CHAPTER III

_OF THE BIRDS AND LARGER FISHES_

[Illustration: Iceberg in August off Tub Harbour.]

Herrings were once in great numbers on the coast, and were so much larger and fatter than our English herring, that at times knaves have found it worth while to imitate the “Labrador Herring” brand. Of late years they have failed almost entirely to visit the coast, and fishery stations have had to be abandoned where once the sea was “dry with fat herring.” As many as 4,000 barrels have been surrounded with the seine at one shoot of the net. The only other common fish is the sculpin, pig-fish, or grubby. He is a voracious scavenger, and, in foul companionship with his friend the flounder, may be seen sweltering on the rotting heaps of offal which surround every Labrador fish-stage. He appears to have no feelings, but one all-absorbing idea—“to swallow” with his stupendous mouth. I have caught on the sharp-pronged jigger, when fishing for “tom-cod” for breakfast, the same sculpin three times in succession, until for self-protection it was necessary to club him with a rowing pin.

The sleeper shark also infests the coast, and in hundreds gather to devour the dead bodies of the baby seals left by the sealers in the spring. It has a callous nature, and Scoresby tells us, on one occasion while one was feeding on a dead whale, and scooping out at each bite pieces as large as a man’s head, a sailor pierced it through with a scythe knife. It took little notice, however, and went on feeding in exactly the same spot. Mackerel appear in the straits of Belle Isle only.

Two series of submarine banks lie off the Labrador shores, over which it is shallow enough to fish with small boats and hand lines. These have been estimated to cover an area of over 7,000 square miles. Over these the northern current spreads countless animalculæ, in the form of a vast ocean of living slime. This food attracts the bait fishes especially, and they, in turn, attract the cod. No doubt also, this is the attraction to the numerous whales, whose loud “blowing,” as they laze along in the sunshine or hunt fish for their livelihood, alone breaks at times the death-like silence in the lonely bays and inlets. A large sperm whale, 70 feet long, was towed into Battle Harbour our first year. This variety has large teeth, which are used by ivory cutters. A Captain Clarke, writing in 1766, narrates how a sperm whale charged one of his boats; it struck the bow with such violence that it threw his son, who was harpooning, some feet into the air. The whale turned and caught him in her devouring jaws as he came down. He was heard to scream, and part of his body was seen hanging out of its mouth, when it “sounded.” A small but beautiful whale, “as white as a sheet,” is common on the coast. I have seen it caught in cod-traps. Its skin makes excellent leather. The hump-back whale, and more rarely the right-whale are also to be seen. The ferocious “thresher” whale also visits us. It has terrible teeth, and one variety has also a huge back-fin, six feet high, with which the fishermen say they have seen it beating its prey to death.[9] Captain Scammon tells us of an attack by three threshers on a huge cow-whale and her baby in a bay. “Like wolves they flew at her throat, dragging her under water, the others charging at her and leaping right over her. At last they killed the baby, and when it sank kept diving down and coming up with large pieces of its flesh. Meanwhile, the poor mother made her escape, leaving a long track of blood behind her.” I have fired from my boat at the grampus, but without success. Mr. Mackenzie, of the Hudson Bay Company, however, told me he was once standing up in his small boat, waiting for a seal, when he saw a grampus rising to the surface alongside. As its head emerged from the water, he fired straight at the blow-hole, with the result that the single explosive ball penetrated the animal’s brain, and he rolled over dead without a struggle. Not an unfortunate issue as far as the small boat was concerned.

[Footnote 9: Goode’s _United States Fisheries_.]

Pliny speaks of a whale 960 feet long! Another traveller’s license I fear. A hundred feet is, as far as I know, an outside limit. The whale-bone hangs from the roof of the mouth, is short in front and behind, and is at best some six feet long. It is scythe-shaped, and edged with long coarse fibres, which sweep over the huge soft tongue, filtering off the slime on which these whales live. Three hundred and fifty pieces are found on each side.

The narwhale, with his long tusk, eight feet long, with which he pokes up the sea grass on which he feeds, was once common on this coast. Some say he uses the tusk to bore holes through the ice, and so get air to breathe. The tusk is really an incisor tooth, or two incisor teeth enormously prolonged, and twisted round one another. Where no wood is found the Eskimo hang their tents on these ivory rafters.

[Illustration: My first Caribou, and Guide.]

The sword-fish is a doubtful visitor, though he is taken off Greenland and on the American coast. Many are the authentic accounts of ships he has attacked and even sunk.[10] He will weigh as much as 600 lbs., and Professor Owen says, “he strikes with the accumulated force of fifteen double-handed hammers, and its velocity is equal to that of swivel shot.” In 1864 one, for which a sailor was angling, stove a hole through the bottom of the ship _Dreadnought_, and so “the insurance company had to pay £600 because an ill-tempered fish objected to be hooked, and took revenge by running full tilt against copper sheathing and wood planking.” Also in 1864 Captain Atwood took from the stomach of a large shark a full-sized sword-fish, but the shark’s skin was pierced with a dozen holes, showing how much the dainty morsel had objected to being swallowed. Hanging with the armour of Christopher Columbus at Siena, in Spain, is a sword of this fish, said to be “taken from a _warrior_ they slew on nearing America.”

[Footnote 10: Goode’s _United States Fisheries_.]

