old tombstones is an inscription in the Basque language, the Basques having been the earliest fishermen on the coast. The handsome silver communion service presented to the church by William IV., who visited Placentia when a midshipman, is still preserved. On the neighboring hill is the old French fort with some crumbling fortifications and rusty cannon. At Placentia, remote as it seems, we are brought into daily touch with the world's great throbbing centres of life. Here is a relay station of the Atlantic cable, and before any one on the American continent was aware of the fact, we learned of the assassination of Von The Plehve, the Russian minister. local manager overheard this whisper from the sea passing through his instruments, and mentioned the fact. On the opposite side of the island, in the deep and majestic Trinity Bay, the first telegraph across the ocean was landed. Whittier's fine poem fittingly commemorates the event: "O lonely Bay of Trinity, Ye bosky shores untrod, Lean breathless to the white-lipped sea, And hear the voice of God! "From world to world His couriers fly, Thought-winged and shod with fire; The angel of His stormy sky Rides down the sunken wire. "What saith the herald of the Lord? The world's long strife is done; Close wedded by that mystic cord, The continents are one. Bear gently, Ocean's carrier dove, Thy errands to and fro. "Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, Beneath the deep so far, The bridal robe of Earth's accord, "For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall, Space mocked, and Time outrun; And round the world the thought of each It is the thought of one! "The poles unite, the zones agree, The tongues of striving cease; As on the Sea of Galilee The Christ is whispering, Peace!" disaster had been caused by a high tide, whose salt waves had "seeped up through the stones, destroying her garden, as well as that in the neighboring convent. "It's very lonesome I wuz in the country, an' so I moved to the town," she said. "So Patsy an' the childer gathered the seaweed an' covered the stones. But 'twuz the sorrow of a job to get the earth. We had to bring it in a barrow from the hill beyant, and many a weary hour we spent, off praties, an' the tops wilted black as yer hat. That was last year, an' the year's crops is not what they wuz afore. But, praise to providence, the neighbors wuz good, and so wuz the fishin', an' we worried through. But what the childer will do for boots when the winter comes I don't know. Oh, thanks, your riverence, may the blessin' o' heaven follow yez, an' may yez never want fur nothin'." The good nuns, on whom we called next day, told us of their trepidation as the water oozed up through the floor of their school-room and chapel, making them take to the upper story, and destroyed in a night the labor of years. One can see only the roughest, wildest and most inhospitable part of Newfoundland by rail. For hundreds of years the fisherman's path was on the deep. There was but little travel on the shore, then only by dog teams and narrow trails. In many parts of the island horses and roads are still unknown, but by the admirable steamboat service of the Reid Newfoundland Company, and its connections, almost every bay and harbor can be reached. Their steamers traverse these wide bays, thread the perfect archipelago of islands, and carry the mails and the results of civilization to the many lonely outports and fishing harbors. An excursion of special interest is that to the Labrador in the staunch sealing steamer "Virginia Lake," Capt. Parsons, of the Reid Newfoundland system. We leave St. John's, skirt the mighty headlands and rocky coast, and penetrate the deep fiords of Conception, Trinity and Bonavista Bays. The size of the Methodist chapels, the numbers in their congregations, the comfort of their parsonages, will surprise many from Canada. At Carbonear the commodious par |