How the pages of a book fail to carry these scenes into the heart! I have been reading of them for years, and, as I have thought, reading understandingly and feelingly; but I can now say that I have never known, certainly never felt them until now. The living presence of them has an originality, a taste and odor for the imagination, which can never be expressed even by the vivid and sensuous language of the painter, much less by the more subtle, intellectual medium of written records. It is so new and fresh to me, that I feel as if none had ever seen this prospect before. Old and familiar as these waters are, I am thrilled with emotions, kindred to those of a discoverer, and remember and repeat the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner:
We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.
Silent sea! This is any thing but that. The surf, which leaps up with the lightness and rapidity of flames, for many and many a white mile, roars among the sharp, bleak crags of the islands and the coast like mighty cataracts. Words of the Psalmist fall naturally upon the tongue, and I speak them in low tones to myself:
Voices are heard among them. Their sound is gone out into all lands.
“And so sail we,” this glorious morning, after the icebergs, several of which stand sentinel along our eastern horizon; but we do not turn aside for them, for the reason that we confidently look for others more closely on our proper track.
NOTRE DAME BAY.—FOGO ISLAND AND THE THREE HUNDRED ISLES.—THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.—THE ICEBERG OF THE SUNSET, AND THE FLIGHT INTO TWILLINGATE.
AFTER noon, with the faintest breeze, and the sea like a flowing mirror. We have sailed by the most eastern promontories, Cape Bonavista and Cape Freels, and have now arrived at a point where the coast falls off far to the west, and gives place to Notre Dame Bay, the great Archipelago of Newfoundland, of which there is comparatively little known. Our true course is nearly north, and along the eastern or Atlantic side of Fogo, which is now before us, the first and largest of some three hundred islands. For the sake of the romantic scenery, we conclude to take the inside route.
From the shores of Fogo, which are broken, and exceedingly picturesque further on, as Captain Knight informs us, the land rises into moderate hills, thinly wooded with evergreens, with here and there a little farm and dwelling. Perhaps there are twenty rural smokes in sight and a spire or two. Under the full-blown summer all looks pleasant and inviting. What will not the glorious sunshine bless and beautify? A dark and dusty garret wakes up to life and brightness, give it an open window and the morning sun.