orous run of the crew has borne her out of all harm's way.

"Such is the ceremony of landing at Sable Island nine or ten months out of
the year: though there are at times some sweet halcyon days when a lad
might land in a flat. Dry-shod the visitor picks his way between the
thoroughly drenched crew, picks up a huge scallop or two, admires the
tumbling play of the round-headed seals, and plods his way through the
deep sand of an opening between the hills, or gulch (so called) to the
head-quarters establishment. And here, for the last fifty years, a kind
welcome has awaited all, be they voluntary idlers or sea-wrecked men.
Screened by the sand-hills, here is a well-stocked barn and barnyard,
filled with its ordinary inhabitants, sleek milch cows and heady bulls,
lazy swine, a horse grazing at a tether, with geese and ducks and fowls
around. Two or three large stores and boat-houses, quarters for the men,
the Superintendent's house, blacksmith shop, sailors' home for sea-wrecked
men, and oil-house, stand around an irregular square, and surmounted by
the tall flag-staff and crow's nest on the neighboring hill. So abrupt the
contrast, so snug the scene, if the roar of the ocean were out of his
ears, one might fancy himself twenty miles inland.

"Nearly the first thing the visitor does is to mount the flag-staff, and
climbing into the crow's nest, scan the scene. The ocean bounds him
everywhere. Spread east and west, he views the narrow island in form of a
bow, as if the great Atlantic waves had bent it around, nowhere much above
a mile wide, twenty-six miles long, including the dry bars, and holding a
shallow late thirteen miles long in its centre.

"There it all lies spread like a map at his feet--grassy hill and sandy
valley fading away into the distance. On the foreground the outpost men
galloping their rough ponies into head-quarters, recalled by the flag
flying above his head; the West-end house of refuge, with bread and
matches, firewood and kettle, and directions to find water, and
head-quarters with flag-staff on the adjoining hill. Every sandy peak or
grassy knoll with a dead man's name or old ship's tradition--Baker's Hill,
Trott's Cove, Scotchman's Head, French Gardens--traditionary spot where
the poor convicts expiated their social crimes--the little burial-ground
nestling in the long grass of a high hill, and consecrated to the repose
of many a sea-tossed limb; and two or three miles down the shallow lake,
the