Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/424

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
358
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

Iron and Steel Companies. The amount of ore in sight is estimated at 2500 million tons.

To refer to recurring coast views as extraordinary becomes monotonously repetitious. The larger eastern bays differ only in the degree of grandeur by which one excels the other. The least of their coves has an artistic appeal. Conception Bay, enthrallingly lovely in every aspect, is enclosed by precipices less sublimely tall than those of Trinity Bay, but is none the less satisfying for that. A peninsula 85 miles long divides these two immense arms of the Atlantic. The railway which traverses nearly half its length is to be extended to Grates Cove at the northern end.

Grotesque ridges of unclad rock close in the village of Brigus, which lies a mile from the railway station at the head of a walled blue harbour. In this stony lap were reared all the Arctic captains who navigated the ships of the Peary expeditions, and the men of this immediate coast composed Peary's crews. In a cottage house surrounded by trees and a neatly plotted garden lives Captain William Bartlett. He and his brothers, Captains Sam, John and Henry were all born to the ice. The first of the Bartletts to go with Peary was Captain Henry who later lost his life coming from Philadelphia with a cargo of coal. Captain John was skipper of the Hope when Peary's meteorite was brought south. Captain Sam who, if necessary "would ship for the Polar Seas in a bath-