The fowl of the air are a most important factor in Labrador life. Among many land birds that do occur, far the most important are the willow grouse and the spruce partridge. The former are large birds, tawny red in summer, and white as driven snow in winter.[11] At that season many depend on these birds to keep them from starvation, and even when a settler’s ammunition has all run out, he can sometimes noose them with string on the end of a long stick as they roost in the trees, so tame are they. Like Alexander Selkirk’s animals—

[Footnote 11: The willow grouse very rarely take to the trees, the spruce partridge almost always.]

“They are so unacquainted with man Their tameness is shocking to me.”

A covey in a tree can be killed right out, if shot from the bottom upwards, so that the falling bird does not disturb the rest. A common entry of Cartwright’s[12] is, “Saw a covey of six grouse. Knocked off all their heads with my rifle.”[13]

[Footnote 12: Cartwright’s _Journals_.]

[Footnote 13: To economize powder, the settlers frequently shoot these birds with bows and arrows. The arrows are club-headed.]

The willow grouse in heavy weather bury themselves in the snow, only the cock bird, who acts as sentry, keeping his head above ground to watch for an enemy. Besides these “spruce” grouse, thrushes, American robins, warblers, redpoles, snow buntings, sparrows, larks, woodpeckers, crows, hawks, and owls occur. The snowy owl is an exquisite white in winter, brown in summer, and a large bird. The jay, also, is very common, filling the woods with its cries. Now and again the beautiful gyrfalcon is seen, whilst the osprey, or sea eagle, also breeds on the coast. All these birds are American varieties, and differ slightly from our British species.

There is a great wealth of sea-birds, and until the last two years the arctic curlew ranked first among these. I fear in Labrador we class all our animals in a descending order, with the flesh-pot as the basis. These curlew came north, in flocks which nearly darkened the air, in September, feeding on the numerous berries, and returned south in October. The last three years they have almost disappeared. The settlers say that, owing to their depredations on the American cornfields, poisoned wheat was laid out for them, and this led to their wholesale destruction. Their annual visit can be ill spared indeed.

Perhaps one should mention next the Canada goose. Great numbers of these breed near the great lakes or ponds. They are largely graminivorous, and therefore do not combine the flavours of fish and flesh, which we find so unpleasant in the gulls and divers. It is usual, however, to catch these when young, and confine them in bounds, for in this way not only is the flesh rendered much sweeter to the palate, but since they grow very tame, they are used as decoys for other geese. One man last year anchored out by one leg his tame decoy goose, and so shot no less than thirty other geese. But, in his anxiety for more, unwittingly left his pet too long in the water, with the result that it died of cold; and so the goose with the golden—or in this case “feathered”—eggs was lost. It shows these birds do feel the cold. It is not waste to shoot a hundred geese the same day, for it is only necessary to hang them up in rows outside the house on nails, and they will remain frozen and fresh all winter.

Both eider ducks and the king eiders abound on the coast. In huge flocks early in November they come to the south’ard, generally with a north-east wind, and then in quick succession flock after flock, taking almost all exactly the same line. Near Battle hospital is a barren, rocky point known as “Gunning” Point. Here, under the above circumstances, you can always find some half-dozen “Livyeres,” with long guns and dogs, waiting for the flocks. It is difficult to say whether the dogs or the guns are most remarkable. I measured one gun, six feet two inches long, and when it was discharged it was always an open question which end of it would do most damage, for the adventurous hunter always loaded it “ten fingers” deep. When a flock pass, all the guns are discharged simultaneously, and the ducks, which at times respond in showers, are nominally divided equally.

But now comes the excitement. As a rule a huge Atlantic surf, with these north-east winds, breaks over the point, and the splendid pluck and endurance of the dogs is taxed to the uttermost. Dashing into the waves, I have seen them repeatedly hurled back, bruised and winded, high on to the ledges of rock, only to be dragged off by the return wave and once more pounded on to the rocks. To avoid this, the brave beasts hold on with the energy of despair, and many times have I noted their bleeding paws, and nails torn off in the unequal struggle. Yet they would at once return to the charge, and, waiting their chance, leap right over the breaking crest, and so get clear of the surf. Once they have seized a duck they never let it go, and I have often felt sorely tempted even to jump in and give the brave creatures a hand, when it seemed impossible for them to keep up the struggle any longer. Yet, after being lost to view, engulfed by a huge breaker, one would see soon a duck appear, and after it a dog’s head, still true to its hazardous duty. Sometimes, however, they are really lost.

Petrels, loons, divers, gulls, guillemots, widgeon, teal, scoters, puffins, shanks, sandpipers and other waders abound. These are shot in the fall, and salted down for future consumption. Their eggs are also collected for eating; and though we found even the eggs of the domestic hen, when allowed to feed on fish remains, too highly flavoured to be appetizing, yet I have seen healthy babies flourishing on gulls’ eggs. Whitbourne, writing in 1612, speaks of the utility of the penguin—the great auk was common then. He says, “These penguins are bigge as geese, and flye not, for they haue but a short wing, and they multiply so infinitely upon a certain flat Iland, that men drive them from thence upon a boord into their boats by hundreds at a time; as if God had made the innocency of so poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sustentation of man.” Then, as now, he says the “fishermen doe bait their hookes with the flesh,” and also that they were so fat that the men drew threads through under the skin and used them as candles.