Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. CANADA. 1835-1838. ON Midsummer Day, 1835, Philip Gosse took a final farewell of the little town which had been his home for eight years, and set off, full of sanguine anticipations, for a new life of liberty and enterprise. He walked from Carbonear to Harbour Grace, where the Camilla was lying, and went on board of her to sleep that night, to be joined next morning by Mr. and Mrs. Jaques. In the course of this, his last walk in Newfoundland, he saw in flight what all those years he had been looking for in vain--a specimen of the large yellow swallow-tail butterfly. He gave chase to it at once, and, after a long run, succeeded in capturing it easily with his hat, for it was very fearless. In the evening a boy brought out to the vessel for him a large cockroach, of a kind not native to North America, which he had picked up in the streets, dropped perhaps out of some cargo of sugar. This quaint species of tribute was his last gift from Newfoundland, a country in which he was destined never to set foot again. He took on board a variety of chrysalides, caterpillars, and eggs, the premature transformation of some of which gave him a great deal of anxiety. How completely he was absorbed in his duties as the nurse of these insects may be amusingly gathered from his diary, in which, for instance, in turning for some information regarding that important day on which he landed in the new country of his adoption, I find these words and no others: --"July 15.--As I this day arrived at Quebec, I pro"cured some lettuce for my caterpillars, which they ate "greedily." The voyage from Harbour Grace to Quebec, a comparatively short distance on the map, proved an intolerably tedious one, from lack of wind. In the St. Lawrence the strong ebb tide...