est;
and on the afternoon of the third day we arrived at Goodbout, an
establishment nearly half-way between the post I had left and the one to
which I was bound. Here we stayed all night, proposing to start again
on the morrow. But the weather was so stormy as to prevent us for a
couple of days trusting ourselves out in a frail bark canoe.

Early on the third morning, however, I took my place as steersman in the
stern of our craft (my former guide being obliged to leave me here), and
my man Mike squeezed his unwieldy person into the bow. In the middle
lay our provisions and baggage, over which the black muzzle of Humbug
peered anxiously out upon the ocean. In this trim we paddled from the
beach, amid a shower of advice to keep close to shore, in case the
_big-fish_--alias, the whales--might take a fancy to upset us.

After a long paddle of five or six hours we arrived at Pointe des Monts,
where rough weather obliged us to put ashore. Here I remained all
night, and slept in the lighthouse--a cylindrical building of moderate
height, which stands on a rock off Pointe des Monte, and serves to warn
sailors off the numerous shoals with which this part of the gulf is
filled. In the morning we fortunately found an Indian with his boat,
who was just starting for Seven Islands; and after a little higgling, at
which Mike proved himself quite an adept, he agreed to give us a lift
for a few pounds of tobacco. Away, then, we went, with:--

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that followed fast,"

ploughing through the water in beautiful style.

The interior of our boat presented a truly ludicrous, and rather filthy
scene. The Indian, who was a fine-looking man of about thirty, had
brought his whole family--sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, wife, and
mother--and a more heterogeneous mass of dirty, dark-skinned humanity I
never before had the ill-luck to travel with. The mother of the flock
was the most extraordinary being that I ever beheld. She must have been
very near a hundred years old, as black and wrinkled as a singed hide,
yet active and playful as a kitten. She was a very bad sailor, however,
and dived down into the bottom of the boat the moment a puff of wind
arose. Indians have a most extraordinary knack of diminishing their
bulk, which is very convenient sometimes. Upon this occasion it was
amusing to watch them settling gradually down, upon the slightest
appearance of wind, until you might al