288 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. CHAP. svn. 



climb above the wall of rock, and throw dry wood down. 

 Our tents were pitched upon a spit of sand, which had 

 formed in a little bay of the gorge, and lay, for about one 

 foot in depth, on the flat polished rock which during high 

 water formed the bed of the river. The scene after night- 

 fall was very picturesque. The narrowness of the gorge 

 did not admit of our seeing the sky unless we gazed 

 upwards ; the river rushed over a ledge of rocks about 

 seven feet high, and when illuminated by our fire, looked 

 terrible in its fury. Holding a flaming piece of birch 

 bark over the angry waters, in the eddy below the fall, 

 salmon came, looked, and darted into the stream. 

 When we glanced upwards and northwards, an aurora, a 

 comet, and brilliant stars turned our thoughts from the 

 gloom of a narrow crack in the earth to the fields of 

 space in which the shining diamond glittered, the lost 

 manitou wandered,* and the dancing spirits of the dead 

 held their nightly frolics.! 



Early on the following morning I observed seals 

 swimming towards us ; and having fired at one fellow, I 

 was not a little surprised to see fifteen or twenty of these 

 animals roll off flat rocks into the water. They had been 

 sleeping there during the night, and the report of the gun 

 woke them suddenly, and for the present spoiled our 

 prospects of getting a seal. At the fourth rapid we had 

 some difficulty in carrying the canoes over the gigantic 

 fragments of rock which obstructed our passage. Many 



* It is a common belief among 1 some Indian tribes that comets are deities 

 who have been driven from their proper sphere, and are compelled to 

 wander through space. 



f Indians call the ' Aurora ' ' the dancing spirit of the dead.' 



