CHAP. xv. DREARY ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. 237 



Cartwriglit, in his ' Sixteen Years in Labrador,' speaks 

 of the boulders disclosed when fire has swept off the 

 covering of moss, and his account refers to the north- 

 east coast, 400 miles from the head- waters of the Moisie. 



' When a fire happens on a peat soil, at the end of a 

 very dry summer, the whole of it is burnt away to a great 

 depth, and wiU not only produce no timber again, but 

 also is both dangerous and troublesome to walk over ; for 

 great numbers of lame stones and rocks are then left 



O o 



exposed on the surface, and the Indian tea, currants, and 

 other plants, which grow between, often prevent their 

 being discovered in time to avoid a 1 >ad fall ; but if the fire 

 happens early in the summer, or when the ground is wet, 

 the soil takes no damage. The burnt woods are also very 

 bad to walk through, until the trees are felled and pretty 

 well gone to decay ; but in how many years that will be 

 I had no opportunity to observe: I know it is not a few, 

 and that it depends on particular circumstances.' 



In the narrow tongue of forest through which we had 

 passed on our way to this mountain, the only trees seen 

 were small spruce, larch, and birch, with a few Banksian 

 pine. 



Growing in crevices and hollows of the rock, the 

 Labrador tea-plant was common and caribou moss abun- 

 dant; time-stains, tripe de roche, with other lichens of 

 similar growth, painted the gneiss, and a few other fami- 

 liar dwarfed shrubs and flowers decorated this lonely and 

 dreary wilderness. Of birds we saw only one - - a spruce 

 partridge, tenderly luring us from her nest and young. 



The country we were surveying was on the borders 

 of the table land of the Labrador Peninsula, through 



