CHAP. xvi. THE DARK DAYS OF CANADA. 251 



destroyed the stunted trees, the thick lichens, and luxuriant 

 mosses, and driven the main body of the caribou to the 

 north-eastern and northern part of the country. 



The occurrence of a great conflagration is an interesting 

 question in the history of so wild a region as eastern 

 Canada and Labrador; for, with the destruction of the 

 means of subsistence, the nomadic Indian races must dis- 

 appear. Annual fires in the great prairies of the valley of 

 the Saskatchewan have driven the woods back some 

 eighty miles from their former limit, and the same de- 

 structive agent has extended the prairie land east of the 

 Eed Eiver on the north towards the Lake of the 

 Woods. 



It is not improbable that those singular phenomena, 

 which produced what have been called ' The Dark Days 

 of Canada,' may have been occasioned by the burning of 

 a vast area of moss and forest in the Labrador Peninsula, 

 and have originated much of its present mournful 

 aspect. 



In the year 1785, several so called ' dark days ' occurred 

 in Canada, and excited much apprehension among 

 the ignorant and speculation among the learned. Lower 

 Canada only was peopled by civilised man at that time, so 

 that we have no account of the occurrence of the ' Dark 

 Days ' in the upper province. 



It is recorded in the ' Quebec Gazette ' of October 20, 

 1785, that on Sunday, October 16, 1785, it was so dark 

 soon after ten in the morning that printing from ordinary 

 type could not be read. The phenomena are described 

 with some degree of minuteness by Chief Justice Sewell. 



' On October 9, 1785, a short period of obscurity 



