A LABRADOR SPRING 



tenors the black marks of fire. The ranges 

 beyond, still higher for no matter how high 

 we climbed on the elevated plateau there were 

 always summits beyond still higher showed 

 also gaunt trunks, and in places a considerable 

 growth of birch and aspen where there had 

 probably been a previous growth of spruce. 

 Here was an explanation for the absence 

 of arctic birds. The region was not arctic, al- 

 though from a distance it simulated it perfectly. 

 It had originally been clothed with a forest 

 in which forest birds had dwelt. Mr. J. A. 

 Wilson, the factor of the H. B. C. at Mingan, 

 told me that a great fire had swept over this 

 region forty years ago, starting hundreds of 

 miles inland at the Grand or Hamilton River; 

 it had reached the Gulf shore with a front over a 

 hundred miles broad. Hind gives the dates of 

 several great fires before this. Not only was 

 the forest destroyed, but the undergrowth of 

 bushes, the low herbs, and more important still, 

 the mosses and lichens as well as the peaty soil 

 were all licked up by the flames, exposing the 

 naked framework of bed-rock and boulder. 

 This soil destroyed represented the disintegrat- 

 ing work of water in its solid and liquid form, 



46 



