Those Terror-Stricken Sailors Watch The Slowly
Moving Berg As It Drifts Past Their Vessel, Fearing
That Their Own Ship Will Be Drawn Towards It
From The Peculiar Power Of Attraction They Believe
The Iceberg To Possess.
And as they watch,
against the icy base of the mountain in the sea
the waves beat and break as if expending their
forces upon a rocky shore.
Down the furrowed
sides of the disintegrating berg streamlets trickle,
and miniature cascades leap, mingling their
waters with the briny sea. The intruder slowly
drifts out of sight, disappearing in the gloom,
while the sailor thanks his lucky stars that he has
rid himself of another danger. The ill-omened
Anticosti, the graveyard of many seamen, is yet
to he passed. The ship skirts along its southern
shore, a coast destitute of bays or harbors of
any kind, rock-bound and inhospitable.
Wrecks of vessels strew the rocky shores, and
four light-houses warn the mariner of danger.
Once past the island the ship is well within the
estuary of the gulf into which the St. Lawrence
River flows, contributing the waters of the great
lakes of the continent to the sea. As the north
coast is approached the superstitious sailor is
again alarmed if perchance, the compass-needle
shows sympathy with some disturbing element,
the cause of which he believes to exist in the
mountains which rise along the shore. He
repeats the stories of ancient skippers, of vessels
having been lured out of their course by the
deviation of the guiding-needle, which
succumbed to the potent influence exerted in those
hills of iron ore; heeding not the fact that the
disturbing agent is the iron on board of his own
ship, and not the magnetic oxide of the distant
mines.
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