416 LABRADOR 



"The interior is said ,to be well wooded and far from 

 barren, even almost to the northern extremity. But near 

 the coast one rarely sees trees of any notable size. At 

 Hopedale and Nain there are small groves near the mission 

 stations ; but elsewhere we met them only deep in the bays 

 and in sheltered valleys a considerable distance five or 

 ten miles at least inland. Thus, when not entirely 

 lacking, they form an unobtrusive feature in the usual 

 landscape. The low vegetation that predominates clothes 

 the country with a close green mantle, but leaves its shape 

 and natural outline unconcealed. Inorganic nature reveals 

 herself in her own primeval character, leaving all the 

 strength and charm and variety that she can assume naked 

 to observation. There is little of softness, little of the 

 attraction that vigorous organic life can add; though the 

 green of the low plants, the grays, reds, and browns of 

 mosses and lichens, the blues and whites and pinks and 

 yellows of the flowers, add a suggestion of this, yet in a way 

 that never interferes with the stern grandeur of the lifeless 

 masses. 



"The more northern landscapes differ from those thus 

 far described mainly in the facts that the greater heights 

 attained lead to grander impressions of massiveness and 

 strength, and involve greater ruggedness and variety of 

 form ; and that the softening influences of soil, water, and 

 vegetation are present to a far less degree. . . . Plant 

 life is still abundant on the lower levels, but finds little 

 hospitality on the bleak higher slopes. . . . 



"The great mass of the vegetation of Labrador consists 

 of low forms. It grows so thickly and vigorously in the 

 thin soil, however, that the country never gives the impres- 

 sion of being lifeless and barren. In the far south, es- 

 pecially on moist lowlands, sphagnum is often a prevailing 

 growth. But aside from its rather rare supremacy, almost 

 everywhere we went we found the curlewberry (Empetrum 

 nigrwri) and the so-called caribou-moss (Cladonia, really a 



