One day served to make us familiar with the flora, fauna, geography and geology of the region, for it was not an interesting place from a scientific point of view, however the fishermen may regard it, and after the departure of the mail steamer, leaving us all disappointed in regard to mail, time dragged on us terribly.

Two or three of the more venturesome ones could get a little sport by pulling a long four miles down to the extremity of Cape Harrigan, where sea pigeon had a home in the face of a magnificent cliff, against the bottom of which the gunners had to risk being thrown by the heavy swell rolling against it, as they shot from a boat bobbing like a cork, at “guillemots” flying like bullets from a gun out of the face of the cliff.  One evening a relief party was sent off for two who had gone off to land on a bad lee shore and were some hours overdue.  To be sure the missing ones arrived very soon, all right, while the search party got back considerably later, drenched with spray and with their boat half full of water, but the incident gave some relief from the monotony.

Another evening several visiting captains and a few friends from ashore were treated to a concert by the Bowdoin Glee and Minstrel Club.  All the old favorites of from ten years ago and less were served up in a sort of composite hash, greatly to the delight of both audience and singers.

[Abundance of codfish] At Webeck Harbor, which we came to pronounce “Wayback,” probably because it seemed such a long way back to anything worthy of human interest, we saw the business of catching cod at its best.  They had just “struck a spurt,” the fishermen said, and day after day simply went to their traps, filled their boats and bags, took the catch home, where the boys and “ship girls” took charge of it, and returned to the traps to repeat the process.  An idea of the amount of fish taken may be given by the figures of the catch of five men from one schooner, who took one thousand quintals of codfish in thirteen days.  We obtained a better idea of the vast catch by the experience of one of our parties who spent part of a day at the traps, as the arrangement of nets along the shore is called, into which the cod swim and out of which they are too foolish to go.  They are on much the same plan as salmon weirs, only larger, opening both ways, and being placed usually in over ten fathoms of water and kept in place by anchors, shore lines, and floats and sinkers.  Once down they are usually kept in place a whole season.  The party were in a boat, inside the line of floats, so interested in watching the fishermen making the “haul,” as the process of overhauling the net and passing it under the boat is called, by which the fish are crowded up into one corner where they can be scooped out by the dozen, that they did not notice that the enormous catch was being brought to the surface directly under them till their own boat began to rise out of the water, actually being grounded on the immense shoal of codfish.