THE NEWFOUNDLAND BARRENS 157 



between fifty and sixty points. The illustration shows the writer's 

 best head with thirty-seven points. 



Should the reader desire to know just how it was secured, let 

 him accompany two hunters for a couple of hours to a typical 

 Newfoundland barren. They stand upon the pleasant shores of 

 a lake lying upwards of a mile above sea level. It is the last week 

 of September, bright with the warmth of the dying summer- 

 that tranquil autumn time when all nature seems to rest and bask 

 in a mellow radiance which is the farewell glow before the northern 

 summer comes to an abrupt conclusion. 



From a picturesque encampment among silver birches and 

 pines, you look across a narrow inlet of the lake over the sun-dried 

 yellow herbage of a flat meadow, the further side of which is seen 

 to be fringed with a belt of pine, firs and black spruce. Beyond 

 this there rises a rough and rugged mountain on the nearer side 

 bearing traces of strange ruin. Wounds and scars, of the age of 

 the ice period perhaps, appear still raw. It looks as if the skin and 

 flesh had been torn from these precipitous mountain sides but 

 yesterday. Boulders wrenched and filed from the scarped rock 

 are strewn on the ledges in crushed heaps. 



At the edge of an island of dwarf fir trees where the hunters 

 can command every portion of the open space spread before them, 

 the two men pause and examine fresh hoof-prints in a deeply 

 worn deer 'lead'. A dappled herd soon come in sight moving 



