind E. thiol fog

Su.

29.87

29.80

Wind r.w., c'oudy

29.60

29.04

Ditto

Tu.

29.47

29.44

Fog and rain, wind It. and vble., p.m. clear

29.51

29.46

Wind s.w., cloudy, p.m. rain

Th.

29.44

29.62

Snovv, wind n.n.b.

Fri,

29.86

30.03

Fresh breeze n.b.

Sa.

30.08

30.15

Fine, wind light aud variable

Su.

29.97

29.83

Fresh breeze n.n.e., snow squalls

29.72

29.69

Thick fog, heavy ra-n, wind s.e.

Tu.

29.53

29.95

Wind s., fog and rain

29.51

29.80

Cloudy, wind s.s.w.

Th.

29.70

29.95

Cold N.E. wind

Fri.

29.95

29.30

V/ind s. showers in the evening

Sa.

29.04

29.47

Showers, vrnd s.w.

Sii.

29.74

29.95

Fine, wind variable, p.m. wind s.e.

Mean temperature of May, .^9° 10*31.— Highest 60°.— Lowest 25°

ilWiJ i HW

228

■•:■■ \

METEOROLOGICAL TABLE.

JUNE 1835.

<;,

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

Th.

Fri.

Sa.

Su.

Tu.

THER.

BAROMETER.

40
39

•<

39.02

29.58

29.55

29.95

29.49

29.62

29.87

29.95

29.74

29.67

30.08

29.77

29.86

29.76

29.77

29.94

29.65

29.88

29.94

29.95

29.97

29.87

29.67

29.81

29.67

29.88

30.04

30.11

29.86

WEATHER.

s
a>

29.95

29.50

29.87

29.76

29.35

29.75

29.98

29.80

29.50

29.89

30.00

29.85

29.78

29.75

29.98

29.78

29.80

29.89

29.86

30.00

30.03

29.90

29.80

29.81

29.78

29.83

29.98

30.11

30.00

29.90

Fine, wind S.E., P.M. cloudy

Rain, wind s.s.w., p.m. fine ; '

Wind N.E., cloudy

Fine, wind light & variable, p.m. wind s.w.

Wind W.S.W., cloudy, p.m. fine

Cloudy, wind s.w.

Fresh breeze, n.n.e. snow squalls

Fresh breeze w.n.w. and fine

Strong brteze s.w.

Fine, wind n.n.e. snow squalls

Fresh breeze w.n.w. and fine

Strong breeze s.w.

Fine, wind s.s.w. rain in evening

Rain, wind w.s.w., p.m. wind n.e., foggy

Wind N.E., foggy

Fresh breeze, n.e., fog and rain

Wind 8.W., cloudy, p.m. fine

Cloudy, wind stw., rain in evening

Wind s.s.w. foggy with shwrs, p.m. hvy. rn.

Cloudy, wind variable, p.m. fine

Wind S.W., frequent showers

Light and variable winds and rain

Cloudy, wind w.s.w., p.m. fine

Wind 8.W., cloudy

Ditto, P.M. wind n.e.

Fine, wind variable ,

Wind s.s.w., fine ' ■ ' •

Ditto , '

Ditto

Fog and rain, wind s.e.

Mean temperature of June, 48° 2'31.— Highest, 73° — Lowest, 29°

I. wind a.vf.

M.E., foggy •

aing
p.M.hvy. rn.

rain

e ■ "

)west, 29°.