114 Rhodora [JULY 
so we finally solaced ourselves with the thought that they were so 
abundant that we should find them about the Bay of Islands. But, 
after we had followed this type of country for seventy-five miles so 
that we were beginning to think of it as typical Newfoundland, there 
was a sudden change. The broad open bogs or barrens with scattered 
Black Spruce and Larch and with the Eriophorum and Betula, Are- 
thusa, Sarracenia, Rubus Chamaemorus, and Andromeda, abruptly 
gave way toa beautiful dense forest of White Spruce with open park- 
like glades and springy meadows, with now and then a white mass 
which we recognized as Salix candida, or a clump of pink and white 
Showy Ladies’ Slipper (Cypripedium hirsutum). Upon comparing 
the time-table and Howley’s geological map, which quickly became 
our “ guide, philospher and friend” for the summer, it was obvious — 
just as if the abrupt change in vegetation were not in itself sufficient 
evidence — that we had left the Carboniferous sandstone area and had 
entered the Silurian limestones which extend from here to the Bay 
of Islands and far beyond. Soon after passing St. George’s Pond 
we caught fleeting and thrilling glimpses over the forested valleys of 
treeless reddish-brown slopes in the West, just like Mt. Albert as one 
sees it from the East, and we knew, as already indicated by Murray’s 
geological reports and Howley’s map, that we should soon be exploring 
serpentine mountains like those of Gaspé. 
After leaving the head of Bay St. George we had seen no towns — 
only camps and occasional log-cabins — but suddenly emerging from 
among the Silurian hills we came unannounced upon the Bay of Is- 
lands with its prosperous and picturesque town, Birchy Cove. Our 
headquarters were to be at Petrie’s which proved to be a comfortable 
house on a point reached ordinarily by walking a mile back on the 
a first arrival — by motor boat. 
track, but on such occasions as this 
Here we found a comfortable home for the summer, with a kind host 
and hostess and interesting and friendly people at table, and we soon 
had a work-room equipped and in active use. We had entrusted, a 
week before we ourselves started, our drying paper, collecting boxes, 
waterproof clothes, tramping shoes and such other articles as we most 
needed to the mercies of our old acquaintance, the American Express 
Company, and this time some brilliant wag had shipped them from 
Cambridge to Newfoundland by way of Montreal! So during a four 
days’ wait we attempted to explore in our travelling shoes, a pro- 
gramme which on the first day wrought havoc with them, for in 
