On seals and savages.

  • Blake, Edith.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On seals and savages. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1889 ON SEALS AND SAVAGES. Ix the old world the charms and beauties of the spring-time have been the theme of poets' songs probably since our simian or other remote ancestor first acquired the power of speech. Should, how- ever, a poet ever arise on the fir-clad island of Newfoundland, he will be compelled, in one respect at any rate, to have the merit of origi- nality, and it will tax his powers to describe the disagreeables of what is there the most forbidding of seasons. Then the thick northern ice comes sweeping down, carried from desolate polar seas by the Arctic current, and sometimes for several hundred miles the island is encased in this chilling armour, which stretches far as the eye can reach, the sea resembling a vast pavement of rough white marble. Here and there an iceberg is jammed amidst the floes, and the deep blue shadows of passing clouds alone afford the eye some little relief in the dreary white monotony. When the southern wind sweeps over this icy desert, it meets with the usual fate attending' evil com- munication,' imbibes all the disadvantages of the new association, and reaches Newfoundland laden with the chilling fog which has given such an evil reputation to the climate, and which in parts of the inland is distinguished by the expressive sobriquet of 4 the barber.' Frequent thaws melt the snow off the warmer portions of rock and field, and these peer out in black and brown misery from amidst the soiled and rotten snow, giving the whole face of the country an indescribable appearance of forlorn wretchedness. Not a flower is to be seen, not a green blade holds out promise of glories to come; a few American 4 robins' (Turdus migratorius, a kind of thrush—hand- some birds with ruddy russet breasts, black heads, and yellow beaks), which arrive about the 10th or 12th of April, alone reassure one that nature is * not dead but sleepeth.' As English boys rejoice in the spring amusement of bird-nesting, the youth of Newfoundland look forward to the arrival of the iee for their spring pastime of 'copying.' This diversion consists in jumping from one floating slab of ice to another. These pieces of ice are locally termed * pans,' and a pan may vary from a piece not more than a few inches in size, to one some thirty feet, in diameter. The pans are not always close together, open water or • sludge ' (half- frozen snow) is between them in places, and it is not every pan Vol. XXV.—No. 146. M M