"As each successive blast grew less in fury, and as the force and sound of the sea went down, we heard the wild streaming of the Baccalieu birds; and now, ere the water, which was rising fast in hold and cabin, destroyed everything, we procured charts and telescopes, to discover on what part of that barren, bleak, and most desolate of all the American shores, our fate had cast us. "On comparing the outline of the snow-clad coast with the diagrams on the chart, we found we were stranded somewhere between the Bloody Bay and the Bay of Fair and False, about one hundred and twenty miles to the north-westward of the point from whence we had sailed. "Few or no settlers, even of the most hardy and desperate description, are to be found thereabout, as the inhabitants between that place and the Bay of Notre Dame, about one hundred and fifty in number, are poor wretches who fish for cod and salmon in what they call summer, and for seals and the walrus in winter, and usually retire for the latter purpose to St. John’s, or bury themselves in the woods till the snow disappears, about the month of June. "We had but a sorry prospect before us; every instant the brig was going more and more to pieces beneath our feet, and our glasses swept the far extent of the snow-clad coast in vain, for not a vestige of a human habitation, or any sign of a human being, could be seen. No living thing was there save the Baccalieu birds, which screamed and wheeled in flocks above the seething breakers. "Captain Benson’s resolutions were taken at once. He resolved to abandon the wreck, and make his way by land at once for Trinity, a little town on the western side of the great bay that divides Avalon from the mainland of the island, or for Buenoventura, another settlement twelve miles to the southward. "By circumnavigating the numerous bights, bays, and other inlets that lay between us and Buenoventura—especially the long, narrow, and provoking reach of Clode Sound—provided we failed to cross it on the ice, we should have at least a hundred miles to travel over a desolate and snow-covered waste, without a pathway, and without other guide than a pocket-compass. "We set about our preparations at once. Every man put on his warmest clothing, and Tom Dacres lent a cosy Petersham jacket to the Canadian, Gautier. We greased our boots well, that they might exclude the wet, and made us long leggings to wear over our trousers by tying pieces of tarpaulin from the ankle to the knee, and lashing them well round with spun-yarn.