and yellow flesh has given a name to one of the most delicate hues of
Art or Nature.

THE CLIFFS.

But where was the iceberg? We were not a little disappointed when all
Torbay was before us, and nothing but dark water to be seen. To our
surprise, no one had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off Flat
Rock Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed with the
supposition that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations
to pursue, by securing the only boat to be had in the village,--a
substantial fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at
least a cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive
power, as it turned out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked
at the foot of a fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the
kind-hearted men, and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck.
All ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars with the
skill and deliberation of lifelong practice, and we moved out upon the
broad, glassy swells of the bay towards the open sea, not indeed with
the rapidity of a Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable
steadiness, and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores,
which, under the afternoon sun, were made brilliant with lights and
shadows.

We were presently met by a breeze, which increased the swell, and made
it easier to fail in close under the northern shore, a line of
stupendous precipices, to which the ocean goes deep home. The ride
beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my
life. While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all
their appendages of extent, structure, complexion, and adjacent sea,
they are sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of
sublimity. The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle
to angle, and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face
of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and
rise perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water.
Their stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of
light and dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the
effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface. At one
point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a kind of
headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form of a
pyramid,--from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to
meet in a point. The