Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/439

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TOURS BY RAIL AND STEAMER
371

painter will stay tied. Spirit hands loosen the firmest knots.

The Glencoe has gone in and out of these granite orifices and beaten along the reefs and straight cliffs of this remarkable coast for nearly twenty years, through September gales and March hurricanes, and never lost a life. Before the advent of steam vessels so many fatal wrecks were recorded every year between Cape Race and Cape Ray that the inhabitants were able to construct and furnish houses and even apparel themselves from the flotsam scattered on the waves. Judge Prowse in The Newfoundland Quarterly relates the story of an Anglican clergyman who held service in an isolated south port. "Having been formerly an officer in the army, he was very particular about his clothes. His plain black coat was of the very best material. The old fisherman, his host, eyed him for some time; then laying his hand on the coat sleeve, smoothing it down, he said: 'That's a mighty fine piece of cloth, sir; never seed such a splendid bit of cloth in my life before. Get'ee out of a wrack, sir?'" In those days the best that any one had was reaped from the sea.

Four miles east of Port-aux-Basques are the Isles aux Morts, the Islands of the Dead, where a hundred years ago the immortal George Harvey rescued from ship-wrecks many scores of human beings. Cape Ray, the extreme southwesterly