lSli Rhodora [September 



great .sprawling roots, now destitute of hark and blanched by the sun 

 and storm, but yet fully a fool in diameter or three feet in circumfer- 

 ence. Sometimes a prostrate trunk throe or four feet long would be 

 Been. One pictures an ancient forest, very different from the grassy 

 plains with occasional clumps of dwarfed and stunted spruces and 

 fir hushes that arc here now. 



Professor Pernald was much interested in these stumps. He says: 

 "In such accounts as I have found (except possibly Carrier's) the 

 coasts of the Straits of Belle Isle arc described as desolate and hare, 

 and even (artier, in 1534, entering the Straits and anchoring at Blanc 

 Sablon, was so impressed with the barrenness that he wrote: 'If the 

 land was as good as the harhors there are, it would he an advantage; 

 hut it should not he named the New Land hut [a land of] stones and 

 rocks frightful and ill shaped, for in all the said north coast I did not 

 see a cart-load of earth, though I landed in many places. Except at 

 Blanc Sablon there is nothing hut moss and small stunted woods; in 

 short 1 deem rather than otherwise, that it is the land that God gave 

 to Cain;' l and again on his second voyage in 1535, he wrote: 'The 

 whole of the said coast from the Castles as far as here [note, by Prof. 

 Fernald, " From ( 'bateau Bay as far as Brest, west of Blanc Sablon "] 

 bears east-northeast and west-southwest, ranged with numerous 

 islands and lands all hacked and stony, without any soil or woods, 

 save in some valleys'. 2 And at the present time the people at Blanc 

 Sablon insist that there has never been any forest there and that no 

 timber exists within four or five miles of the Straits. Yet, the first 

 day 1 saw upon the terraces east of Blanc Sablon such plants as have 

 just been enumerated I was convinced that a forest must have been 

 there, since these are so distinctly woodland species and so decidedly 

 not plants typical of the Arctic barrens and tundra. So my delight 

 can be imagined when, crossing with Kidder the tableland east of 

 Blanc Sablon, we came upon buried logs in the bog and soon after 

 found numerous stumps protruding from the moss. Some of the 

 stumps, now much crumbled, were still a foot or more in diameter 

 and indicated an ancient forest of considerable size. Just when this 

 forest lived it is difficult to say, but if it still throve in the lGth cen- 

 tury Cartier did not give a very clear indication of it. Only by such 

 indefinite expressions as 'except at Blanc Sablon there is nothing hut 

 moss and stunted woods' and 'without any soil or woods, save in the 



' J. I'. Buxter, Memoir of Jacques Cartier, 80 (1000). 

 • J. I'. Buxler, 1. o. 130. 



