EASTWARD OF BLANC SABLON. 207 



opening of spring, until the first of September, the beginning of 

 cold weather, but during these four months all is stir and excitement 

 both day and night. Men in boats are out fishing all the time, and 

 every device thought of is put into operation for the securing of a 

 good " catch," as the work of the season is called. Labor is cheap, 

 and none but lazy persons fail to enter into the full excitement of 

 the occasion ; these well deserve the poverty brought upon them 

 by their own idleness and want of exertion. I have known whole 

 families to exist on the charity of their neighbors with perhaps only 

 a single or at most two barrels, one of flour and the other of meal, 

 during the long six months of winter ; but the idle always have 

 their own reward, at least on this coast where no one is rich enough 

 to supply such persons at their own expense, even if they were so 

 disposed. 



Early the next morning we tackled our still lame and tired dogs 

 and proceeded on our journey. The dogs went badly at first but 

 they bravely overcame the tendency to weakness, caused by their 

 lame feet, and soon trotted along at so brisk a pace that, but for 

 the occasional drops of blood left in their tracks from wounds 

 made by the sharp ice cutting their feet, one would scarcely notice 

 their tendency to fatigue. We soon climbed the steep, high hill 

 directly back of the houses and the ridge or rather long, low gran- 

 ite mound — if one may so call it — and found ourselves on an 

 uneven plateau of sandstone, the upper surface of which looked 

 much like that of the Bradore granite ; but while the vegetation 

 on the Bradore Hills was scant and poor, here dwarf spruce and 

 fir trees showed occasional green tops and branches from beneath 

 the snow ; while broken and cut sticks, appearing in all directions, 

 showed where the ground, once completely covered with these trees, 

 had been cleared for fuel, and left to again grow over, probably 

 for the same ultimate use. I could not but reflect that I was riding 

 over a mass of stratified sandstone, extending miles in three di- 

 rections with the sea at the south, and once a part of the ocean, 

 which receded either by elevation of the land, by sinking of the sea 

 basin, or a combination of both. With about the same slope that 



