TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 



and of vegetation working through thousands 

 of years on the solid Laurentian rock that had 

 been left naked and scoured by the ice of the 

 last glacial period. The remains of this soil, the 

 precious product of so many years, no longer 

 protected by vegetation on the steep slopes, 

 was soon washed down into the valleys, and 

 these rocky hills are now almost as devoid of 

 soil as they were when the glaciers melted. 

 On the bare rock lichens are again growing 

 and disintegration is gradually creeping on 

 even there ; in the crevices the mosses and the 

 herbs and bushes are striving to gain a foot- 

 hold, and slowly a soil is being formed, which 

 after many, many years will be sufficient for the 

 re-growth of the Hudsonian forest of spruce 

 and balsam. Verily what a great destruction 

 a little fire kindleth! The mills of the gods 

 grind slowly indeed in this case! 



Here at a height of five or six hundred feet 

 glacial boulders abounded, many of them poised 

 on slopes of such an angle that a touch seemed 

 all that was needed to disturb their equilibrium 

 and send them crashing into the valley below. 

 The presence of these boulders shows that the 

 land here had never been submerged below the 



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