[ Ballantyne / The World of Ice ]
Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a popular and prolific Scottish writer of adventure tales for boys, and was a significant influence on Robert Louis Stevenson. Ballantyne, from a family of writers and publishers, was also a painter of some note.
This work is Ballantyne's contribution to the "whaling adventure story" genre. First published in 1860 (London: Thomas Nelson), this novel mentions Newfoundlands three times:
The first mention occurs in Chapter 2, as the whaling ship "The Pole-Star" has just set sail, with the family of a young crewman watching from the dock:
"I fear we shall never see him again," sobbed Mrs. Bright, as she took Isobel by the hand and sauntered slowly home, accompanied by Fred and Buzzby, the latter of whom seemed to regard himself in the light of a shaggy Newfoundland or mastiff, who had been left to protect the family. "We are always hearing of whale-ships being lost, and, somehow or other, we never hear of the crews being saved, as one reads of when ships are wrecked in the usual way on the seashore."
The second mention is in Chapter 13; a group of hunters have escaped a fierce snowstorm by seeking refuge in an igloo, and emerge when the storm abates:
O'Riley was the first to emerge into the upper world. Having dusted the snow from his garments, and shaken himself like a Newfoundland dog, he made sundry wry faces, and gazed round him with the look of a man that did not know very well what to do with himself.
The final mention occurs later in the same chapter, as the hunters have killed, and prepare to field dress, a bear and her cub:
The weight of this bear, which was not of the largest size, was afterwards found to be above five hundred pounds, and her length was eight feet nine inches. The cub weighed upwards of a hundred pounds, and was larger than a Newfoundland dog.