Chapter I: Preface

To open to the youth of America a knowledge of some of the winter sports of our neighbors of the maritime provinces, with their attendant pleasures, perils, successes, and reverses, the following tale has been written.

It does not claim to teach any great moral lesson, or even to be a guide to the young sportsman; but the habits of all birds and animals treated of here have been carefully studied, and, with the mode of their capture, have been truthfully described.

It attempts to chronicle the adventures and misadventures of a party of English gentlemen, during the early spring, while shooting sea-fowl on the sea-ice by day, together with the stories with which they whiled away the long evenings, each of which is intended to illustrate some peculiar dialect or curious feature of the social life of our colonial neighbors.

Later in the season the breaking up of the ice carries four hunters into involuntary wandering, amid the vast ice-pack which in winter fills the great Gulf of St. Lawrence. Their perils, the shifts to which they are driven to procure shelter, food, fire, medicine, and other necessaries, together with their devious drift and final rescue by a sealer, are used to give interest to what is believed to be a reliable description of the ice-fields of the Gulf, the habits of the seal, and life on board of a sealing steamer.

It would seem that the world had been ransacked to provide stories of adventure for the boys of America; but within the region between the Straits of Canso and the shores of Hudson's Bay there still lie hundreds of leagues of land never trodden by the white man's foot; and the folk-lore and idiosyncrasies of the population of the Lower Provinces are almost as unknown to us, their near neighbors.

The descendants of emigrants from Bretagne, Picardy, Normandy, and Poitou, still retaining much of their ancient patois, costume, habits, and superstitions; the hardy Gael, still ignorant of any but the language of Ossian and his burr-tongued Lowland neighbors; the people of each of Ireland's many counties, clinging still to feud, fun, and their ancient Erse tongue, together with representatives from every English shire, and the remnants of Indian tribes and Esquimaux hordes,--offer an opportunity for study of the differences of race, full of picturesque interest, and scarcely to be met with elsewhere.

The century which has with us almost realized the apostolic announcement, "Old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new," with them has witnessed little more than the birth, existence, and death of so many generations, and the old feuds and prejudices of race and religion, little softened by the lapse of time, still remain with their appropriate developments, in the social life of the scattered peoples of these northern shores.

Regretting that the will to depict those life-pictures has not been better seconded by more skill in word-painting, the author lays down his pen, hoping that the pencil of the artist will atone, in some degree, for his own "many short-comings."

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. OUR COMPANY 9

II. BUILDING THE ICE-HOUSES.--MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST 19

III. THE SILVER THAW.--A FOX HUNT.--ANTHONY WORRELL'S DOG 55

IV. THE GRAND FLIGHT.--A GOOD STRATAGEM.--THE PACKET LIGHT 75

V. A MAD SPORTSMAN.--SNOW-BLIND.--A NIGHT OF PERIL 95

VI. ADDITIONS TO THE PARTY.--AN INDIAN OUTFIT.--A CONTESTED ELECTION 110

VII. A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER.--BREAKING UP OF THE ICE.--JIM MOUNTAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE DEVIL 136

VIII. FLOAT-SHOOTING.--A GENERAL FIELD-DAY.--CHANGES OF THE ICE 148

IX. ADRIFT 158

X. THE COUNCIL.--PASSING THE CAPE 169

XI. TAKING AN INVENTORY.--SETTING UP THE STOVE 175

XII. DOCTORING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.--AN ANXIOUS NIGHT.--FROZEN UP 187

XIII. THE CHAPEL BELL.--THE FIRST SEAL.--THE NORTH CAPE.--A SNOW-SQUALL 199

XIV. THE PACK OPENS.--MYSTERIOUS MURMURS.--LOVE SCENES AND SOUNDS 207

XV. A SAIL.--THE SEALING GROUNDS.--THE ESQUIMAUX LAMP.--AN INDIAN LEGEND 220

XVI. THE BREEDING-GROUNDS OF THE SEAL.--A CURIOUS SIGHT.--A SHARP ENCOUNTER.--ICE CHANGES 230

XVII. ENLARGING THE BOAT.--WINGED SCAVENGERS.--NOTICE TO QUIT 244

XVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE.--BUILDING A SNOW-HUT.--THE VIEW FROM THE BERG.--A STRANGE MEETING 254

XIX. THE RING.--THE BURIAL.--A MAUSOLEUM OF ICE 263

XX. A STRANGE LIFE-HISTORY.--AMONG THE RED INDIANS 271

XXI. NORTHWARD AGAIN.--THE STEAMER.--TAKING TO THE BOAT 287

XXII. THE FORECASTLE OF THE SEALER.--A SEALER'S STORY.--THE LAST HUNT.--ARRIVAL AT ST. JOHN'S 303

XXIII. THE CAPTAIN'S VISIT.--HOMEWARD BOUND.--BROTHER AND SISTER 313

ILLUSTRATIONS:

Adrift.

Map of Prince Edward Island and the Northumberland Straits.

Adrift in the Ice Fields.

Capt. Lund headed a Party to assist their Friends

Gie me my Guse, Mon, and dinna delay me

Well, George, you're here at last

And the next Second the glittering Teeth were about to close upon his helpless Victim

On the Top of the Berg they felt repaid for the Fatigue of their Journey and Ascent

Kneeling beside it, the Lad bowed his Head as if in silent Prayer

In His Hands La Salle Waved the Banner