Adventure and adventurers > Hudson Bay, or, Everyday life in the wilds of North America

A DEPRESSING SAIL.
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sides as we rounded Point Rouge: another puli, and
Tadousac was hidden from our view.
Few things can be more comfortless or depressing
than a sail down the Gulf of St. Lawrence on a gloomy
winter’s day, with the thermometer at zero! The
water looks so black and cold, and the sky so gray, that
it makes one shudder, and turn to look upon the land.
But there no cheering prospect meets the view. Rocks
—cold, hard, misanthropic rocks—grin from beneath
volumes of snow; and the few stunted black-looking
pines that dot the banks here and there only tend to
render the scene more desolate. No birds fly about to
enliven the traveller; and the only sound that meets
the ear, besides the low sighing of the cold, cold wind,
is the crashing of immense fields of ice, as they meet
and war in the eddies of opposing currents. Fortu¬
nately, however, there was no ice near the shore, and
we met with little interruption on the way. The priest
bore the cold like a stoic; and my friend Jordan, being
made, metaphorically speaking, of iron, treated it with
' the contemptuous indifference that might be expected
from such metal.
In the evening we arrived at Esquimain River, where
we took up our quarters in a small log-hut belonging
to a poor seal-fisher, whose family, and a few men who
attended a saw-mill a short distance off, were the only
inhabitants of this little hamlet. Here we remained all
night, and prepared our snow-shoes for the morrow, as
the boat was there to leave us and return to Tadousac.
The night was calm and frosty, and everything gave
promise of fine weather for our journey. But who can