, with hills for
toss-coppers and seas for soap-bubbles, or warring with the elements
themselves for weapons.

The harbors are very deep. In some twenty that we visited there was but
a single exception. In fact, it is commonly only in little coves boxed
up by high walls of rock, where one side threatens the ship's bowsprit
and the other her stern, that an ordinary cable will reach bottom. You
anchor in a granite tub, where one hardly dares lean over the rail for
fear of bumping his head against the cliffs, and see half your chain
spin out before ground is touched. Jack sometimes wonders, as the cable
continues to rush through the hawse-hole, whether he has not dropped
anchor into a hole through the earth, and speculates upon the
probability of fishing up a South-Sea island when he shall again heave
at the windlass.

A Labrador summer has commonly a brief season during which the heat
seems to Englishmen "intense," and even to an American noticeable.
Captain French, the old pilot, told me that he had been at Indian Harbor
(far to the north) when for three weeks an awning over the deck was
absolutely necessary, and when a fish left in the sun an hour would be
spoiled. Last summer, however, was the coldest and rainiest known for
many years. Once the thermometer rose to 73 deg., Fahrenheit, once again to
70 deg., but five days in six it did not at nine in the morning vary more
than two or three degrees from 42 deg., and half the time the mercury would
be found precisely at this mark. The lowest temperature observed was
34 deg. This was on the 28th and 29th of July, when we had a furious
snow-storm, which lasted twenty-four hours, with twelve hours of wild
rain, sleet, and hail interposed. In consequence of this rain and of the
constant melting, there remained on the steep hillsides only three
inches' depth of snow when the storm ceased, though in the hollows it
was found a foot deep. In the deeper ravines the snow of winter lasts
through the year, and was found by us in the middle of August.

We were, however, treated to a few days which left no room for a wish:
for the best day of a Labrador summer is the best day of all summers
whatsoever. Herodotus says that Ionia was allowed to possess the finest
climate of all the world; and in Smyrna I believed him, for there were
May days when each breath seemed worth one's being born to enjoy. But
all days yield to those of Labrador when the better genius of its
climate prevails.