washing it herself.  After rubbing it with a little grease, she first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then finished with soap and water and a good wiping with a coarse towel.  I begged that she would spare herself the trouble, and allow me to help myself.  But it was no trouble at all for her, and the greatest pleasure.  And what should I know about washing off tar?  They were members of the Church of England, and seemed pleased when they found that I was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church.  They had a pastor who visited them and others in the village occasionally, and held divine service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended, going in boats in summer, and over the hills on snow-shoes in the winter.  The woman told me, in an undertone, that the family relations were not all agreed in their religious faith, and that they could not stop there any longer, but had gone to “America,” which they liked much better.  It was a hard country, any way, no matter whether one were Protestant or Papist.  Three months were all their summer, and nearly all their time for getting ready for the long, cold winter.  To be sure, they had codfish and potatoes, flour and butter, tea and sugar; but then it took a deal of hard work to make ends meet.  The winter was not as cold as we thought, perhaps; but then it was so long and snowy!  The snow lay five, six, and seven feet deep.  Wood was a great trouble.  There was a plenty of it, but they could not keep cattle or horses to draw it home.  Dogs were their only teams, and they could fetch but small loads at a time.  In the mean while, a chubby little boy, with cheeks like a red apple, had ventured from behind his young mother, where he had kept dodging as she moved about the house, and edged himself up near enough to be patted on the head, and rewarded for his little liberties with a half-dime.

THE ICEBERG.

The sunshine was now streaming in at a bit of a window, and I went out to see what prospect of success.  C., who had left some little time before, was nowhere to be seen.  The fog seemed to be in sufficient motion to disclose the berg down some of the avenues of clear air that were opened occasionally.  They all ended, however, with fog instead of ice.  I made it convenient to walk to the boat, and pocket a few cakes, brought along as a kind of scattering lunch.  C. was descried, at length, climbing the broad, rocky ridge, the eastern point of which we had doubled on our passage from Torbay.  Making haste up the crags by a short cut, I joined him on the verge of the promontory pretty well heated and out of breath.  The effort was richly rewarded.  The mist was dispersing in the sunny air around us; the ocean was clearing off; the surge was breaking with a pleasant sound below.  At the foot of the precipice were four or five whales, from thirty to fifty feet in length, apparently.  We could have tossed a pebble upon them.  At times abreast, and then in single file, or disorderly, round and round