20 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



of three hundred souls and steered to the north and northwest with them. 

 It Avas because he knew nothing of the Labrador iee-pack that he steered 

 to make a northwest passage. What the}^ found then is recorded in 

 Peter Martyr and Gomara. 



Tlie following description of the coast is from Mr. A. P. Low's report 

 to the Director of the Geological Survey, 189i) : 



" Along the Atlantic coast the land rises abruptly inland, almost 

 " everywhere to altitudes varying from 1,000 feet to 1,500 feet, from the 

 " Straits of Belle Isle to the vicinity of Nain. To the northward of Nain 

 " the coast range is much higher, and in the neighbourhood of Nachvak 

 " Bay, ranges of sharp, unglaciated mountains rise abruptly from the 

 " sea, to heights varying from 2.500 feet to 4,000 feet ; while farther 

 " north the}" are reported to culminate in peaks of G,000 feet, a i'cw miles 

 " inland. AVith a slight decrease in height, this range continues north- 

 " wai'd, to the barren islands at Cape Chudleigh." 



This is not such a coast as a sailor would care to anchor alongside of, 

 if indeed such places have anchorages ; but Admiral Baytield's descrip- 

 tion of the swell on the Labrador coast completes the jjicture. It is taken 

 from " Hatton and Harvej-'s Newfoundland,'' p. 384 : 



" I never saw anything more grand and wildly beautiful than the 

 " tremendous swell which often comes in without wind, rolling slowly 

 " but irresistibly in from the sea, as if moved by some unseen power, 

 '• rearing itself up like a wall of water as it approaches the scraggy sides 

 " of the islands, moving on faster and faster as it nears the shore, until at 

 " labt it bursts with fury over islets thirty feet high, or sends up foam 

 " and spray, sparkling in the sunbeams, fifty feet up the sides of the pre- 

 " cipices. I can compare the roar of the surfin a calm night to nothing 

 '• less than the falls of Niagara.'' 



Summer is indeed, as Mr. Ilarrisse says, " brief but lovely " — lovel}-, 

 Avhen the field ice is gone, with the deep purple of the sea and with the 

 rose and violet sheen of the stately bergs and with the black beetling 

 precipices and the foam of the breakers combing over the rocky islets — 

 a stern and solemn loveliness. jQt tender at rai'e moments in its delicate 

 tints of colour ; but John Cabot was a practical person, not in search of 

 pictorial effects. He said the soil Avas good and the climate temperate, 

 and gave promise of the growth of silk and brazil-wood. 



APPENDIX B. 

 "Living Slijie." 



It is probably Professor Hind who originated this sontewhat dis- 

 agreeabl}' graphic phrase. It has been taken up by succeeding writers to 

 express the teeming microscopic life of the Arctic current, and Mr. Ilar- 

 risse has tripped over it. He can hardly be blamed, for the metaphor is 

 a little strong. The following passage from "IIatto)i and Harvej-'s New- 

 foundland'' explains it thoroughly (p. 852) : 



" The icy current flowing from the Arctic seas is in many ])laces 'a 

 " ' living mass, a vast ocean of living slime,' and this slime, which accom- 

 " panics the icebergs and fioes, accumulates on the banks of northern 

 " Labrador, and renders the existence possible there of all those forms of 

 " marine life — from the diatom to the minute crustacean, from the min- 



