NATASHQUAN — SPRING BIRDS. 251 



from the same cause, firmly stamped down with the continual pat- 

 tering of numberless feet. 



Tuesday the 25th. We anchored off Natashquan. Here we ob- 

 tained a bundle of newspapers, mostly Harpers' Weekly, the first 

 we had seen for nearly seven months. Natashquan point is a little 

 better than a sand bank, with an overgrowth of low spruce and fir 

 trees, and but a poor attempt at vegetation. At its extremity are 

 placed the houses of one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts, 

 and one or two native huts, while on a small island opposite is a 

 very neat house belonging to a trader, who passes the greater part 

 of his time between this place and the neighboring shores and 

 Quebec trading along shore. The water all about the point is very 

 shoal with dangerous sandbanks in every direction. I saw the hulk 

 of a vessel of about eighty tons, that several days before had run 

 aground here ; it had become stuck fast in the sand and was now 

 a total wreck. A few miles almost direct east takes us to the mouth 

 of the river where the settlement is. The harbor, even here, is full 

 of sunken ledges, most of which appear only at low tide. Vessels 

 cannot approach near the shore even here, since the sandbanks 

 again interfere, and the water is quite shallow even at high tide. A 

 little distance above this is another river, and the intervening space 

 is a picturesque httle peninsula, of coarse and fine granite of feld- 

 spar, over which a scanty vegetation forms a groundwork with 

 dwarf spruce and fir trees extending far back into the country. 



In the bushes, just back of the few houses that line the stream, I 

 saw large numbers of birds. The white throated sparrows sang 

 their well known pea-body, pea-body, pea-body, prefaced by their 

 usual whistle, from nearly every prominent tree-top, while I amused 

 myself for nearly an hour watching the robins as they flew or 

 hopped about on the lawn, or in and out the wood-pile and other 

 debris in front of the houses, enjoying the bright sun which 

 shone down, warm and gladdening, upon the ground just springing 

 into greenness again, wet with the moisture of melting snow. I saw 

 quite a number of other birds, and recognized the white crowned 

 sparrow, and also a shy Maryland yellow-throat {Geothfypis iri- 



