[ Noble / After Icebergs with a Painter: A Summer Voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland ]
This book, published in 1861 by D. Appleton (New York), recounts the Rev. Noble's 1859 trip in the company of "a distinguished landscape painter" — Frederic Edwin Church, one of the most famous and popular members of the "Hudson River School" of American painting, although Church was equally well-known for exotic landscapes ranging from the Arctic to South America to the Middle East — in order to sketch and paint icebergs. There is one mention of Newfoundland dogs in this book, reproduced in its entirety below. The "he" referred to in the opening sentence is the young man who was serving as their guide.
Speaking of the Newfoundland dog, he told us that one of pure, original blood, was scarcely to be found. I had supposed, and had good reason for it, from what I had read in the papers, about the time of the visit to St. Johns, upon the laying of the Atlantic Cable, that any person could for a small sum purchase numbers of the finest dogs. I think a certain correspondent of some New York daily, told us that several gentlemen supplied themselves with these animals upon their departure. If such was the case, then they took away with them about the last of the real breed, and must have paid for them such prices as they would not like to own. Scarcely a splendid dog is now to be seen, and five, ten, and even twenty pounds sterling might be refused for him. We have not seen the first animal that compares with those which trot up and down Broadway nearly every week; and they are not the pure-blooded creature, either, by a good deal. It is to be regretted, that dogs of such strength, beauty and sagacity should have been permitted to become almost extinct in their native country.
One of Church's more well-known paintings, The Iceberg (1875), was created as a result of the voyage recounted in this book.
