328 Life of Audubon. 



hanging on smaller ones, as if about to roll down from 

 their insecure resting-places into the sea below them. 

 Bays without end, sprinkled with thousands of rocky 

 inlets of all sizes, shapes, and appearances, and wild 

 birds everywhere, was the scene presented before me. 

 Besides this there was a peculiar cast of the uncertain 

 sky, butterflies flitting over snow-banks, and probing un- 

 folding dwarf flowerets of many hues pushing out their 

 tender stems through the thick beds of m.oss which every- 

 where covers the granite rock. Then there is the morass, 

 wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over 

 the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, whereby one treads 

 down the forests of Labrador ; and the unexpected bunt- 

 ing or Sylvia which perchance, and indeed as if by chance 

 alone, you now and then see flying before you, or hear 

 singing from the ground creeping plant. The beautiful 

 fresh-water lakes, deposited on the rugged crests of great- 

 ly elevated islands, wherein the red and black divers 

 swim as proudly as swans do in other latitudes ; and 

 wherein the fish appear to have been cast as strayed be- 

 ings from the surplus food of the sea. All, all is wonder- 

 fully wild and grand, ay, terrific. And yet how beautiful 

 it is now, when your eye sees the wild bee, moving from 

 one flower to another in search of food, which doubtless 

 is as sweet to her as the essence of the orange and mag- 

 nolia is to her more favored sister in Louisiana. The 

 little ring-plover rearing its delicate and tender young ; 

 the eider duck swimming man-of-war-like amid her float- 

 ing brood, like the guard-ship of a most valuable convoy ; 

 the white-crowned bunting's sonorous note reaching your 

 ears ever and anon ; the crowds of sea-birds in search of 

 places wherein to repose or to feed. I say how beautiful 

 all this, in this wonderful rocky desert at this season, the 

 beginning of July, compared with the horrid blasts of 

 winter which here predominate by the will of God ; when 



