We fell under the land presently, and passed near the northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir.  The sun, at last, was really setting.  There was the old magnificence of the king of day,—­airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with scarlets and crimsons, and striped with living gold.  A blaze of white light, deepening into the richest orange, crowned the distant ridge behind which the sun was vanishing.  A vapory splendor, rose-color and purple, was dissolving in the atmosphere; and every wave of the ocean, a dark violet, nearly black, was “a flash of golden fire.”  Bathed with this almost supernatural glory, the headland, in itself richly complexioned with red, brown, and green, was at once a spectacle of singular grandeur and solemnity.  I have no remembrance of more brilliant effects of light and color.  The view filled us with emotions of delight.  We shot from beneath the great cliff into Flat-Rock Bay, rounding, at length, the breakers and the cape into the smoother waters of Torbay.  As the oars dipped regularly into the polished swells, reflecting the heavens and the wonderful shores, all lapsed into silence.  In the gloom of evening the rocks assumed an unusual height and sublimity.  Gliding quietly below them, we were saluted every now and then by the billows thundering in some adjacent cavern.  The song of the sea in its old halls rung out in a style quite unearthly.  The slamming of the mighty doors seemed far off in the chambers of the cliff, and the echoes trembled themselves away, muffled into stillness by the stupendous masses.

Thus ended our first real hunting of an iceberg.  When we landed, we were thoroughly chilled.  Our man was waiting with his wagon, and so was a little supper in a house near by, which we enjoyed with an appetite that assumed several phases of keenness as we proceeded.  There was a tower of cold roast beef, flanked by bread and butter and bowls of hot tea.  The whole was carried silently, without remark, at the point of knife and fork.  We were a forlorn-hope of two, and fell to, winning the victory in the very breach.  We drove back over the fine gravel road at a round trot, watching the last edge of day in the northwest and north, where it no sooner fades than it buds again to bloom into morning.  We lived the new iceberg-experience all over again, and planned for the morrow.  The stars gradually came out of the cool, clear heavens, until they filled them with their sparkling multitudes.  For every star we seemed to have a lively and pleasurable thought, which came out and ran among our talk, a thread of light.  When we looked at the hour, as we sat fresh and wakeful, warming at our English inn in St. John’s, it was after midnight.

* * * * *

THEODORE PARKER.